sometimes
a wound-eyed night
stares up at you

indefatigable

like an opening
lotus

bleeding its
sticky seeds
into a famished
pond

like gory streams
of memory
curling their ruined
arms around
your body

maybe you know
or don't know
that they are no longer
here.

That they have never been,
and never will be again.

that those invisible warmths
that you and I
once knew so well

were only brief
and soluble oils
in the lightless
and infinite
sea of our living