I could feel your skin moving
while you were thrusting
Couldn’t see your eyes
They were open
Piercing holes through the walls
of my memory
I knew it was wrong,
the wrong place to be

We were both angry and lonely
and you’d been inside before,
me unwilling
And you got away.
Tragically bonded,
all I wanted from you
was familiar bad ***

It went by so fast
I thought I was dying
But you never crashed
until in the kitchen, crying
I could feel the glass break
like I was the aluminum
at the bottom of the sink
swallowing the whisky

And it burned the whole way down
as you jogged my memory
of your past use of force
I got away this time
lost in the night
as you were screaming
and begging for
familiar bad ***

The white light of my bathroom  
reaches down through the steam,
breaks yellow through the shower door.
I scrub my skin, try to scratch loose
all the sour, stinging memories inside,
hope the grime would disappear
in the porous mat under my feet.
The steam flows like a host of ghosts
into the vent fan-  leaves behind
only  the face of tomorrow
in my  mirror’s reflection.

I haven't forgotten what your smile looks like,  
the way it breaks open the sky in halves,  
how it once carved a path through my ribs,  
a gentle cut that never stopped bleeding.  

I haven't forgotten the curve of your lips,  
a half-moon rising in the darkness,  
pulling the tides of my body to shore,  
reaching inside to stitch the torn seams.  

I haven't forgotten the way you tasted,  
like salt and sugar mixed in a kiss,  
your laughter a bird trapped in the room,  
desperate to escape but never willing.  

I haven't forgotten the silence you left,  
the echo of that smile in empty rooms,  
a ghost haunting the space between breaths,  
and still, it lingers, a wound unhealed.

You are my late September,  
When spring has long been forgotten  
With its newness, lush green and raindrops.  
The rambunctious giddy splendor of sweaty palms  
And arterial palpitations.  

You are not summer, hot and dripping,  
Air thick, smothering with inescapable heat,  
Panting breaths and desperate lips.  
Perhaps once or twice as we revolved around each other,  
If night airs could tell tales.  

You are not winter,  
Though we have shared Decembers.  
There is no place for you in my snow tipped trellises.  
No coordinate in my circumference that would hold you in ice,  
Frozen and forgotten under rippled white blankets,  
Though perhaps, under wrinkled white sheets.  

You are not fall,  
When autumn turns the ground dirt and dull.  
Trees shedding their raiments  
And reaching naked for the sky.  
Surrendering to the inevitability of winter’s approach,  
Drawing sap down to their rootwork,  
Waiting for another spring  

You are my late September,  
The earth still warm between my toes  
With the remembrance of summer suns.  
More vibrant than spring, and wiser than summer.  
Leaves full of tree-song  
Brilliant gold and fire,  
Blood orange and melancholy yellows,  
Blazing in defiant glory.

Memories are the stones in my pockets weighing me down as I walk into the interminable ocean.
Where there should be fond recollections of my laughter and playing in the yard,
live etchings of dread; a relentless foreboding.
Sometimes memory isn't a specific scene,
sometimes it's a guilt that envelopes you in a sick, nostalgic way.
A guilt so familiar it almost feels like home.
Sometimes it's a scent that takes me back to the house on 3rd st, sometimes it's a sound that brings me to the blue house on Allen.
It's the caldo de pollo with too much cumin.
It's the shattered mirror on our shared bedroom floor, it's the color of the dried blood on the discolored bathroom door.
It's the sound of me and my sister begging her dad to stop beating our older sister, time and time again; how many times did our throats go raw from pleading?
And why am I cursed to keep reliving it?
What sin did I commit to deserve the burden of survival? What am I paying for?
What horrors has my brain locked away if this already isn't bad enough to forget?
Am I doomed to have the good times become grains of sand slipping through my fingers for as long as I am cursed to roam the earth in this lamentable body?
When I look back, will there only be wretched stains where I know there should be reminders of love and kindness?
I want the “good times” to stay burned into my mind like everything else does,
Is that really so much to ask? I suppose so.
For now, I will hoard small momentos of the “good times” movie tickets, receipts, doodles done in passing and anything else.
For now, I will quietly envy the forgetful.

Dreary eyed and worn tired,
On last legs, to stand defiant
Against the falling away of time,
Heavy handed and unceasing.

I remember.

Through the haze of blue white mist,
A familiar feeling,
A perceiving glance,
Breaks forth a spring of fresh thought
That flows down the back of my mind
To whet the stone,
And let memory sharpen.

I remember.

Restored from grey depths
Of dismal slumber;
To stand tall once more,
And seize the joy and pain
That first wove it into me.

I remember.

To hold that moment at times edge,
And share it once more
with the heart's palette.
To give colour to thought,
And meaning to the mind.

I remember.

And so the memory carries on
Till the stone is dry,
And the blade is weak and worn.
The withered thought, falls to rest
Under the pauper's headstone.

...Remember?

I put you back inside your box
and placed it just behind my eye
the lid is loose and the sides cracked
light shines as though under a doorway
your story paramount in my library
when you're not here I hold a breath
that is yours and yours alone, a sigh
for when we are once more met
and history tumbles like yesterday