Soft lips, the absence,
cold hands touching a boiling ***,
all of it overwhelming.

Lisps, nothing but blurred
s's and slurred whispers
of reassurance and love.
So much blind love, so much
lying, so much forgetting,
so much resting in the
space between the absence.

I loved you once, then I
forgot, and loved you again,
and forgot, and loved you
again in memory, I have forgotten.

The absences are wavering;
they teeter like a fresh vase on the edge
near an unruly cat,
nothing tethering the events
of the slurred words from
soft LIsPS, but the
love almost did.

So I think.

The man I loved is dead and gone
and rest before me, a carcass;
his shaky hands and shaky breaths
are almost fully silenced.

I don't recognize that sound of his,
unusual and discordant,
those mumbled songs and deepened voice
have surely lost its purpose.

Say it's you one last time,
suspend all disbeliefs;
with open arms and inviting eyes,
tell me all that you've repented.

Salted, flimsy orange rinds,
bittered instead of sweetened:
these are all I eat nowadays.

Crystalline textures coat my insides,
my blood pressure’s at an all-time high,
and my tensions are shooting through the roof.
By god, I’m so naïve,
So untouched by anything other than this,
it seems unlikely
that I would taste such saccharine things,
I’d be much more inclined to shrivel up my insides,
dehydrate all my limbs and pack them
like raw meat in a harsh winter.

I feel useless again.

Haven't you heard
that breaking and entering is an offense
and that maybe every attempt
you make to barge into me,
every door you bust open,
every single step forward
into my soul, my energy,
against my will, is trespassing,
and I'll be ******
if you think I won't
take care of a wiley trespasser
like you.

It’s a trigger, I think.

I’ve had a talk like that one
a million times
in three voices, two men, one woman,
in my many nightmares,
in my day to day living,
I’ve heard that one too many times.

A swirling tunnel,
a downcast drain, flushing
twisting impressions
of time and space, corrupted
in their voices
in my ears
and I think, surely,
that had to be a trigger.

Crinkling, sizzling
grey, listful energy
always
waiting for the collapse,
perhaps it can hear the discordance
in your voice
when you tell me
it's over.

If you lied
and he lied
and everyone's lying
then what am I doing here
listening to everything
when I could be damaging my ear hairs
another way?

Loosened tie,
loosened dirt,
one's gonna **** you
one's gonna hurt,
what's it gonna be boy,
when everything's turned,
suffocated misery
or the underground resort?

Parts of him,
Everything
Was broken into parts
Of him.

I was told the story
Of when his boy lungs
Couldn't hold another gasp,
And his father found him
Five
Or was it ten? Minutes later
And they had to bring
A dead boy back to life.

They were told a story
Of how his mother drank
A bit too much, often
But they musn't, he musn't
Speak another word of it,
There are parts of stories left untold.

There are parts of him
So many parts
But never enough parts
To make a man whole.

Disgusting,
tongue stuck out,
nose closed;
she always hated it,
and no matter what
we’d press and press,
forcing her to stomach
things she never wanted,
smelling that sourness,
those vinegar troubles
and tangy juice
covered in coercion;
we’d ask her time and time again
and never once did we respect her wishes.

Why must I consume?
is it not enough to exist,
is that not enough consumption?
How greedy it is
to expect me to take
more than I desire,
to force me to eat another
out of house and home.
That’s kind,
so very kind,
a sickly kind,
the sort of “kindness”
that destroys marriages,
uproots families and destroys psyches.
I’m not like that,
I don’t want to be controlled.

But we kept on shoveling
these aged, old traditions,
those nasty pickled ideas,
those greedy, grubby hands
of control over her,
and she could never let herself forgive.