A large crash;
Everything comes at once,
Drags you by your chest
and pulls you in,
Makes you relive every moment
And with scents
Breaking past your hyposmia,
Troubled voices crowding
In your ears, in your throat,
And you remember it all
Thumping in your chest,
Making you so ill,
Always sick, always prying
At your weakened body,
But you’ll forget it again,
Hoping it goes away,
And it will always find you
In hot flashes,
To drag you by your feet,
Asking you to see again.

I used to remember in images,
Movies, flipbooks, flying across my eyes,
But then I saw haze,
And the foggy screens became thicker,
So the grime and dust became darkness,
And through the darkness became words,
Disconnected, discolored, disjointed
Streams of words,
And so all my memories lost
Vision, became nothing but recalled statements,
So I could tell you yes it happened,
But how or why or what was sifted through a blender,
Chunked into a garbage disposal, and lost somewhere,
yes, the memory exists as a statement,
A declaration it occurred but oh so loosely,
You can’t be sure of it.

I wish to find some respite
In arms like yours,
though, safer,
much safer,
As it is much too likely if they were yours,
I would feel my breath leave
in sharp bellows of agony,
my lungs would decompress
into shriveled bags,
and I'd pray to forget you
all over again.

Yes, does the mother bird sing
to her sleeping young.
Yes, does she wake them
each morning, with a full heart,
aware they may not make it,
and yet she sings with gusto.

She opens herself fully to her loved ones
because even if they pass,
even if they fly too short or plummet
from the well-kept nest,
it was always worth the morning song
and always were her children worthy of her love.

I dreamt that I saw you
barreling towards me in a sea of people,
and with your arm extended out
to touch me, pushing past me,
and you looked back
with bewildered eyes,
scared, confused,
but not knowing;
I only recognized you when I awoke,
and I'm sure
you'd never remember who I was.

...Whose voice is that?

She likes to ask me this
when I finally lift my fingers up,
and sometimes I have to tell myself
I'm not quite sure anymore
but at least she's honest.

I walked into your life an actress,
putting on a show for you,
miming who I thought I was
with lifeless limbs exerting so much effort,
nearly hollow did I feel,
typecast, merely trying to not collapse in front of you
like a miserable cutscene signaled too quick;
yes, it is most unfortunate
you fell in love with an actress
playing a role she didn’t know how to keep.

These turbulent smashes of a hammer
smacking down and cracking
through my hollowed ears
destroy my ability to breathe,
and continue to torment me as I walk;
I hear everything,
the sound of ever-impending weeping, wheezing,
or perhaps the sound of scrapes skidding
down my legs,
but nearly everything makes a sound
and it forever engulfs me;
I can't be in these spaces anymore,
even imaginary sounds puncture through.

I know that face used to light up,
and I recognize that face here,
but I don’t know what to say,
cause I feel that face in my expressions
and I really thought it’d go away.

I am delighted and also frightened,
and I feel most ashamed
that after all this time,
our faces, some faces, these faces
look the same.