Lady I don’t know barges into my stall at the nightclub toilets
She looks at me with a grim smile that’s trying to split her face in two
Before I can stumble she grabs my arm, looks at me with eyes
Rolling and rioting inside their sockets and says
Don’t forget
With her nodding frantically I ask what I am forgetting
And she shakes me and points at the neon fluorescent humming on the ceiling
The sun she says she says the SUN we have forgotten it
I give her my palms and say lady I don’t know you
She is already laughing
It’s a laugh that sounds like the splintering of bones
Like dragging a sharp knife across a rotting ribcage
A laugh you know is a precursor to wild and empty weeping
The light flickers and I notice that it does look like the sun
A bit, from this angle, from where my head is pressed under the heavy weight
Of the whites of the lady’s eyes
Another stall door opens, whispering across the ground and taking her smoke-thin body with it
But all I see is the sun, flickering like the beating of wings and I want to touch it so bad that I am burning
Truly burning, ignited on the promise of remembrance
There is a name I have forgotten and I know I will hold it again if only my fingers could stretch to touch the light
The girl that exited the stall puts her arm on my shoulder to move me away from the sink
And I fall into wakefulness, coughing and spluttering ash all over my bed
I see I have left a single candle burning by accident
There are dead moths everywhere