amnesia

wrap your laced-up fingers around my throat like you don’t want to breathe,

hold my pupils in your palms. do you want to smile?

amnesia. the brain doesn’t like the watercolour poem of my skeletal frame,

scratches it out with violent love; acid ianthine fingernail marks fall on my eyelids.

fingers stretch to meet in the equilibrium of the bathroom mirror, but your lashes brush

the cobalt-tinted glass instead. the lights flicker in my face/your face/my face. i/you/me/we smile.

look away.

us = fated in the stars, made to burn out within a mile of each other,

two burning gas balls in the fabric of dark blood-clotted space. 

drown your sorrows in the bathtub. why is there soap in your eyes? 

sticks and stings like blurring clouds, slides over the suns that are your

irises untainted, dunk your head under the water and breathe in the tiles.

momentarily turn blind from the shampoo in your corneas. love it. savour it. it will never come again.

remember i’m waiting outside. don’t get out. fear the living ghost that is me.

climb out with your hair clinging to your nape, stare into the glass,

peek through the gap in the door, see the wall looking back at you.

what were you so afraid of?