living along the margins

My soul lies awake tonight as if it has never known rest.
It lies awake at the memory of your name.

The recesses of my mind echo with but one sound.
Your name echoes in the recesses of my mind.

I am allowed no rest, no sleep.
You have taken, with you, my rest, my sleep.

At the sacrilege of voicing thought, the stars burn out.
Your name allows no utterance and thus I remain mute.

I live haunted and bound wide-eyed.
Your name haunts me and I live not if not to be bound.

I am reborn with the knowledge of your name.
With knowledge only of your name, I am still-born.

still frames

your hands draw forth mechanic whirring
with short outbursts of electromagnetic radiation
streaming from flights of infinitesimal beelzebubs
wrapped in metal casings

i am amused, enthused, brought to laughter
imploring to remain within the ritualistic frameworks
of you paying homage to me or a likeness thereof
mirroring two-dimensional affectations on chemically-coated paper

i exist through captivity, imprisoned in dark rooms:
refuge to stolen souls sucking breath out of otherwise healthy men.
i exist through you. in a vacuum created from sensitised metal
requisitioning cognition and thought, incapable yet still smiling

broken families, no matter what anyone does, always feel broken

how long does it take to forget? what does it take to finally be able to say we've moved on? i see your message on the screen, bridging the seas and vast tracts of land separating us. and even through the distance, i feel my body tense with uncertainty. what do i say? how do i convince myself that i feel hardly anything at this possibility of contact? i cringe at the thought that you are real. i shudder at the realization that it was only i who denied your existence.

but what would you have me do? i am torn. i am broken. i am lost and you have been shattered. shattered into the tiniest fragments that memory has allowed. shattered and scattered across time, across space that i will not occupy. i've forgotten you. i don't remember how it felt to have once been complete. i plead for the mercy of forgetting you. i beg for reprieve from a litany of words threatening to make me long for what has long been dead. when will you let me go? when will you allow me to forget you?

it has been too long and yet you've brought it all back with just one word.

missing you, i wonder how you look now,
wonder if you still do that little habit with your fingers

i remember you as if it was only yesterday
and realize it is only in yesterday that i have the courage to remember.