it hurts to know i cannot love the way i want to we fill the cut out cavities with hands we plug the holes with writhing fingers it startles me when the insides flail out the tiny creature inside facing death like another quick jaunt over the river oh oh oh oh oh ohhhhhhh i am coming to terms with the fact that they might marry someday she picks up the pieces with painstaking attention gathering half before abandoning the task the mirror reflects the glass still embedded in the planks of wood i cannot commit to having a child i already feel a sense of loss

Don't you wonder how the tiles are ubiquitous? You watch them ripple underwater and inside mountains, beneath bare feet and overhead. The flash of light between two consecutive tunnels wakes you with a subtle grinding. Your teeth remember even as your lips hand off the story to someone else.

It doesn't occur to you that something like a body could float, it's as foreign as heaven and the way there. Your thoughts abscess on the drive home, as your knees bend in prayer at the asphalt altar. It still feels strange to breathe in rotting air through rotting lungs, it's still surprising to be falling apart.

Let me list all the ways to keep quiet. You know those stories they tell you aren't stories, how they pile up until they weigh heavy on your soul? I dropped my history book in the hallway, and it clattered so loud on the linoleum, that's all I have to say about that.

Neon lights draw him into the future and the past, and all he notices is the chrome reflection and the breakfast sandwiches. Typical, how the eyes wander in so many directions, you never quite know where he hides it. The will to set another date forms knots in your stomach that you have no choice but to evacuate. The bile matches the crime, the drapes are hung and there's nothing for him to grab ahold of. Maybe it's nothing, but it glitters in the night sky just the same.

I can feel you in the room. They talk about you as if you'd gone, but I know better. The air is heavy with you. The last time you were here, we filled the memory until a little red light came on announcing that there was no more space in this moment for us to live. These sheets still feels like home, because you slept in their fold. The kitchen, the ants, the desk lamp, every piece of this image has a blur, billowing at the edges. I know the shape, I know the hue. You aren't yet a ghost. You still cast shadows in this room.

I fall asleep before I know how to process the news, before I know how to hold it in my mouth, to let it escape in gasps and sobs before the language rescues me, a rope in the water, but unpredictable, like the stories playing out inside my head. I don't say the words at first, I extend the letters tentatively, just far enough to snatch them back before the light hits them. The brine floods out alongside everything else, and somehow, I smile, knowing it's a start.

The flies aren’t lazy, you insist, and I want to believe you, like you believe in progress, that entropy is not lost on us. They’re only slow because they are so small, and I cannot bring myself to notice the layer of crystalline wings powdering the floor. Sometimes gravity is still the losing force.