The Writing on the Wall

nothing ever leaves that was meant to stay. Nothing

ever stays that was meant to drift, evaporate like lace

tendrils of dying fog. The empty

stars all whisper the same

litanies, curious and incomprehensible. Reality's cheesecloth

retention shreds at the murmur of the spirits that consume

us. Memory is the taste of chlorine that fills the mouth, or

blood that comes at the end of a fist, or the feel of the small,

fine hairs around the curve of her ear,

at the nape of her neck. Ash stretches

from the end of the cigarette, distends, drops gray weight,

collapses.

(Caffeine rides the veins like wildfire,

slash and burn conflagration, flushes nerves that crackle,

pop like the skin of a spit pig. Muscles clench in expectation of a blow, back

begs to arch release before drop to nadir, soul in menopause. Sallow

lids flex straining laziness over glazed eyes with each blink. Cycle

predictable as the relation between catharsis incurred from tragedy and observed

angle of descent from grace.).

But you still

remember her eyes, the way arc sodium burned white lines

on the windshield solid as chalk, the faces

of those you grow to hate, the

precise

way her mouth tasted: lip gloss and smoke,

and a way out of this place.