This moment
Cockroaches crawl
Under fingernails,
Impaled on a filament,
My sanity exists as spark between lightbulbs,
Superstitious and nutritious
Cockroaches surround,
All that we ground
Ourselves in,
The silence screams so loud,
The gaps between our memories,
Cease to exist
So oil up your synapses,
Because this is a fond memory
Your pedigree
Means very little to me,
Certainly,
We will quiver and fall as reality,
Is no more real than a clock hand,
Every moment you’ve planned
Is a memory,
Categorically,
This is the past,
Varicose veins on your arms are swollen as you recall,
Behind sagging eyelids,
Off grid in the circuitry of your cerebellum,
Often sure but hard to tell them,
Apart,
The nights blur into one,
And that night you’ve been planning for a while now,
Is the only warmth in your inconceivable rocking chair,
Is your life enough to keep you warm?
Take a deep breath,
The weight of your legs, your arms, your jacket,
The zip digging into your lower waist,
The thoughts darting around your head as they trigger fear, arousal, times gone past and futures yet to come,
The smell of your partner, pheromones and perfume, the smell of the person next to you, of the room,
The stick from your feet to the floor,
The noise of my syllables overlaying my vowels and my prayer that this moment will never end,
The pounding of your heart and the slight chatter in the back of the room,
The dark and the light illuminating me, shading you,
The amalgamation of acts, people faces, cheap words,
Every second you try and anchor yourself in has already passed,
It’s the next day and your head hurts,
It’s 5 years and the night is forgotten,
It’s 20 and the lines on your body are only conceivable because you lived through them,
But to you in this moment, they aren’t real,
And you can remember forever,
How improbable your present existence felt on this night.
