I am echoes of empty moments
the days with you:
drunk-night glimmers
flashing into sober mornings
reminding what was when;
you are 200-proof moon-shine moonshine
the press of your sleeping hips
hangovering me
headaches of your smile
body aches of your kisses
AA means something else
and there are twelve-hundred steps
to recovery
I cannot piss your DNA out from my liver
it’s deeper than my bones
shotgunning kegstands of your arms around me
I want you, summer lemonade
sweet-and-sour kick in the teeth
burrowing corkscrew cavities into molars
your mint-julep biceps holding me down
your voice a gazebo piano ballad
earworming a melody the rest of me misharmonizes
this old body was too young in you
you, too old for the time we had
we charted inevitabilitywe lived the prequel of the now-that-must-be
we plotlined the time-travel TV movies
we echoed thunder before the lightning
and in the now-that-must-be,
20-20 foreshadowing hindsights foresight
I still get drunk you in the moonlight
shape constellations into us
dismiss the stars that don’t connect
as figments of imagination
we, too stubborn to let the heavens disappointoutside this skin built of metal adamantium strong
unbreakable in the winter sun
but inside the boy still shimmers in your afterglowsomeone I knew oncehe shared my boneshoped so hard for fate to failhoped so hard time was a hiccupwe could reshape in our image
but without étui, the bedsheets of time
only fold now to then
never make now then inside, he’s running away with you
flying elsewhere on someone else’s wings
but cannot escape this unventilated skin
he’ll suffocate in
rather than breathe new air
I’m supposed to be stronger than this
stoically accept your absence as a must-be
pass on the days without tears
get over you as all things do
fish-in-the-sea-ing our moments into someone else
less shimmeringly iridescent
but I can’tI don’t know howand I have no one to tell,
so your DNA leaks out of my liver
cirrhosising me to death
no one sees the lesions covering this skin in a new armor
fresh-milk skin in each dawn
stitched together with dried salt threads
because you slipped in under the skin
some night when we shared the same bedroom air
fermented in our sweet sweat and whispers –
in dreams, all my stalwartness comes for naught
I cannot bleed you from my blood
you pump my broken-glass heart into synapses
irresistant when I sleep
reconstituting you back into being nightly
resever these heels so I can’t outrun you
torment me, tied to a kitchen chair
from these lips, draw some hallelujah,
which sounds more like your namethan any heavenly hymn
or late-night radio replay on backcountry roads
tonight as the sun sets and overweight lids heavyize
no volume of drink or caffeine
can keep me from you
or you
out of me
out of me
it’s why I fight sleep so desperately
whatever war I wage in daylight
your irredentist reconquest reseizes in moonlight
paradoxing our ontology
make this heart ache again
bodyslam my mind against my skull again
this is the only real I feel most days
and agony bests absence
because it means there’s still someone here
youor me
or someone in between
even if it’s just a boy’s death throes
memories
bleeding out
Christopher Fox Graham © 2017
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