the slow art of breathing bitter

Mausoleum in Dreams

Did you ever have a long-term memory?

Too long to forget lousy poetry,

and finally, losing itself in the gushing water beneath the indigo rocks?

I have a room for myself now,

and it tastes just like the way heaven does;

a small talk of flaming love and murdered pain

over your favorite kombucha tea.

Long distracted walks and Van Gogh paintings.

Your diary's now a nest of cobwebs and broken lyrics,

The ones you've bled your glassy words

and forged in prose poems and songs—

I've never drunk the whole of.

The old radio plays a Fleetwood Mac tune,

slow, slow, slow—the way your breaths have faded.

The tea's becoming cold; you don't bother.

The heart-aching colors now stain your hands.

I've slowly acquainted myself with surviving 

not pain, but memories.

Everything feels icy blue like your eyes,

but I ignore the reflection that stares back at me.

A congregation of smiling sinners,

blue-black words in search of false truth,

A floating mausoleum beneath the lilac dreams,

and buried people breathing peace.

Bare skin clings on in another grip.

The threads of your jean jacket loosen.

Our glowing hands never touch;

we're the hourglasses

filled with never-falling silver sands 

of engulfing emptiness—a mirror image of our bleeding lips.

Aphrodite's thighs bleed, and they breathe in euphoria.

Granddad once wrote me songs

of dark, midnight lovers

that couldn't sing but dance.

The picture frames are the psalms

of our deathful love and regretful morals.

We made small talk on the other side of my bedroom;

the Devil side you loved to hide at.

I remember the day we were smeared with azure and tenderness.

The designed flower pots on our first anniversary,

The movie receipt for your birthday,

The seventy-one text messages and fifteen missed calls,

The maroon hoodie of our senior year,

The "Love You, Darling" coffee mugs on our first date,

The orange gift boxes and green rings,

Our little trunk of childhood cacophonies,

The diary we used to write things in,

The white sneakers you gifted me on my eighteenth birthday,

The pullover I knitted for you after a load of crying and bleeding,

The scar you got on your elbow after you fell from your bicycle,

The lipstick-stained tissues in my trash,

The only promise you broke like I'm when he bade me goodbye.

Isn't that what August meant to us?

I feel so lost in this maze of

smoky lovers and giggling regrets.

Your eyes are flat and cold against

your low-slung jeans; the smoke of roadside tea

erases the space between our words.

Mornings flame red in Saturday hues;

Lavenders smell stale in broken truths;

Lies ring how pleasantly in autumn's haze.

The coincidences of Sunday evenings

and the last page of my favorite novel.

We're the pastel reminders of the bittersweet melodies

we have been dancing to for years.

A catastrophe of affliction and affection.

We're dancing to the rhythms of warm air

on cold winter mornings;

They speak of rumors from the next-door lady—

People that have overlooked and spat blood.

And it hurts to know that I hate to miss you;

I couldn't cease this reminiscing, nor could I move ahead—

More like a sad whisper of fading winter,

you smile in my dreams and die soon after.

Our storage box is full of splintered memories,

and I can remember them all—all at once.

But you can't, now.

You say it's because you've aged with time,

and your brain can't process everything messed with marijuana.

But you were stained in coffee, 

where our stars clashed, and the asteroids bled.

We've loved since we were seventeen, Grey.

How can you forget?

But I know better:

Why remember petty things after one has moved ahead?

Wood burns like your coffee stains;

So I stayed awake one more night,

and dreamed of another rhapsodic nightmare.