CONSUMPTION

The word RUN still echoes long after the sound should have died.
Not in his ears-
in his bones.
Each step forward drags two shadows behind him. One remembers her laughter.
The other remembers her teeth.
Sometimes she's there in reflections:
whole, breathing, eyes soft with recognition.
Other times the glass crawls with that thing-limbs bent wrong, smile too wide, voice layered over itself like a broken chorus.
He doesn't know which version hurts more.
The balance demands sacrifice.
The world demands forgetting.
But grief is heavier than any law, and hope-
hope is a stubborn parasite.
"If you can hear me," he whispers into the dark,
into the places where light goes to die,
"I'm still looking."
And somewhere, between the shifts, between the screams and the silence,
something hears him.
Something remembers being her.