dreamt of you again last night

woke up sick feeling

like i did for weeks on end

frantically checking to see if you texted or called or emailed me while my fragile body slept

the weakness and necessity pull me from endless stares at a popcorn ceiling with the secrets of the universe and happiness hidden in the obtuse crags

if they would just reveal themselves to my fevered mind

and as i lay staring at the intrinsincal nothing of hopes and prayers

pulse spiked

your gaze burned into my retinas

reburned

reigniting the scar tissue build up until this cataract of your

lovely

evil smirk

a polaroid washed out version of yesteryear

all browns and orange and greens

like a kitchen in the seventies

autumnal colors and avocado shaded stoves

and i lay here with cramping muscles and acid filled guts

remembering the you i have villified and forgiven

sentenced to death and given a last second reprieve over and over

a moebius strip of fresh scars and a maybe a second second chance on a long line of secondary second chances

every second of misty vision and hollow pleas

of wanting to fall back into the dream so the feel of your lips on my cheek never fades away

as my guts gurgle in decisive indifference

the signals to flee generated by my traitor brain

this lump of nerve clusters that cannot let sleeping dogs lie

let lying dogs go

of being a colorblind demolition expert with quivering knees and trying to differentiate red and green before this bus of orphaned aspirations explodes

and the secrets of the galaxy mock me

this breakfast scramble of emotional malaise served buffet style for the hungering masses yearning to be

corralled and led down the slaughter house steps

told what to think

to eat

to say

morbidly posting our every meal and thought

a map with pins and colored string denoting every move we make in hopes of electronic approval

vomiting into the social stratum

tearing the best parts of ourselves out and taking pictures so the entire world can see we are human like everyone else

spilling out guts to an indifferent at best, uncaring at least, exotic mishmash of insignificant shadows all futilely trying to do the same

and failing that we try and make ourselves less mortal

exaggerating the reality to fit the narrative until fiction and fact become synonymous

writing slivers of truth to season the bland taste of basic survival

waking up with you whispering as the dream fades to crust in the corner of my eyes

losing the ability to

the ability to

function