I remember it,
sometimes.
Mostly at night,
Or when i’m drinking water,
and I can feel the coldness
rush through me.
That’s how it felt.
Thinking about
the way my mind took simple things
and twisted them at will.
Like poor spoons,
or broken limbs.
There’s one thing
that stings to remember.
Like scar tissue,
covering up a nasty past.
It was him
Or you.

He is my victim.
The boy with flowers in his hair.
Thinking of how he looked
causes me pain.
Because, before the scar healed,
he was the infection.
He infected my thoughts, my love.
He tainted my desires.
Our words never met,
but our eyes did.
And in these passings,
these intersections,
our glances exchanged
information that
encodes stars and DNA.
A falling star couldn’t run
as fast as my heart did.

I fell in love alone.
I fell in love with a phantom,
a specter.
I could only guess at what
he tasted like.
And how it would feel when he
tasted me.

And, one day, I realized,
eyes wide open,
that a fog had been covering him,
separating him from me.
That I hadn’t really seen his face,
that I’d filled in his holes.
The fog covered his flaws
and reflected
a too perfect image.
Something that couldn’t breathe.

And when I see him,
the flowers missing from his hair,
but the Sun, the truth, shining
so far through him,
it hurts.
Not because his kisses were imagined,
but because I can still remember them.