I can't come home anymore,
and I can't trust your willingness
to see me until I can at least remember your smile,
and pretend what you're wearing now is the same thing.
I so want to pretend;
I swear I've gotten better,
to the point that even my friends are recognizing
the floor is lava and I'm on the wrong side of the room,
but that's hardly enough
to make this place real again.
It's like everything is coated in mercury
and I'm afraid to touch anything,
afraid to die, slowly, from a heavy metal
replacing my insides
and reducing metabolic flows to stagnant pools
where electrons whirl like clouds of gnats
dogging me and occasionally dying in my eyes.
They're no longer unpredictable—
I could tell you their colors
and why the blue lights are always doubled
and you could know how sick we really are
just by looking:
mine a bright red and yours a pale yellow.
