i wish i had kissed your veins
like black ink carving underneath your skin
flowing into your blood
i wish your body would remember me
the way a tattoo would be marked
like a decorating scar
it's been a while since loneliness creeped up behind my back
its fingers touched my forehead
coldness washed me inside out
when i left the office today it was already nine pm
i drove home knowing no one awaited
the road faded into the thousand roads I have walked
the lights faded into the thousand dots of illumination my eyes witnessed
i uttered an old poem that I have written elsewhere in my mind but never made it out from the stream of consciousness
a poem that i buried
but my dear
why don't we remember each other
when i touch my wrist with the fragrance of a something that smells like loss
why do they name it love
as if it is meant to disappear
how about you now, do you remember me
once in a while, you must have glanced at the old books, the empty bottles, the wrecked pieces of paper filled with my handwriting of a poem that I started to forget
do you keep them in a box, in a corner, in the drawer, in your heart
do you sometimes mumble my name
like a habit that hardly dies
i want to call you, and tell you, it is three in the morning here
and i couldn't sleep
i couldn't sleep
i couldn't sleep
i couldn't sleep
i walk around my messy, tiny apartment
start to remember all the names and all the stories that don't ring a bell anymore
from last year, the year before that, the year before that, until I lose track of who is from what era, who loves me and who loves not
it was never you
i put a drop too many
of the perfume sample i saw in a corner of a grocery store
it smells like something unnameable, unrecallable, untouched
it smells like all the things I keep inside my head and then forget
it smells like you
except i don't remember
what you smell like
so i put a drop too many
of the perfume they named l o v e
one that i found in the corner of a shop
pretending that
it was you under my skin
june 5th 2015
