skin deep

It is a matter of depth, of resonance, remembering the color of your eyes. Not the hue they heel  to in still pictures, but the brushwork of your sight shining on me in that brief and bygone time when you were near and I was seen. The attitude of your architecture, the wellspring of so many trembles and sighs. The ease of your amplitude when the signal’s still strong and sharp. The reverence of your flesh when posed in prayer, the teeth that showed whether or not you smiled. I forget everything, trailing dusk and fugue. 

That’s not to say that memory is a refuge— I remember enough to wish I remembered less. The look of disgust as the words walked the line, the roll of the eyes at the very thought of me, the standard exasperation and the assurance of the opposite. Contempt on your breath and the weighted phrase, the lie repeated once the lie was revealed. Little more than a filler for a plot point, nothing much but a number and some stage directions. A pallid, aging pantomime. All the accessories out of style and the lapels too thick or too narrow, a comic caricature to emphasize some personal low.

It doesn’t matter that this is not your story. It doesn’t matter if this isn’t who you are. Millions of lives end every day in the pot or in the jaws, never squeezing out that last not me. The numbers buzz on past, and each day we are each of us winnowed away. The heartbreak in the everyday, the humdrum of our answered prayers. The fire offered, the altar calling to your bones. These kingdoms of once and future kisses, old lovers just over the horizon, your blood clutching at its breath.