phantomless

 

          For once, I would like to hear your voice drip with something more than deserts forgotten. The sun has long since perished between words you failed to utter, and words you only whisper to deader things. There is no moonlight to bathe loneliness in, nor madness, no oceans large enough to hold the weight of such limitless suffering. Where are the phantoms, the strangers, the ugly, frail things that once gave me reason?

Lungs tremble with a useless wind; you give breath to a name that is not my own, watch it swell with the smile of a doting mother. I sit in a corner like a mistake.


  Your dust no longer quenches me; it sticks to bones that protest when shifted. They would much rather lay tongueless, pretending to be as you and walls, or floors that lay in wait for such tender undoings.