Visceral Chocolate Baby
I am still scrubbing you off the walls of that room, and my mind. The iron-rich stains have seeped so deep that I fear there will always be a piece of you that remains. I cannot decide if that’s comforting or haunting. Not many would choose to live in a home with so many phantoms from the past, and yet I do. Like a shroud I have worn them all these years, and I fear I am beginning to show the signs of their decay. I fall asleep to the sound of your whispers, lilting over the nightscape, and coaxing swirling dreams of matches and gasoline. I pace the desolate structures of my mind, the past so intertwined with the present, the line of demarcation indistinguishable. It’s been days since I left the house, or has that merged to weeks? I lay in bed, staring at the wall shared to your room. At times, it looks as though it is breathing, spurred to life with your DNA deposits. The sun’s path my only orientation to time. Sleep now rarely comes, and only in chaotic spurts that are more disturbing than restful.
