Between Mind and Matter

I
Weightless, I collapse into the space of memory
Unwanted images flash behind my eyes
Wildly flickering screens barely able to contain
Spasms pressed up against their glass
I see her floating through slate-black washes
Inside slimy mires of mind
I hear her whimpering, nearly
Drowned out by toneless buzzing
Lost in cold, reverberating dark
I've forgotten her face
Once burned in so deep
Now formless, an amoebic frame stretched
Colorless and emasculated across
The backs of my eyelids

II
Reaching my hand out I stretch my palm over
Dead low tide and pull the water back
Dreams can seem more real than life
Lucid as this or when I get dragged beneath
Numbness as if my blood becomes clay
I will try to rise, and see the room before
Me under new layers
Crepuscular and bleary; I won't know what's
Happened to me, I –
Can't remember anything, God
Help me, my chest is caving in

III
You said something before I breached
The threshold of cognizance, something
About dreams and memories becoming
Indistinguishable in liminal states
You carried me over to a new bed
You washed my face, I whispered
“But is not life a liminal state?”
Before I woke and asked you
What day it was, what year

IV
I once dreamt of palm fronds and a lazy sky
The bay appeared warmly beyond the streets
I threw my shirt to the sand and threw my body
Against the foamy waves to come fetch
Her laughter and add mine to it, shake them
In the warm tides and carry her on my back
Drop down in again and kiss her
I'd jerk out of bed, look out the window
Paw at the glass cold against white stretching all ways

V
Squinting, I stagger about the room
Bare feet slapping on cold tiles
Locked in, only the bathroom
Open in the
Shut
in
Chok-
ing
Qui-
et
of
Dis-
In-
fect-
ed
White
Walls

VI
A harbor, a dock,
Seagulls, and the sun
All coated and dripping wet black
I dip my cup into inky water
I drink to forget

VII
You don't want to live?
Do you even remember how?
If you were alone, drowning in a river
And there was a rock
You could use to pull yourself up
Would you just hope the current
Carried you to shore?
If water filled your lungs and you
Died by the time you reached it
Would the coroners later find
Diamonds pouring out of your chest?

VIII
If I don't erase these words yet again
They'll be absorbed into the page
Like sutures in a ticking clock
Oceans falling apart
Scattered heartbeats of floodwater

IX
I lie here confined to my bed
My hands won't move
My words gargle in the back of my throat
I'm a distorted image of myself
Do you still love me?
How could you?
Look at me
Look at me

X
Dry riverbed
Needle and forceps
Don't close my eyes
I remember everything
I remember her face
The nightmares
What you said to me
You said
Dreams and memories are where the soul
Blooms and withers, they are
Indistinguishable in liminal states
To forget is to cease living
To suck the life already sucked out of the dead
I remember how to live

XI
Gracefully, I rose from the ash of forgetting
I saw her floating back to me
I heard her sweet words again
But you couldn't hear mine gargling
In the back of my throat
Stitch by stitch
You sewed my eyes shut
God damn you
God damn you