Page 37 - WDickinson_Blackwell_Submission
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Liquid Escape Hatch
The good time you said was going to be a good time instead
sorrows me back four years. What was supposed to be
milky oblivion in the organs, thick ambrosia shoved between
neurons, is rather the channel from here to then. The memories
in the mouth coursing from tongue to kidney. From hand-in-mine
to not-hand-in-mine. From senseless chatter to the dense sound
of thoughts receding backward. Not said. Almost not thought. Suspended
between synapses. Guilty receipt in the trash. New stain on sofa,
glaring from armrest. The relapse collapsing us backwards in time,
where wordless sighs mean waiting for the not-apology, for the souring
of what has already gone bad. The safety exit from here more like a portal
to the same room. Drink up anyway. Tell me, again, how this won’t
ruin us. How soon clipped words will estrange us.
Tight, noncommittal smile meaning less than ever.
How this, and all we do, fermenting now and then together, indistinguishable.
Habits you just can’t break, impossible to walk forward. Your ghosts
return, become that bitter aftertaste, sobering revival,
until that
oblivion escape
becomes our undoing.
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