Lament, the Dying

Memory, grief, and confusion: this poem attempts to display these things.

I remember this thing
that horrible taste of sulfur and potatoes on my tongue
the squish of liquid on my thumb as I tried to remember
what was it?

What was it that was there, beneath the porcelain?
the soft-pink shine a gloss over the
hard
wet
round tongue in my mouth

His fingers pulling and molding my
flesh into mirror images
of
his
own

That tongue so proud and red
making my body melt around it
and swim down
down
into the pit that is the thrown up, thrown away, thrown in heaves of the nights
before the end of it all.

I remember giving in
the smell of shadows conjuring inside
me
the harsh
welting
snarling beast that was my self

Angrily relenting and tugging him
closer
until he was all
that
was
left.

My world a now growing, smooth, narrow passage
that gives life to only the dead.
The smallness of me
a pillow
a font for the words of the living to read and

To remember
the east is over now
the moon ripens and is plucked
by the wrinkled fingertips of the
newly made