exsanguinate | issue 2.3 excerpts

measles

I cannot remember the way you look --
as I lay there
burning 
scratching
vomiting.
I expend every energy 
to become well again.
I expend every energy
trying to remember
the look of you
the feel of you
the smell of you.
I long 
to touch you
to taste you --
perhaps
to devour you . . .
and cannot.
You are gone.

I struggle ceaselessly
against this disease
against the blackness
against the blankness 
against forgetting your lovely face --
as you escape from vivid memory.
You are more unreal than you have ever been.
So surreal:
a figment of my imagination,
a concept for my love of pain and passion,
a subject for my media-starved attention.
"Please don't leave me,"
I whisper
to no one.

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