Away

Away

Emaciated bones and need prominent. I mask it in the voluminous clothing of patience and silence until Eventually hard angles poke through fabric and even you must surely notice how I am

fading

away

Parched, my tongue has become curled I can no longer whisper in your ear “I love you.” Endearments have dried-out in the desert of your absence Here but not hearing Looking but not seeing Speaking but not telling… Words laying flat and lifeless like salt leeching out the moisture Except when choices are words sharp and serrated so that I

back

away

slowly hands to centers core holding shredded ends together and like all wounded mammals retreating to shadow to lick the toxin from the wound. I am here now, again, plumply hydrated from the center’s well but gauzed thick and hard and softly impenetrable. My words are choices and drop solid like stone, “let your language be liquid or watch me confidently

walk

away.”