this is to serve as a reminder only:

a watered-down attempt to keep it in motion
with half-inch gaps between our changes in disposition
as the course ink that chafes the corners of sulking mouths
lends palm prints to the apprehensive, cowering crowds,
a reason to strike through, mix colors and lap it up,
closing the divide or humoring yourself at the loss
you've become.

          sometimes, much like this time,
          keeping you in strict line with my others,
          that schematic skill, the source of my blunders,
          fails me now.

          I've raised you above me, dabbled in taboo
          ravines too turbid for me, and with
          pigmented hues of disappointment rues,
          my limbs stiffen with atrophic misuse.

          a hardening of hollowed cheeks exist
          because she knows what I've forgotten,
          my failures to admit
          the mistaken and the haste of my cowardly tongue
          now met with pauses in speech and the flight of an
          additional one.

          I never wanted to be so fluid between your fingers,
          or to rely on you for matters I've yet to consider
          but I've fallen short, dependent on escaping hurt
          now innate, forcefully extending my ankles straight
          where even thrashing
          fails me now.

a scratched-art attempt to keep it hidden
with spaces for thought and deciphering forbidden
as my words combine to form a circular road
of destined familiarity through which I'm defeatedly towed.
the reason to scrape through, mingle memories and eat it up
now smudges my chest with its vacancy of never really
being enough.