You finally fell in love, I see.
– Salo
B.
to tear himself apart. It came to me
in a dream I forgot;
a misplaced postcard, where I tore
myself together, part
by part. Outside the ship, sirens choired,
their mouths rang like harbors, offering
C.
safe silence. You came to me in
a life I forgot; a displaced dream,
where we danced behind our eyes
to stay warm in the trembling blue
sunset exhaling goodbye to us
in a bed we didn’t share, but where
I stayed awake to your hypnagogic
quivers; a buried impulse
from when we were made
D.
of loud noises. It came to you a replaced memory;
an ocean losing its estuary. I have been
a problem, these moments convulsed
at your delving into my math,
organs trade with numbers, numbers
count your fingers handling the small,
metal rib you were told you were made from
from me, you can stab it
back into my stomach, reassemble,
as some watcher in the sky follows you
sketching my retinas –us trading eyes is too
graphic– we press tongues, I catch
your laughter in my mouth, my tears
on your lipcusp: our faces made
pornographic for no one else’s
pleasure, the glances we sneak each other
as God, away, looks back,
A.
rapt. I came to you in a vision
you didn’t believe. I told you
the fictions of your life as they found
the nons, I taught you to see your future as
if it weren’t already set (but it is). The slow
seconds of inhaling, cells conspiring
to unmake you, the past dreams
of darkness where a star will
one day shine: a mother, a father,
a child, feeling the years brink
(or bless) on meaninglessness
as Huygens descends. Salo begins
Ella Flores is an M.F.A. candidate at Northern Michigan University. She is an associate poetry editor for Passages North and has poems published/forthcoming at Cider Press Review, Fifth Wednesday, and Foothill Journal.