I remember the day she left the hospital I looked all over for her. When I came to pick her up she was gone, later she said I never came to pick her up and that’s why she left with a group of strangers…can’t remember who they were or how I found the house where they took her. But the street was wide and there were steps up to the front door. I can’t shake that anxious feeling I have it now I had it then fear…fear of rejection. They stood behind the screen door and told me she wasn’t there. I knew they lied. It happened so long ago that some of it is very vague and keeps fading in and out of my memory. I close my eyes and see the house like a colorless photo taken through a dusty lens.

At night I dream of that day over and over. She is riding

Perfect illusion ill used per individual abstract fact and non-homogeneous, a refraction, subjective subjection subjected to a dream or hallucination, barbarous, incongruous and vain, projecting projects forward in a wanton lustful consumption of time wherein we sit mesmerized by the sand running out, our skin sagging with its own weight. In the moment there is no perfection but reflection of self, realization that you are all there is. There I am in the shiny surface of your eye, miniaturized and inscrutable, your parted lips deigning to speak yet sweetly exhaling an emotion I do not understand.