the language I used to know has disappeared with your sound, your scent,
and with me no longer near it, I have wasted entire days and
months trying to smell, to hear it, among
the virus and death, that late artifact
tongue that spoke only of you and to you and for you.

once, to write of a sky like this, a
deep and wide blue, without
putting therein a you, seemed
impossible, or quite possibly sin—

to dare not find the thin clouds sullen, the
shrouded sun lonely, to be so
bold as to not tag
the very air
bereaved for sheer lack of you.

by Ruskin, fuck that.

I am happy to be bare and cold and dreaming (for the
first time in years), and (strangely) though
I still and always
love you, I can no
longer access those scared tears.

I am only bone and blood and spit, now.
I am bleach-burned skin and piss, now.
I am unsealed, legit, myself, now.
I am real, unfit, but lit, now.

what used to be the aesthetic of me
is inextricably linked to a lost
and forgotten we, and
I know that to write of a
you at all, would only be to fall,
would be the true pathetic fallacy.

TAGS: DailyKaiya | Dogs | Winter2022-23