aphasia

the last time we checked each other for ticks, i found two on your navel, just below your belly button. and i wondered how they ended up there, but then remembered that every little living thing wants those secrets parts of you.

i see you in everything, but specifically the grocery store produce that rots before it can even be purchased. i’d like to fall off a ladder in my backyard and develop aphasia, and become the master of the short story. only able to remember a placeholder of you.

yesterday, the sun switched directions and went back where it came from, rising in the east, and falling in the east. and i didn’t question that, i just saw you there, i saw you in the old movies where the humor got lost in all of the time that has passed.

but my fall from the ladder will feel like a relapse of sorts, i think, each inch closer to the ground is another small decision to reach out, which makes up a bigger decision, which makes up the forgetting, which makes up a hole in my head.

what no one tells you: relapse is not recovery, it is just relapse.

“where did i go?” i will ask the doctors. “you went to the ground,” they will say.