In my dreams, evil is always man-shaped the cockroaches and the worms fill me with loathing but they do not fill me with despair hatred disgust

they do not kindle my heart to murder the shape is my shadow I am what I despise

The shape of home has always been wrapped up in the arms of my beloved some long ago forgotten place lost in the heaped-up jumble of my rotting soul my decaying mind desolation

I only guess that time eats space and even home can disappear be destroyed be erased and again I’m chasing shadows chased by shadows treading over ground swallowed up overridden overwritten disappeared

Home, this vast shape residing in the confines of my memory this lingering touch lost in the fragrance of her hair I am dreaming again of what will never be of time past, time lost dreams trod upon torn asunder tattered and misshapen

I looked askance something hopelessly forgotten the distant feeling of a memory obscured communication garbled out of sync I am remembering something that I could not have known the contours of her face the brilliance of her smile her smile, awakening something like laughter turns me inside out her smile, what else could I wish for? like sunlight on a May morning glinting across the silvery sea

Did I hold her for a scant moment? a fraction of a second a thin slice of time in these interstices, and forgotten moments I am home then forever exiled

Do we not live in these fractionated moments? The fraying milliseconds kept in rhythm by the drumbeat of bouncing photons Is this not the half-life of happiness? To peak, then decay keener than sharpened steel heavier than granite then gone like a puff of smoke

The emptiness is what gives shape The absence reminds us of presence My longing for you as you turn away is all that there is all that there will be and the silence thereafter will follow me to the ends of the earth knowing that you are not there that home is nowhere that I am alone