The Body Looks Farther Away Than Most Stones

Based on the quickness with which
the subdivision appeared

since I last passed,
the bedroom looked especially lived in. I stood

wondering how many nights she’d spent there,
how many I would spend alone

justified by this one. I didn’t blink as she pushed
a fist full of pills into her belly,

but they must’ve had a different effect on her:
Working in frenzied bursts of unison

that would shame even the most agile
clouds of plankton, schools of mayflies try to escape

from the skin on my neck. Her chin planted
just below my collar,

she does a modern day
rain dance. Her pajama pants covered

in raised polka dots: I have no choice
but to skim over

Accelerated Breathing, The Sparknotes: Brail Edition.
Then the energy turns: Hands move like the moment

a drain overflows: You recognize panic
before the water dips to the low

spots on the painted concrete floor, while its still
just a bowl filling

and filling. She puffs
across the frenzied darkness ‘I’m too medicated.’

My pills tell me the same thing, the pills
that have me poured into the dents of her mattress,

that I crowded down from a similar bottle
giving lousy directions under a stranger’s name,

next to the slippery dream of every alcoholic:
that the effect can be intensified.

And so for a while then it was enough
just to be next to something so similar.

Even though
I couldn’t exactly make her

out,
through that clutter of dark.