Nightshade

Look how these ducts dry with no tears to run through them
All things have come to a deathly halt
The lips crack and breath shallows, yet tangibly it’s all the same

My body decays

Held together by vines, sewn with mildew. So superficially, so fragile
As if the whole arrangement would break
If only I drew in the slightest bit of air

Yet it holds up, all the same, this suffocating flesh prison of my decay

The roots have dug deep where lungs use to be. A solitary blossom runs in between my shrunken lips
Nightshade, the centerpiece in this grotesque tapestry of pain

Though Lethe does it moistens and forgets all, even the countenance you bore
Nor does it remember your voice, or the sense of your touch
Its forgetfulness be cursed, it has forgotten each thing it once loved

These memories fade

Only it knows something is amiss
For it may not remember your voice by the quality of its being
Yet how can it forget the way it made it feel?

And forgotten perhaps is your touch
But the longing that has settled in its absence remains as ripe as the nightshade blooming between the dying lips and the crackling lungs