i wake up with Stagnancy in my bed
another morning, yet the same day
the rays of sun tear into the room,
ripping open pools of white on his face

he pays it no mind, his hands
clutch my Adam's apple like plucking
fruit in an evergreen garden,
where nothing grows so nothing dies

Constancy begs me to stay, pleads me
to never leave, shuts the blinds
so the hordes of bright people and
brighter voices stay outside our
unchanging paradise

they call him bullish names, they
say he's complacency, laziness
say he's "wasting my potential"

but I've found greater peace in him
than I ever have in the multitudes
of mornings and infinite days
that I never want to experience

so I'll wake up with Immutability
and go to bed with Invariableness
I'll give myself to him, let him take
everything, let him be everything

another morning, yet the same day.
I wake up alone again.

bury me where the sun can't see
where its rays have never gazed
hide me away in the unknown
never thought of, never thought about

bury me where no breath has been taken
in soil where no root has defamed
a garden where nothing grows
is a garden where nothing dies

bury me like an unwanted memory
like a recurring nightmare, an endless dream
if extinction is forgetfulness' child
then remembrance is my nemesis
bury me where they won't know I'm gone
and where they won't come looking

bury me not like I've lived
bury me not like I've died

bury me like I never lived
and like I never died

The grooves of the door handle
clasp too perfectly about your
fingerprints. Push, don’t pull

and enter into my splendor.
The expanse of the corridor
is slightly familiar to you. The
gait, the wait, the bate
of your breath and the silence
that follows and the violence
that crashes through the expanse
of my corridor are
slightly familiar to me.

The master bedroom is
straight down the street and
a left turn after two blocks,
past the cafe you irregularly
patronised for all those years
where I could get but a glimpse
of the sunrise through the window.
It has a his and his, a walk-in
wardrobe and easily removable
wallpaper. If you would like to tear
it down because the deja vu
is too strong then I have about three
hundred other instances of solo
interactions between you and me, and a
colour palette no other interior
redesigner could ever possibly imag-

You peek past the slightly neglected
washroom, clinical scents wafting out
like blood washing off wounds that are
never meant to stop bleeding but
rather are orifices we pretend to
not understand. The leaky faucet hums
a tune you played on the harmonica
three years ago. You recognise off-white
tiles from the freckles of your face. I am
in the medicine cabinet, just waiting
for you to reach in and patch me up
along with the ever-bleeding orifices but even now
as I ****** the faucet with a hundred
unfinished melodies the bathroom is still
flooding.

The living room is a graveyard. But you
can’t smell the bodies because I set a
reminder for myself to put on deodorant
every alternate week when I stumbled
past you to get to the same side of the street as you
but each time a different car
would kiss my knees and colour my bruises in and
each time you would
already be
gone.

This next room is under construction.

This next room is under construction.

This next room is utter destruction.

-

I reach into the medicine cabinet and grab at nothing
and suddenly the wallpaper is just the pattern
of my shirt sleeve because I have long forgotten
the name of the cafe I saw you in once.

I watch the expansive corridor become
fragments of impossible sidewalks and
mono-coloured zebra crossings. I can
no longer see the sunrise through
the window. I have never seen the sunrise.

Do you know my name?

-

The grooves of the door handle
clasp too awkwardly about your
fingerprints. Don’t pull, don’t push.

Enter into my splendor.