Manslave memory is a nasty caricaturist,
whose hemlock hums in the trenches of your skull
until every moment becomes palpable nothing:
            a 3rd grade analogy with the faces rubbed out.
Challenge him
And he’ll fade your finest hours like stonewashed jeans
until your lips hang on your words, every thought a broken nebula.

Whittle down movement with a carving knife,
until there’s nothing but a still-life
splitsecond
in which you can’t breathe or move or think or speak
and you’ll see him at work,
Tearing us like a jigsaw
despite the glue I edged on your skin.
He’s what you see when you close your eyes,
A thick, pounding darkness:
Not even a darkness, but the fading of color

You are being paranoid,
he will say, And I will say
I remember you
as clearly                 as the day before we met.