Phase One: First Encounter

Tiny in my veins, you inserted yourselves into my blood cells and hijacked

amino acids to replicate the RNA code of you and,

cell membranes full of you, my blood cells exploded and flooded

my arteries with even more of you.

Phase Two: Rejection

Every device was a nanotech construct made of you.

Each night my blender deconstructed in front of me

and rebuilt itself in your image. Ten billion microscopic

molecules, each one of which holding in its nucleus

the memory of blond curls, the guilt-love

gravity in your eyes.

Phase Three: Recovery

Say we're living in a multiverse.

It is full of infinite parallel yous, and each night,

I forget one of you.

One down, infinite to go. Two down, infinite to go.

Phase Four: Recovery, cont'd.

Eyelashes plucked and chopped into a fine dust or

ground into a powder and then burned, and the

ash of which then dispersed into the stratosphere

via rocket propulsion, still grow back.

Phase Five: Remembrance

If I cannot remember our legs entangled and a cool

breeze through the curtains and across our skin,

I can remember certain atoms within my heart

entangled with certain atoms on the bottom of your heel.

I can remember how that felt, each day, each bloody pulse.