It was another form of involuntary servitude/hypnotism. We dreamt in corporate haiku. Each passing moment was stashed away in a different coin locker in the middle of the city; you threw the keys one by one into a toxic sea nearby.

You kept thinking you were already in Hawaii.

"What could he possibly be so angry about?" I remember you found their relentless rage so funny. I wished I could feel the same, but by then, my sense of humor had already been devalued and structurally adjusted beyond any hope of recovery--

Some things refuse to get lost in the translation/exchange.

What?--

No, what I meant was--

State--

meant was, I--

moot...--your purpose--

Word for word.

Punctuation is a disease.

From here on out, we will only speak to each other backwards. Later, when they run the tape on rewind, what once looked like silence will be revealed as a heartfelt declaration of independence and deepest affection.

On your windshield is the calligraphic trace of invisible lips. Transparent brushstroke. Permanent smudge of unspoken words in tender reverse.

All through winter, we played together in the ruins of a mining town near the sea. It was all rust and weeds and packs of wild dogs at our feet. I remember the color of the city that year; it was an infinite almost. A possibly maybe. A milk white desire. You were born with a rapidly fading blue; I was not quite transparent when I met you. I still had to stand next to neon in order to be felt.

We danced on abandoned streets until exhaustion overwhelmed.

--I am sick of all these words. I want to stow away in a rogue grammar I do not understand. I want to forget this alphabet of linear constructs. There is an irresistibly infinite regression of horizon that draws me out to a growing lack of understanding. I am the perennially aspiring amnesiac with questionable talent and hopeless ambitions.

I can never assume a neutral position for too long.

A second unraveling.

By the time I worked up the nerve to say something, the tide had rolled in and washed away the tips of your toes. I forgot what I was saying. We used gestures and pheromones to communicate our lack of emotion/will. Half the world starved so we could eat a peach. I wanted to laugh at this but there was a commercial on TV. I mimicked a language I could not understand. A woman pointed at the earth and the sky. Contaminated words left my lips, hung on the air, and died. Radioactive poetry in the way you sighed.

In the afternoon, we lay together and smoked cigarettes. We called each other collect. You never imagined the authorities were watching us the whole time. I asked you to sing me a children's song that didn't rhyme. There were forty-seven messages for you and only one for me. I hid words in your carry-on luggage when you weren't looking; you grew suspicious when I ran out of things to say. Helicopters followed me home while you searched for a new place to park your car. For you it was simply a matter of obtaining the proper permits and navigating correctly; for me it was a matter of time before the amnesia wore off and I landed myself in prison again.

I watched a bug crawl along the edge of your table. I watched your cat vomit on the carpet. I watched your toenails change to the color of perhaps. Cooled smear of blue wax on a windowsill. From your apartment we watched a fight on a rooftop nearby. Korean gangsters beating a man down on a bright Sunday morning. Black boots. Hard blue sky.

Later that same night, a woman screaming from an alley.

In the dark, you look at me as if to say, You think too much about these things. As if to say, You want to make the world better but what about my world? As if to say, ¡Mira mira mira mira mira!

But that's exactly my problem, I imagine conveying with rapid Morse code blinks. But--

--instead, I close my...

eyes, and fade; color is a--

transparent sea flawed.