It’s best we not speak anymore

by A. R. Sherbatov

 

The black letters of the movie theater you took her to just say “FAREWELL THANK YOU EVERYONE” now / I decay, and you decay (and he decays) but she stays young forever / I drink mango cinnamon whiskey to forget the “estranged” in “estranged father” / and it tastes just like my own blood or maybe someone else’s (who knows what blood is anymore) / I choose not to tell my high school friends about the whiskey or even the estrangement / Her prom dress still fits her, or becomes her, and you won’t stop looking at the way it hugs her waist / forty dirty needles assemble into square battalions to fight the looming disintegration of our text message history / forty dirty needles get you closer and closer to looking like a normal sane functioning employed human being / forty dirty needles of which your old man must never find out / forty sterile platitudes (I’m sorry. excuse me. let me throw up Prosecco in your sink) / forty tiny polaroids, collecting dust; though the face in them stays young forever / forty dirty needles remind you what desire is usually supposed to feel like / forty tiny platitudes(she thinks you are a freak and should run into traffic) / he fights you as you fight me as I fight my roommate while we’re watching Eastern Promises our favorite movie / sobbing in Riverside park I come to a hesitant conclusion that Nikolai and Kirill will in fact live on / I choose not to tell my high school friends about the overdose / (but wonder every day how they’d react) / and with the one friend who knows about the overdose we choose to never talk about the overdose / She still doesn’t know about the overdose for she is young forever and such will she stay