Undertones

Another older piece…

From two thousand miles away I hear your voice change. A subtle click that turns every sound you make unnatural, like you have become someone synthesized, fabricated from vibrating wire and silicone, every utterance bringing with it a high-pitch of metal.

Dug up from the asphalt of the road, the scars are never as deep as the thought of them, the remembrance, the counterfeit recurrence of reflection, where even the most deliberate lie, told enough times, becomes the truth.

I have convinced myself that my indiscretions are not. I have hidden every face, every kiss, every illicit touch behind a shield of ambiguity, as if that alone made them intangible, insubstantial, ethereal. Instead they render themselves elusive to everything but 2 AM recollections. Another line up of regret after regret after simple sigh as the hours of darkness slowly urge on. Always on the nights when I must sleep, when I must escape these memories.

I could ask your forgiveness again and again and never feel free of this.

And now the chemicals reach my senses. I feel the burn in my throat from the open sores, covered in the flow of alcohol and pills. Soon none of this will matter; soon you will see the mirror that tells no falsehoods. Soon, voices in the film, the burning echoes will set us to running.