Uta Thalamus

Sometimes I need you to unlove me

so that you could find me again

after I’ve dusted myself off and crawled out of the impact crater

or at least my ghost

emerging from my bony, irradiated smithereens;

our chapters long since emptied out

all Uta Hagen, Siddhartha, and Roanoke

on the far side of closure

as if they’d filled a wastepaper basket,

its belly grumbling on three shreds of crumpled, loosed leaf

and the remainder a versicolor suffrage of stickier, more disgusting mutilations;

half an old Twinkie, a too ketchupped fork, a throat.

I think it would only hurt differently

than how you love me now

not more

differently as is the distinction between losing one’s sight and losing one’s eye.

Sometimes I need you to unlove me

in making a moment again when virtues came uncluttered and in a primal haste

when that old, electric touch

would stop you

and words were still a floodlight of promises

somewhere in that lush, ravishing precursor

when the aches of me had not yet become the pains of you,

before every atom was a disaster;

Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays marked on your calendar

to trumpet blame

drink a cheap coffee on-the-go

and leave the dirty lids where we keep the photo albums

letting them drool and spit onto the pinkest of our scars.