The Lapse

By Violet Russell

A lapse of thought,
swallowed in the clockwork
mechanics of the Earth’s core.
Grind your teeth as they grind
their gears, and you are seeing
double vision; everything is colliding,
and corroding, and configuring.
Shadows melt like lava lamp wax
all a-cast in a strange orange glow,
and we are interconnected.
Your face mine, and my face yours,
and I realize I’m alone again because
we were parts, now, we are whole.
Our love is lost as one;
because love is a gift too beautiful to covet.
I prick my finger on this spindle,
and I’m falling into a daze.
I could stay here for eternity.
Between the blinds, I watch the light
slice into warm pieces of toast.
The honey sun is taking a
pilgrimage behind the mountains,
and the clouds are hurrying off
to the farthest corners of the world.
The sky’s muddled with confusion,
thundering, bruised, they exit in unison.
Where were you when the world ended?
Parts again, no longer whole,
but you are missing entirely,
and I am stuck in everything and nothing,
the fragile breaths of the universe.
I don’t know what I am anymore,
Strung up like a puppet.
I can only react to my actors’ artful hands,
but there’s no one left to move me.
No one to make me dance.
No one to remake me into
something resembling human.
My unmaking was always assured,
but I had always wished someone would be
here to witness it.

I was told once that atoms never touch,
and this distance hurts the more you notice it.
Let’s balance the scales again,
it’s easy if you don’t fear the fall
or get light-headed on the way up.
A lapse of thought,
And the hand clicks to midnight,
Fast asleep into oblivion.