aphasia is the loss of ability to speak, or understand speech, my words slip and change as i go to say them. you know how on a page of black squares on white, it looks like there’s gray in the intersecting corners? or if you stare at traffic and light flashes off chrome and it’s all blue spots when you close your eyes? it’s all in the angle of light. i never told you i believe there is a space between your shoulders where your wings used to be, that when i have nightmares i think about that space until my eyes grow heavy. i’ve had such real dreams about you, waking up with the taste of metal in my mouth, hiding pennies worn thin under my fingernails and under my tongue. i never told you that i want to sleep next to you until the mattress grows lumpy and the pillow grows soft and the walls overlap above us, i never told you i want to curl up beside you so that even when you are gone your shape remains in the curve of my spine. did you know that they’ve talked of discontinuing pennies? the cost of making them in proportion to the value of the cent.. it happened long ago that mines were abandoned, filled with water, leeching minerals into the rivers, excavating a mountain for ore is expensive. soft copper cheap. have you seen a penny worn so thin from circulation that its features are indistinct? nothing left but a dirty copper disk. it’s all in the angle of light. i never told you that i have a piece of pencil that broke off in my palm when i was younger and i’m afraid of the day the graphite disappears, that i notice the cracks in the sidewalk and how they stay wet after everything else is dry, that i find beauty in the softness of a bullet hole in solid glass, the way it gets swallowed up. have you ever been anywhere that the sun drops straight behind the horizon or the isle of skye, where the sky mimics the color of the ocean so exactly that there is no horizon there? it’s all in the angle of light. there are days that i want to crash my bike, just to feel the gravel in my hands so i can get the words out right like how the blood hit the air and turned red, all that iron. and i have left splinters just below the skin because it gives my day purpose and i don’t know why scars don’t disappear even though every cell regenerates within seven years. i never told you that i wore the prints off my fingers trying to hold tight to you. - too fast to live
