Lost Words

A jar of lost words — biochemical hazards
Rolling in my dusty memory
Collected from the chinks in our sanity
After each futile larynx competition

I weaved a web between our nocturnal encounters
To trap these shavings of our decency
Like dandruff and dead skin; lost words
Clog up the soul when left to sediment

The glass reverberated with the humming
Of a thousand lost words carving their
Vendetta and venom on the jar, longing
To secrete abstract poison into physical organs

I was careless last night.
I tilted my head too far off the bed and
The jar rolled out of my memory
All the lost words escaped, gleeful,

burrowing deep into our lexical gap
widening it to an irreparable chasm

You are long gone, shoved into my
‘failed love experiment’ drawer
But when the wine glass grows heavy
I still find some lost words

Behind my ears

Beneath my pillow

Between my fingernails

I roll them on my tongue, but
Having a mind of their own they
Sting my tastebuds to escape, or
Travel into the recesses of my grey matter to

Eat me from the inside out.