Like marks wiped from a chalkboard,
particles spiraling apart,
braiding back together unnaturally,
I once had command over them,
autonomy unquestioned for years.

You were possessions,
all with a set purpose.

Some to make me realize the sudden
flash of pain when skin breaks,
or how my mother's necklace gleamed,
shimmered like the sands we strolled along that day.

Some were far more cold,
secret skins worn at night
when the house's winter hush
was too much to face,
too cryptic to understand.

Secrets inked in places
I still cannot tell anyone of,
not here, not ever.

I clutched you so tightly once,
could relive every one of you in my veins,
carried through the rivers that flow inside me,
through what will become dim cables.

I may have mistreated you at times,
twisted shapes to support narratives
I wanted more than anything,
but I've always kept you with me.

Like drops of water from the sky,
I cannot hold you but each one
can still pour over me,
jagged bolts from that vast above
can still strike and charge what once was
vivid throughout me before becoming nothing

But the fading echo of crackling static,
of pens consuming page after page,
of a lens shuttering and sealing
you away in one perfect moment.

Some were so simple until I knew
how fragile their intimate textures could be,
how easy it is to crack the rims
framed around our recollections,
like faces and voices are really made
from mysterious infinite threads
that will unspool from within me.

Like the ink left in the grooves of fingerprints,
I can still keep some of it's raw essence for now
before it's washed away,
evaporated with each new mark
made into this unknowable threshold.

I'll still clutch each one tightly,
keep you with me as long as I can.