The surgeon said I would see colors I’d never named

I laughed because she never looked into my eyes directly

And now her face loads in layers

Nose first, then lips, maybe another planet’s concept of eyebrows

You’re splitting again

Everyone keeps saying like it’s a bad haircut

But I counted seventeen versions of your smile today

The one that comes after coffee but before remembering the war

The one that forgets to bring its bones along

The one that’s just a placeholder for all the people you’ve forgiven

The MRI tech asked me to think of nothing but the beeping

So naturally I cataloged every apology I’ve ever swallowed

They danced like moths around the fluorescent god

Leaving powdery confessions on my synaptic ceiling

Tonight I caught myself refracting

Spread out across the kitchen tiles like spilled mercury

Each shard holding a different temperature of grief

The shards are having a meeting without me

They’re voting on which me gets to answer the phone tomorrow

The one who remembers birthdays with atomic precision

Or the one who thinks time is just another kind of light pollution

Doctor says it’s normal to see halos

I didn’t tell her I saw yours weeks before the accident

Just hovering above your shoulders

Like a saint who forgot to apply for the position formally

The pills make everything taste like static

Except for your voice

Which now arrives in packets

Sometimes scrambled like eggs

Sometimes clear as glass

Always three seconds behind itself

Echoing from a room where I’m still whole

I’m practicing being less prism

More straight line

But even in the dark

I can feel myself bending

Around the memory of your touch

That last perfect angle

Before everything shattered into spectrum