Unfashionable like Always

I’m wearing last year’s love;

it’s sticky and residual:

washing up and down my arms, entwisting between the spaces of my spine, filling my ears like bells of cotton.

I’ve always been unfashionable;

walking down streets, forgetful of the courage it takes to pull back the shoulders:

sensing bombast; looking down.

When people see my skin, they can’t seem to look through the clouded varnish of a one-sided affection:

and so they look away.

The clarity of my eyes seem to frighten them; pieces of molten blue-silver, screaming with woken and trapped consciousness: a bygone taste.

I wash myself every day: roughly striking through caked infatuation.

It seems, however, to stretch and recongeal as fast as I try to remove it.

An animal in it’s own right.

And so last year’s love becomes this year’s burden;

and perhaps it’s not just a lack of courage preventing me from standing tall.