lately
I have been meeting
          your past lives

         in subdermal
                 dreams

sometimes
                          you’re
                          a tickle in the throat

                          sometimes you’re a lymph node
                          fat
                   with
             grief

             a plea
             (from one abandoned body
             to the other)
             for              permission
             to coronate
                            every shared wound
                            with a halo of petals

because
how else would one soliloquize death
                                              in braille
                   upon both sides of a void?

                                     if not
                                     with a garden

                                      if not
                                      with all
                                      that hope can conjure?

(and I always know it’s you

because you get the same tattoo
in every life

a little tea bag
with a tag
that reads in comic sans:

‘nepenthe’.

it seems,
that only one of us
ever forgets.)