122) Tar

I knew with a primal certitude his blood
was becoming slow lava chugging thick
Visualize your body healing I said
but he shook his head and described
black luna moths on his lungs
hungry flotilla sourcing the lymph
and on his birthday when we argued over a cloud
resembling: a) a chandelier
b) a lesser-tentacled squid
c) (we both saw the lost photograph of my mother
unwinding her pink foam curlers) I knew
we had loved the same world
overwhelmed by different ideas
about how it should be;
that the love faded naturally with experience
but the ideas died harder.

---Ashley Capps