A hill burns into cathodes, a monitor peels
its wallpaper. Skinned knees

belonging to your brother, the pulse
around his red, glowing hyper-

green. Each year we find another link
decayed, glittering chaoses now sites

of memory, now the neon of your fading
brown hair, under lamplight all night

reading about gamuts we can’t
observe directly. One trick has you

saturate your eyes black then yellow
then blink to spot Stygian blue. But what stays

longer is fatigue, is the dripping
of lilac-beige to the base of your father’s back

a plum-rust ring digging into my mother’s
wrist. We leave ghost-rose

hues where we press their arms
last. The endless scroll of headlights

in rainwater. There’s too many directions
that head away from you. Faces I can’t see

turning to check if I’ll reappear
in their peripherals. Each failure

of each finger, each blink
bringing us closer.

—Ella Flores

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