how to talk about love when it stops talking to you

The floor of your voice smells like slow-dancing globes

trotting over scratched-up versions of songs

I used to know the words of but now

can only whistle because it hurts to pronounce the reek of retired

love stops swarming around me like honey hungry wasps wishing for foreheads to sting,

and do you remember when I hijacked the music video of your loins

but it happened so quickly that what you used to love

to kiss

blurred its way out like an erased track—

that hidden song you had to wait through twelve minutes of silence

to listen to.