exosynesthesia

It started as a hallucination
- it didn't affect a thing.
Just something I could bring
about. The colors
fanned and billowed out,
they didn't stain or cling.
They just passed through
a streaming light, so lazy
in those days. No more
or less than emptiness, filled in
with glow and haze.

And then the sound

came in, and somehow
colors start to stick. Each dot
and mote affixed by rays

and I am feeling it.

The wall is where
it always was, but now
it's like my skin. At least
in freckles smattering,

we've been becoming kin. These patches
grow and spread, connect. Sometimes,
the process interrupts
itself, resets - and sometimes all

it takes is walking down the street, upset
as every stretch of brick facade
or underfoot concrete

begins to feel

in me,
yet reeling distant
and distinct.

Each kiss
of wind, from anywhere
caress of step, and weight
of human meat.

It's happening I swear. I don't
know what it is
it comes
togetherness
entrapping in enfolding waves
of lacing rays, to stitch
together colored clouds

that no one else can see
and be amazed, and I
should not have been allowed. I try

to stay inside these days.