to you, who loved me without love:

 

it has been so long.

three years ago

You were everything.

had not

touched me yet

had not

hurt me yet

had not

lured me into the black hole that is you.

 

You were still a sun

and I shouldn’t have stared at You so long.

 

you pried me open with a rusty crowbar

and filled me with the worst parts of yourself

you drowned my hollow carcass in

scalding sand

until it spat through my

empty

eye sockets.

 

you scraped your greedy fingers

against my fragile surface

rummaged the frosting off me

and licked your talons clean

until I was an unwanted,

neglected pastry

no hope to be eaten

or even seen

meant for dark, consuming

insects

swarmed with memories.

 

I was walking a splintered plank

stretched out across

tumultuous seas

and I was stumbling,

shaking to the end

to get to You

to jump and land in the rowboat of your arms

but you were never waiting

and the stretch never ends

it just coexes me further

into the crashing waves

that yearn to snatch my pruney feet

spritzing salt into my eyes

and I’m grasping

blind

towards a you that long ago

left me behind.

 

yet I still care for you

you are a telephone line

stretched around mountains,

across the hemispheres of my mind.

 

every time it snows

I worry.

I fear the lovely crystals will betray your wheels

and like a sled ride you’ll

slide

on a turbulent toboggan

till your pale skin

mingles with the snow and your

yellow-speckled eyes

no longer glow

 

I never knew you were scared of being sober

that you chased the melancholy away with empty bottles

how could I have been so oblivious

but how could you have hid it from me

and then screamed at

me

for keeping secrets.

 

maybe I should have held your hands

though your nails were digging into my skin

and cutting me deep open.

maybe I should have let you hurt me

because those ten

crescent-shaped holes

could have saved You.

 

saying no to knowing you

is feeling hard again

but it’s all I can do.

because to know you would be losing the You I want to know,

a You that doesn’t exist.

 

I’m trying to stay busy

reading a book

filling my mind

like a bottomless cup

but the pages are wrong-side up.

they become origami cranes

paper wings folded

by wrinkled hands

they fly

far away

my mind frays

 

looking through a kaleidoscope

of blues and grays

I turn myself every which way

glass pieces rearrange

 

I’m trying to purge You from my mind

 

 

you are chalk on a rainy day

dripping to the bottom of the driveway

a colorful masterpiece

erased

corroded and becoming an unrecognizable

stain.

will we ever be okay?

 

-k