You leave the only way you know how to
In the dead of the night
No explanation, no note
In the morning there will be a hunt
There will be excuses made on your behalf
'Must have gone for a jog'
'Would have left to buy orange juice'
It takes a while for reality to settle
It takes a while for your clothes to be thrown out of the closet
It takes a while before the house loses your scent

Some people take it a step further
They leave with no trace of their existence
No pictures on the mantle
Beds perfectly made as if they had never been slept in
No shoes at the doorway
No stray hairpins or guitar picks or socks
You begin to doubt your own memory
You are left wondering if you loved a ghost

You leave the only way you know how to
With tearful farewells
And eloquent goodbye speeches
You stuff personalised letters into their clenched fists
You leave parts of yourself in their pockets
Beg them to never forget
You make sure that there is no more pain than necessary
You make sure that you are only gone physically

Some people take it a step further
They fill bathroom drawers with their soap bars and lotion
Their notebooks with half finished stories
Are left open on desks
They give themselves a reason to visit
A reason to stay for a couple seconds
Then for coffee
Then the night
When they move half way across the country
They will still call you home
You are left loving an unstable traveller

You leave the only way you know how to
You make it a week long affair
There will be screaming
Ceramics flung across the room and picture frames smashed
Blame passed around like a relay baton
You run a race nobody will win
You leave making sure your car is chased until the end of the road
Apologies dispended as if they are public announcements
There is no silence in your absence
Your voice still echoes in the hallways

Some people take it a step further
It takes them months to pack their bags
Sometimes years
There will be days shrouded with hatred
They leave in parts
One strand of hair at a time
They steal one heart beat at a time
Leaving you cold and numb in the end
They threaten to disappear so many times
That when they finally do you cannot believe it
You are left unable to love again

Painters and poets and playwrights
Have spent centuries convincing us that
Grief yields greatness
Out of sorrow is born supremacy

But the truth is
Great men are great men
Despite their bleeding wrists
Despite the misery carved into their bones
Despite their cut off ears and their stillborn infants

Art is the favorite daughter of brilliance
Who melancholy so slyly tries to steal as her own
To showcase as a gem
Amongst her own worn-out children:
Agony and suicide and irreparablilty

There is no glory in weakness
There is no museum to honour
Pain rolled up in a corner
Willing itself to stop existing
There is no concert arranged for a man
Who furiously runs his bow along violin strings
To produce ear splitting screeches

You and I will not colour our broken hearts
Shades of crimson or indigo
Nor will our ink stained fingers supply a voice
To a tortured soul's invisible turmoil
Instead pain will turn us into a monster
Or a recluse
Waiting desperately for that lightning flash of epiphany
To convert what little is left of us
Into a factory that churns gold

You and I have fantasised
About too many golden sunrises
And yet we always sleep through dawn
Always wake up seconds too late
When grandeur has faded into familiarity

Our bodies are bruised
From all the invisible rocks we have hurled at each other
Our lungs tired from breathing toxic air
Our ankles sore from dragging chains
My fingers are covered in papercuts
From the edge in your voice

We have handcuffed each other
And put leashes around our necks
Confining each other to this birdcage house
Afraid to be the one that has to watch
The other fly free

Yesterday I tried to find the movie stub
From our first date
And instead found my pockets
Stuffed with fist-fulls of receipts
For things neither of us bought

Like the black hole in our bed
That occupies centre stage in our polka dot bedsheets
It swallows the words we speak
And refuses to let them echo
How many conversations have we drowned
With alcohol and tears
How many keys have we thrown away
To lie in a mound ten feet tall
Keys that could have opened the doors
To our secret stash of confessions and apologies
That could have saved us
On the nights that you wrap your arms around me
I can feel your body curving along the edge of the hole
Trying not to fall through
Determined to maintain miles between us
Even though I can feel your breath on my neck

Our living room is covered with pictures of strangers
Because we are afraid of stapling our own faces to the walls
Afraid of calling this prison a home
Afraid of making what had started out as temporary
A permanent affair
So instead we crawl from day to day
Skipping each sunrise as it comes