I miss you in the way that I would miss blood

if my veins ran dry,

whispered conversations with thin air
in the dead of night,

when nobody can see me
when nobody can think that I’m not

getting better,

but is better not forgetting?

a lingering sense of what once was, gone
in a wave of healing

is it not better to believe in ghosts?
an echo of a life I loved more than my own,

than to believe in nothing

There’s disaster in everything I’m
t
o
u
c
h
I
n
g

your hand twisted like a vine under
mine, blue and blistered, buried
memories of love, but I *******
let go

left the vine hanging loosely, limply
lifelessly, just one catastrophic touch
from the hand of a Godless

witch, the craft of destroying,
perfected and projected
onto you

and one touch of
disaster

I carry your memory like oxygen,
breathing in and out a pattern of
the past,

your face swirls like ripples on a lake,
the echo of a laugh dropped like a pebble
on its surface,

carrying hope in one half of my heart,
and grief in the other,
I walk to its new beat,

and your memory, like oxygen,
pulsing through my veins,
putting one one foot in front of the other

to who knows where, but always with

you

another black coffee
to chase away the
nightmares
of lingering hands and
***** soaked breath

it was another life
in daylight
but as the sun goes down
it fills every inch of me

not just a memory, a moment
silence is power when you have none
and sleep is a Hell when you
had none

I wonder if we ever meant to let go,
a heart skipping beats, a record stuck on repeat

I wonder why we said it,
thought we meant it,
hoped we’d dreamt it

you get to be yourself completely
in the arms of another
only once

(if you’re lucky)

and we were lucky

so when we said it, meant it, dreamt it,
was it spite?

“goodbye”

spite
malice
an adult temper
tantrum

I’m feeding myself snippets of memory
in the hope it will ease thebhunger I feel,
this hunger I’ve felt since you’ve been gone, ravenous and raw

I devour a lifetime of photographs,
so that I never forget the curves of your face
an “all you can eat” of your name
swallowing it over and over again,
so that my lips never forget it,

I am slow to realise that this hunger
is grief, triggering action
I sit with it long enough to soothe
the need to act on the fact I’m empty

to just be empty

and wait for your memory
to softly echo back to me

It’s hard to believe that a heatwave
has such a chill in the air,
the wind that carries a whisper
of your memory,
distorted now and distant

have I forgotten you on purpose?
is forgetting easier than remembering
how much I loved you
how much I miss you

Is denial my friend?
Washing away your name
as if it were the sea and I had
drawn it in the sand

the heat makes the flowers
wilt before their time
and I cannot bare to see it
to see you in a rose petal,
brown and withered

deny, forget, erase

but I cannot forget
the flaws and imperfections in you
that taught me how to be human

because I am flawed now,
scrambling in the dark
like a child lost in a maze

there is nothing I can do
to honour you enough
to thank you enough

forgetting is a pretty poor way
of repaying you
but I have to survive
I have to survive

because I am breaking
otherwise