One fragile bone at a time, you broke me.
You left me to piece myself back together with trembling and bruised fingers, remnants of that last kiss still burning like some form of sickly sweet acid on my tongue. The morphine did nothing to numb the dull ache that expanded from my chest, radiating through my whole body. The hardest part of it all was learning to walk again. Learning to talk. Learning to live with the thought that there would be no more late night dances to the dulcet hum of the refrigerator - no more Bacardi flavoured kisses when you came home after work, drunk, with another woman’s lipstick smeared over your collar.
I spent weeks, maybe months, mourning you as if I had lost my faith. Time became a blur. A drunken haze of afternoons spent lounging on the sofa or in a bathtub of cold water, screaming until it felt as though my rib cage was breaking.
You thought that without you, I would be rendered incapable. I’ll admit, for a while, I was. But each moment without you was a blessing. Through my heartbreak, I found my strength. I became the fire in the storm. You always had said that I looked like Hell’s angel in that red dress that you loved so much.
Oh darling, you should see me now.