i have built a home in myself
after all these years
and what peace it is to know
that no one will burn down
what i call hime
ever again.


(and what a quiet pain it is
to still crave the home in you.)

the hollow
nothing fills -
the shadow of you
lingers, leaching
every last ounce of life
out of me.

the apologies, the anger
the rage, the hate, the love,
the fists and the holes in
the walls

the painting hangs in the
living room, the one of the
ghosts who still loved
each other.

and the ache, and the
longing, and the loss

it's battles and wars
and some of them are
victories and some of them
are losses and in the
end we both lose.

your hands -
all the places on my
body where you touched me,
all the places in my
mind where you bruised me,
and all the places in
my heart where you killed me.

recovery is a minefield
and all the parts of me I lost
still lay on your bedroom floor.

wake in the early winter morning,
let the cold settle in your bones,
serve the quiet reminder that
all things come to an end eventually.
the silence of snow and the howl
of wind are the two hands that
say both goodnight and welcome home.
the sudden winter storms will heal
if you let them, but they'll also
steal you away when you
get lost in the night.
don't allow yourself to be
swallowed by the ache of it,
by the barren silence of it all.

the trajectory overlaps
suddenly, inexplicably -
asteroid to planet.
the collision is loud,
volatile, permanent
alteration.
the planet continues
to rotate on its axis
a little sideways, never
really recovering
from the explosion, while
the asteroid continues
on its albeit altered,
but never halted,
trajectory.  

we are planets, like this.
turning and turning
in the same universe,
never crossing. it's like a
hand to hold, the moments
before and the moments after
nearly identical: at one time
we hadn't ever touched,
and afterwards it's like we never
did.

but you are still scar.
there's still the ground zero
where we collided, brutally,
beautifully. once, never again.

sometimes you can't just walk it off.
sometimes you have to rebreak the bones
before they'll heal right. sometimes
you have to sew the cuts closed
and sometimes you pick the scabs over
and over again before the itching stops.
sometimes they become faint scar,
injury really only you can see. sometimes
the scars are so thick and dark that
they become the most noticeable part
of your body.

sometimes we heal.
sometimes we don't.
sometimes we say goodbye
over and over to the ghost
in the mirror, watching the
scars deepen with every
desperate breath.

Denial
     things were never supposed to end
     like this.
     my body remembers you,
     like surgery, like scar.
     the imprint of loss doesn't fit
     when I was never supposed to lose you
     in the first place.

2. Anger
     the hands.
     the fists.
     screaming to skies that don't listen.
     apologies are nothing when you've
     shoved me into the villain role
     knowing all along you broke me in the first place.
  
3. Bargaining
     i'd give anything to have you back.
     i'd given anything to never
     want you back.
     and it's always right there in the middle.
     knowing you're no good for me,
     knowing that you could have been.

4. Depression
     the whole body ache. the
     imsorryitsamess I am doingmybest.
     the way they hold your hands and tell you
     it gets better, you get over it, you stop wanting
     you stop wanting. one day it just stops.
     it's the way they can't see the bruises, the battering
     because the outsides look fine. the outsides smile.
     the outsides are a good employee, a good friend.
     the outsides are a much better actor
     than i give them credit for.

5. Acceptance
     it's like marking a page in a book,
     setting it down, never picking it back up
     again. tragic. the movement of life. it sits
     on a shelf, months, years. you forget the plot
     the characters, the motion. your fingers run
     over its spine every so often, thinking you'll
     come back to it. it's how you never think the end
     is the end, how it burns, how you forget the last
     kiss, the last I love you, the last everything. how
     eventually, the sting of those lost memories stops
     stinging. how you forget you ever started the book
     in the first place


and it's how someday you do pick up the book
again, you do, and it all comes rushing back to you.
the circle of the stages, how each one becomes
a familiar visitor you welcome in with warm coffee
and ask how they've been. they don't ever really
ask you. for awhile, it's like getting hit in the stomach,
lost for air. eventually the visitors go elsewhere for
coffee, and you never realize when you've finally
put down that book for the last time.

no matter what happened
we were going to have an ending.
dry forests burn quick
and lightening will always strike,
and we were always going to have
an ending.