I'm sitting in a cafe
Grinding myself to the bone
My marrow still carries
Your essence, your DNA
I sit back to watch the sunlight
Bounce off the tables
and remember what you smelled like.

The pangs of dissolution
unraveled in my nerves
and my brain tells me
to keep myself small
So that I can return to
The exclusive club I belonged to.

You said it like a joke
But your voice had edges
Something so small
Became my lightning rod
I should have know when
You gently advised against it
That your eyes would harden
As if it was another betrayal.

As if,
You hated that I chose her.
As if,
You hated that I chose something for me.
As if….
You hated me.

I guess it was the
Unspoken proof that
I knew how to decide for myself.

She sleeps on my pillow now
And doesn’t ask for permission, either.

I find pieces of you in others
Your love of music in a coworker
The coded language we shared
In a new friend
Some people say that
Ghosts of the dead are what
Stories are made of
But I say
The ghost of regret is
The chapter I never expected.

Maybe love is not meant for those
With tangled minds
Unable to decipher what’s happening
In your head and in mine  
But I know that every soul
This earth presents to me
Is someone that can teach me
Lessons I’ll cling onto
With every breath
With knuckles bruised.

In the quiet moments at 1pm
The world moves with my thoughts
Melodies pass through me like whispers,
The echoes of your laughter
Twist into questions that I still can’t answer.

I walk familiar roads alone
Wondering if I’m searching for you or
The person I lost along the way.
Some nights I search for memories
Like constellations in the stars
Faint, flickering lights.

I want to know what I want
To hold certainty like a flame in my hands
But desire shifts like a plague in my mind
Like the shadows that I grew to love
I hear your name from a great distance
And something else that I don’t understand.

I will stand in this space
Missing you, missing me
Waiting for the soft silence
To answer me.

I traced the shadows beneath my eyes
New hollows carved by nights spent
Waiting for a fire that never came
I drenched myself in gasoline just to
Beg you to take my light.

Once, my face was smooth and warm
Free of this scar tissue made up of
fear and loneliness
Love unravels in the weight of your gaze
Which I carry in my chest, like a
Silent cough that worsens at night.

How unfair that the world goes on
While I hold the fragile shape of
Your bleeding heart in my aging hands
And the nights press heavy against
My skin, marking me like its own
In soft, sleepless bruises.

Sink your teeth into my flesh
And let my arteries explode into your throat
It once had the tune of drums played
For the day of the dead
Where we first met in the ghosts of people
Long forgotten.
I would so much rather you
Chew the muscles of my soul and
Trap me inside of your growing black hole
So that I may see the stars shining brightly
For me in the end.

The strongest force in nature will erode
That seemingly unbreakable
Stone, marble, mountains firm and tall.
The river shapes, carves, molds
Creating the future, tracing the past.
The ocean surges, waves alive with breath
And whispers, “This was a battle I’d always win”.
The pull is deep and everlasting
And drowning might be worth a handful
Of pebbles and skipping stones.