Nights like this
Are the nights that will **** me.

Nights when translucent ghosts
Drape their long arms

Around my waist and take me
Waltzing across you bedroom ceiling;

Nights when sad songs pour
Out of the cracked walls

And fill my heart
With their bittersweet nostalgia;

Nights when my body freezes
In its despairing loneliness,

Cold stone wrapped in stiff sheets
And sopping pillows.

Nights like this,
I lie awake, aware of

The tangible emptiness,
The stale smell of grief.

Nights like this,
I **** myself the way I killed you,

I break the way you did:
Delicately, like the slivered backs

Of infant birds
Left the nest too soon;

Like thunder collapsing,
Shaking cupboards and windows

In time with our trembling shoulders.
You told me, you told me

"I can't just forget this like you can."
But I don't forget.

Like a soldier cut open
By the knife she obliged herself,

I bleed.
I hold my insides

Inside, cram you back
Deep into my chest,

Wrap memories around my spine
A spiral  staircase of sorrow and

Sweet intentions, where no one will see
The trail of blood

Save for me.

I,
I do not escape this.

I cannot cast aside
Ashen remains, box up burning coals.

I can only carry them with me,
A red thread around my finger

Burning your name in my skin.
I carry my sorrow like a crow on my shoulder;

It pecks on my neck sharp reminders
And gorges on my acute isolation.

You say I forget,
But nights like this,

I remember everything
And regret nothing,

Even on nights like this
When all of me screams

But nothing hurts.