my feet felt far away but they were where they’d always been. my hands were gone, that i knew. my hands were with your hands in the pockets of your creased black trousers somewhere in your mother’s house.

i walked right out, high tides rushing up my spine, until i found myself submerged in a sudden plan to never speak to you again.

i forgot all versions of you, the slow of your smile, your shape next to my shape. i forgot myself, intermittently, and bruised my way to a beginning, stretched so long, so thin that it disappeared entirely.

how tired. how tired you became at loving. you said, i need to trim this ingrown soul of mine, twenty times, and i shook wildly, remembering, but trying not to; you were the one who left, not me.

in a public toilet: i find remaining parts of you, of me, resting gently on my cheeks. i make a wish, blow them away.

and i think, *i knew someone once,
he could retell his dreams like well-thought-out novels,
his eyelashes reminded me of stars,
his silence was a heavy drone.