It’s hard to dwell
in a world not my own,
where no one comes to find me,
no one comes to make sense of
the words I rip from myself
like dead skin.

I don’t exist,
just as tonight never happened,
just as your lips never rested
upon mine.

I am made of hollows-
not much of anything,
maybe just a shadow,
maybe just the last cry of loneliness
before a cold hand comes to smother it.
It’s hard to imagine a future
in which
I won’t be just a repressed thought,
just a rain drop that refuses
to come down to earth.

And yet I try-
even if every time I turn to the light,
darkness is never far behind me,
ready to grab me by the shoulder
with her precise and malicious claw.