Sometimes, I know you only
as your absence, hanging in the air.
I befriended her, she knows my name.
I learned to love her, or to love
the gift she gives: a pain to call my own.
A knife in my back is inherently mine, after all.
On the days where the sunlight
seems to vanish she is there, waiting
to embrace me. She’s more beautiful than you,
her skin shines like gold, her youth preserved
like a stained-glass saint. She is the only
thing that withstands time, a monument.

You are more than aching arms outstretched to
the empty air, than the frustration of beating the
same dead horse. You are the sound of
shattering glass when you walked into
the bar with someone new after you canceled
our plans once again because you were ‘busy’.
You are the noose around my neck, looking down,
smiling at the sight of me strangling to escape you.
You are words written on fogged glass,
vanishing before being read. You are
the cold beds of strangers and my tear-
drenched plea for you to stay, just this once.