The drive home was a blur of tears and rolling landscape.
You called twice, and both times when your face showed up I couldn’t bear it.
I didn’t want to talk to you.
Didn’t want to hear your voice and relive how it sounded,
when you asked me if I still loved you,
and that despite how I felt
you still loved me.
How your voice broke when you choked on our parting words.
The foolish hope in your voice as you kissed me goodbye on our last day.
I wanted to call the earth to rise up over me.
and pull me under.

Despite our many words,
Our assurances,
I struggled to focus on the road through my sheeting tears,
The words dropping heavily from my lips and falling,
To the pit of my stomach.

‘We are not okay.’

And the lists started writing themselves
In a shudder of memory,
Despite my screaming at them to stop,
They settled in clouds through the air of my car,
Even as I refused them,
My lungs heaving on them,
My heart fluttering.

I pulled over.
I couldn’t see.
I wish I could tell you,
To share with you,
What it took to make me stop.
The tyres slowed to rest
As the sounds erupted from me
I was helpless in the tide.
The thudding of fists on the wheel,
the wracking heaving,
the thin rivers running together into roaring falls.
And
as the storm passed
the thin wail threading through the gathering stillness.

I drifted.

In my dreams he was waiting for me.
I ran to him,
fell into his arms and buried my face into his chest,
my hands like claws gripping him to me.
‘No no no no no no’
I couldn’t stop the words pouring from me, a last desperate refusal,
that I didn’t know the answer.

‘It’s not supposed to go like this, you were meant to stay. You were supposed to be the one! What’s wrong with me? Why doesn’t it work?’

I felt myself separating and heard the pieces of me ****** around our feet.
And you just encapsulated me, warm and golden,
you kissed my crumbling hair.
I couldn’t look at your face,
too afraid
I’d see the cracks forming in your skin.
You didn’t say anything,
just talked without words like you always do,
speaking about a sadness,
a love,
an acceptance.
Peace flowed from you and steadied the ground,
my shaking legs,
my shattering body.
I wept and tried to crack as the warmth held me together
and then,
started to dissipate.