disclaimer:
I’m thinking about the hourglass in your mouth.
this is what is left behind
when the dust has settled.

please find attached:-
my heart.

my apoplexy, this, your words bleeding into me
settling, stagnant
clotting around the end of us -
salvaging the wound.

to have something, but not be able to truly hold it,
liquid, seeping through your fingers -
to see it pooled on the floor, the remnants of something you had
so transiently your fingers don’t even feel wet with it,
[not at all]
not when you’d rather be immersed.

you see, I don’t like to be in my body because it only serves to
remind me where your hands once were.
when all you want is what you had,
what is left behind in your palms?
whispers of the last time they were held,
and a kind of vacancy you don’t want to fill.

[close your eyes, breathe,
count how long it takes to fall apart]

interesting
to think of the systemic effects of heartbreak.
interesting
how you can pull one heart string and I’ll unravel.
I know I’ve been a shadow of myself lately;
it’s called “going through the motions”,
apologies.

safe as in a place,
safe as in your arms,
safe as in has-been once-was
and never again.
what happens when the goods commodify themselves?

I have never missed someone like I miss you,
have missed you since the day of my exile from your heart
a concept: existence as a kind of festering,
as though I’m in the last place I saw you like a finger probing the wound,
septic and exactly the wrong kind of comfort:
there is no unloving.

it comes in waves - the weight and salt of it
makes my back ache and my eyes sting.
you see, I’ve never been vulnerable like this before, and I’m wondering if
there’s a limit as to how broken a person can be,
the same way you can only fold a piece of A4 paper in half seven times?

I wanted to be unforgettable
and now I’m just trying to Be,
hoping that somewhere I linger

eat my feelings,
stick pencils down my throat
  ***** poetry.

if my heart is on my sleeve and my sadness upon my eyelids;
then my belly is a processor,
and all it spits out is simply
a checklist
of all the things we could have been
- our morphogenesis, our eulogy.

please. thank you.