I moved out in a backpack
of crumpled clothes
stuffed hastily in tears—resorting
to the bomb shelter of cowardice
so I won’t see us
collapse into eachother.

Maybe it was a better idea—I breathe
my own air, you breathe yours.
It’s calmer here, but I still
can’t stop hearing the silence
of that empty house
I know you hear right now.
I left with five pounds of baggage
on my shoulders, you shackled
two tons more to my ankle.
You know I had to leave,
I couldn’t bear the silence—
the last trace of himself
he left for you.

Dad showed me his new apartment;
we stared silently into off-white walls.
When he asked me
why I was so quiet, I muttered
“No reason.”
All I could think about
was why the absolute hell
would that ******* exchange his family
for some barren apartment
with nothing
to his name but a mattress without sheets
and weeks-untouched guitars
scattered across a hideous tan carpet,
accompanied only by silence.

I peeked in your medicine cabinet, too—
and painfully I read the labels.
Anti-anxiety, anti-depressant, anti-psychotic,
anti-everything they found wrong with you.

Mom still didn’t give you
your pocket knife collection back
that she locked up when you were
under suicide watch.
And I couldn’t dismiss the irony.
Dad, of all people you’d be the one
to end your life
with a hand-crafted Italian switchblade
previously under neat display
behind an immaculate glass door,
only to act in violence
no one could have anticipated.

I still don’t want to go home,
and I’ll give you any excuse
that sounds half-way rational.
But what I dread more than anything
is to hear that bitter silence—
ghosts of ugly words
we’ll never say to eachother.