Rain washed away your footprints,
others came,
and theirs dried.

The flood reversed the ache of your absence,
the storm left my heart in ruins.

You left, yet you remained
deep in my heart,
in the echoes of my throat,
behind the farthest windowpane,
within these brittle, misplaced words
that I struggle to arrange.

A cold, dark night
without you, with you in mind.
I try,
desperately,
to shape something from nothing.
Yet nothing comes.

I wondered:
why does nothing grow from nothing?
Why does a storm within silence
bear no fruit?
Even the signs that tied me to you
were illusions.

My mind was never yours.
Yours was never mine.
There was no mind at all.

I wrap my hands around my neck
a necklace or a noose?
Trace my veins,
sip their pulse,
offering you every drop.
You drink,
you smile,
you dry me out.
And I laugh,
until my last drop vanishes,
until my image dissolves in your eyes.

I laugh
because I love you.
You laugh
because I love you.

I close my eyes to see you.
You close yours to forget me.

I pack my sorrows,
leave from love to exile,
from home to nameless streets.
No tears to water your garden
no tulip years from now to remind you of me.

You won’t remember.
Even your tears are rehearsed.
I know you’re relieved.
I know you know.

I leave,
from one grief to another,
carrying this hollow body
to where another waits.
To love, to leave,
again and again.

be happy.
I am gone.