i woke up to stars fluttering around my head
and a strange operator of crude remarks,
protruding my thoughts as if they weren’t
real enough to see-
i feel dimmed. i hope you don’t.
yesterday when i saw your mother in
the grocery store, it tripped me up
my mind distracted from my sample cup of black coffee,
i lost all focus, i threw it out
i found myself 30 minutes later in the restroom
talking to the mirror
i hope you don’t, ever, yearn to be alone
every passing unconscious fragment
clouded away
i hope you still know how to sleep
without me, haunting your dreams from
time to time. don’t awake in a cold sweat
of memories glued to the back of your mind
you thought you amputated the things people
couldn’t see, the things you didn’t need.
i told myself once
i would read the dictionary
yet i never found the word that accurately
depicted the way it felt when i left you,
no, not even regret,
i threw it out.
my definitions are blurred, i can’t decipher
between heart and
head and
whether or not your name still tastes like home
in my mouth or
if it stings like the oil I drop under my tongue
to love myself and
i’m learning to walk, broken.
all bones cracked.
i left.
i told everyone i didn’t need crutches
and i didn’t need you either, i threw you out.
the irony was in the innocent way
they believed me,
i am bleeding,
i can’t walk unsteadily. a part of me missing
too sunken to scream your name any longer
a bit too bruised to pretend i’ll
ever be the same