Cigarette buds
Empty glasses
Always a wine glass shatters
Leftover biryani
Leg bones
The crease in the beds
Sofa cushions on the floor
Guests have left
Empty house
Just me and the wait for the next weekend.

at the end of the afterlife,
when the dust finally settles,
she climbs into a warm bed
made of soft, wispy clouds,
listening to lilting melodies,
from her childhood memories,
falling into a peaceful slumber.

i am lying on my stomach
after having spent hours propped up on my elbows
spent hours reading, sunbathing
spent hours getting drunk and tired in the sun
i am outside our new chicago home
in a courtyard belonging to only us

i am sprawled on the transparent blue plastic of my past
the cerulean beach chair that never made it to a single beach.
its plastic wound and woven around the metal
like nothing i’ve ever seen before

and i fall asleep

and i’m awakened by the raindrops on the low of my bare back

but it is not raining

and i wake up naked, inside, in your arms as you tap out a tune on me

and the blue chair that we put in the shower
when my brother was too weak to stand
because my brother was too weak to stand
is nowhere to be found
even when he went to live in the hospital
that chair
gathered rust
in a closed, dripping shower

we threw it out
it reminded us of a hard time
he was our only surviving souvenir  

i miss the chair
and i miss the person he was before it all
before he gathered all this rust

You told me I broke you
That you fell apart
Without me you were wreckage
Broken bits of a heart

And then you moved on
You found some new parts
Started making the repairs
Built your own heart

Tell me is it wonderful
To be whole again
The guilt has destroyed me
Long after you didn't

then tell me why have we barely touched
but your bones feel like home,
why is your aroma-
my only known cologne.

then why does your heart pace at the same rate as mine,
synchronized thoughts and breaths
bringing us back together
time after time.