I didn't want you,
I wanted love
and I have realised
that they are not the same thing.

You were a mould
that I poured my insecurities in,
a computer I tried to program.

But you are a sky,
stormy and clear and rainy and warm.

You were so blue when I longed for red.

I didn't want you.
I wanted the thought.

I am made of dead things.
I am composed of the last exhale from cooling lips.
I am the twitch in the still body's toes
and the hardening of its skin.
I am the shake of a uniformed head, a gasp of a mother, a tear of an orphan.
I am built from decay and anger and sorrow.
It takes so much old energy to get me to tomorrow.

How could i tell you?
That the pink that stained your cheek was no longer my favourite colour,
that your laugh sounded out of tune,
that your skin lacked the heat i craved,

that my love dwindled and then fell away all at once.

i'm sorry and i'm not.

i love you, but i don't.

you are game over.
vision behind weary eyes,
when does this love stop?

And it falls out from me.
Pours from my fingertips.
Grief floods the room but I’ve been drowning for a long time.
I cannot contain this.

It’s a fog like carbon monoxide.
Silent.
It wraps itself around your lungs and whispers that this is the only way.
And you lie down, mistaking its vapours for clouds.

It never leaves.
You just get used to breathing poison.

I always thought that violence was physical, brutal, obvious.
I thought that violence was carmine washed down the sink in the dead of night.
I thought violence was sharp and hard and damning.

Not when it comes to you.

Your violence is subtle, lurking behind soft blue skies and the warm glow of sun.
Your violence is an inflection of words that makes me flinch more than a raised fist.
Your violence is comprised of memories and reminders and blame.

You don’t wield a sword, you wield your heart.
And somehow, it hurts so much more.

I haven’t tidied in a while.

Clothes coat my floor in a strategic mayhem; makeup rocks on its side, contents slowly seeping out.
Medication lays scattered, dots of colour in the ocean of obsidian.

I think I see you in the madness.
Your essence.
One of the last places you breathed in.

Maybe I think that when I clear away the buried floor, I will find you beneath the fabric.