A clear Sunday in early May, hitching on the back of your old bike, the sun blinking sluggishly through verdant, street-side trees.  

You locked up against some railings, pushed the door with a jangling bell. Our fingers found each other across the aisles.

The shop smelt of must and lost decades. Dusty sheets threw spectres over looted treasures from long-gone homes.

And the gems we found: two candlesticks winking from the corner at the couple – the final touch to make this thing whole.  

Ten months of us. Too soon to be playing house, playing adults. Bold and brassy, those brave turrets gleamed on our mantle with:

my wooden elephants,  
and your expensive speakers,  
and our broken radio,  
and my loathed incense,  
and your tacky books,  
and our pointless arguments,  
and my guilty frustration,  
and your resentful adoration,  
and our ******* mess.  

Eight months too long, staring at the bold brass and hating them, making them home in boxes labelled Yours and Mine and What a Waste.

I miss my freedom within your absence,
when I stretched between the memories.
Now I'm stuck between the moments,
my eyes tired from believing
your arms were safe for me to sleep in.

Each time I clean the bathroom
A little bit more
Of his DNA
Is scrubbed away
How many dead skin cells
And strands of hair
Sprinkled from my bedroom to the front door
A veil of history
You and me
Decay in matrimony
There is a guitar case sleeping
Under my bed
Hidden from view
It is a dream catcher
It gives me you
And waking up
Is a nightmare

When I reflect back on past times with you
I don't get choked up on hurt like I used to.
Rather, I smile similes of what joy might feel like
And turn laughter into metaphors, I don't really know what for, but I imagine that you are happy.

When I reflect back on past times with you
I try to remember what it meant to me,
The feeling of comfort in a crowded room where everyone is screaming at me,
I wonder how long I ignored them at the expense of selling my weaknesses for your soul that doesn't reflect anything back anymore.

I cannot recollect all the memories because I burnt most of them the same way you set our love on fire, see I squeezed myself onto the flame like gasoline in an open field, I used my bones as match sticks, and lit them all simultaneously, I turned myself to ash, a cremation of good will and broken girls who fell in love with broken guys, see I burned for all of us.

When I reflect back on past times with you,
The remains of my heart emulate something close to beating, close to life, but our past times were just moments that passed us by a little too soon, who was I to know that you had no intent of staying, I wouldn't have built this home, a little too big for only me to occupy.

When I reflect back on past times with you,
I find my self in a state of constant whiplash, I am jetlagged from the high you gave me, I am not me without you.

So when I reflect back on past times without you,
I try not to cry because most of my life I spent with you, opening up, in more ways than one but you treated me like a Jack in the box, I was a joke to you.
I try to remember what my name sounds like when it's not you calling it, it doesn't feel the same because you gave meaning to the language that only you and I spoke. Now I am deaf to anything that isn't you.

When I reflect back on past times without you,
You are still there. You always were, even before.