The skies exploded red, green, and blue. Each pop cracking against my bedroom window until my ear drums shook awake. So loud that the cars went off in the quiet streets and all I kept thinking about was how your palm would feel against my own; standing in front of the paint samples of Home Depot and how nothing—not even the fireworks—were louder than the way you would say my name.
I wish I could find the words. In-between the corners of loose notebook paper and envelopes from a time where we both felt something, pick up all the things I can’t say and string them together to make something whole but I keep falling short. They get lost in the back of my throat or dissolve between my tongue and the roof of my mouth while I sleep and in the morning when the sun wakes me I can only describe what it feels like to keep myself open. To peel my eyelids back so you can dip into my pupils and sit against my lashes but you won’t. Because nothing is ever good enough for you and my teeth rattle like our bones in the winter every time I say I’m sorry when I don’t have to.
There are so many things swelling up inside of me. And I could just be mistaking swelling for sinking but I swear I’m going to burst. I’ll cough up fireworks and galaxies right on your front lawn, near the garden gnomes and plastic flamingo. It will be sometime in February, a long and drawn out afternoon, where my hands will still tremble and I will still have yet to find all the pieces I’ve lost along the way but I’ll hope you will hear it. And I’ll hope you will see the cast of colors reflected on your wooden framed windows and remember to remember me.
I always forget the scars you left. I have to keep looking down to find them still red and pulsing—some humming familiarity that I’m too afraid to detach from. I’ve written the words and whispered them to the walls like they will listen or hold my bones because you won’t. And I shake my head to myself because I know they won’t either. Because I know that my spine still aches without the tips of your fingers there to mend them and your voice is becoming one of those things that I can also catch when my eyes shut tight enough that I can see what looks like dust particles and dead stars. Fleeting. Always fleeting. You have always been that something I can only reach the cusp of and I used to believe that was enough but maybe it wasn’t. And maybe leaving you behind was a mistake because the fact that you’re not here or that I can’t remember the way you say my name anymore makes me explode sometimes. Most days I find I have water—salty and warm—running down my cheeks. I used to think that it meant I was melting and that I’ll never be whole again, but maybe I’m just thawing. At least that’s what I’ll tell myself.
I’m trying to shake you the way winter shook my bones and dusted the summer air off my shoulders but you sleep on the ceilings and in the carpet stains—your ghost still haunting every room in the house and every corner of my head. I think I feel the beating of your frosted heart pounding against the inside of my skull.
the sound of your voice haunts me
like a leaking faucet i cannot fix
and i still have tiny crescent moons
in my palm lines from when you
slipped your hands over my thighs.
back when we had mud in our eyes
and your lips started to taste like a
mouth full of missing teeth.
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