shadow.
it’s a warm evening,
so the window at the head of my bed is open
and i just keep thinking that if i could delete our memories
as easily as our messages,
rinse away my heartache like i did your scent from my bedsheets,
then this would have been easier.
if i could swallow some sense that came bottled up,
(in a form other than a liquor drink)
maybe i’d garner the courage to look you in the eye and say
you are a shadow of who you used to be.
you don’t have any of the muscle memory associated with the fact
that you were once in love with me.
you’ve forgotten how to touch me without thinking.
how to let yourself smile because you’ve noticed i’m smiling.
all my favorite parts of you,
vanished to the wayside of premeditation.
deliberation.
calculation.
words that sound as brutal as the animalistic clash of our bodies,
each wrung as dry of their passion as my raw hands can withstand.
you’ll love again, i know it.
she’ll be gorgeous,
and you’ll be nervous,
happy at least to have gotten the messy part over with me.
you’ll know everything about her in twenty-one days
and will ignore the stitch in your side that develops
when you realize that on day forty-two.
if you do indeed stick it out,
you’ll get married in the vein of 1940’s “society”
where you smoke cigars and she primps
and you’re together because that’s what people of this class do,
they are monogamous and they wear rings to prove it.
and you will live,
my dear,
but i fear for whether or not it will be a life.
because while you’ve proven to me
that you can’t handle the challenges of something real,
i wonder how truly you’ll flourish
under the umbrella of something so superficial.
