When You Leave

Your presence

quakes through me…

seismic, splitting bone from skin.

Your voice:

an aftershock of memories

too intense to be real.

Like a fever dream I can still taste,

but can’t hold.

I study your gestures,

the chaos in your movement,

your contrasts,

your wounds.

I want your mind,

I crave your body,

I dissolve in your mouth.

I melt into your kisses,

collapse in your arms,

vanish inside your stare.

I fall in love with your soul,

its shadows, its cracks,

its soft decaying beauty.

I rub my face against your knife-blade beard

knowing it cuts,

loving the sting.

The wound never closes.

I reopen it every time

our mouths collide like the world’s ending.

You awaken my masochist.

I fell for the one who bruises me.

Some call it cocaine.

I should call you God.

Because you take everything,

leave nothing.

a holy ghost hallucinated by the lonely.

A parasite we worship

to explain our pain.

I pray to you in silence,

and you whisper back,

never promises,

just heat,

just breath.

I try to imagine a life with you...

no lies, no time, no shame.

But I see nothing.

You made sure I believed

you have nothing to give.

I love you without saying it.

I give myself without warning,

knowing you’ll drop me

just as easily

as you undress me.

And it will hurt.

It already hurts.

Not because I didn't expect it,

but because I convinced myself you wouldn't.

I’m hopelessly in love

with everything you are

and everything you bury.

You evolve,

and I rot,

waiting for your arrival.

You inside me

sets off chemical fireworks:

dopamine, oxytocin, adrenaline.

A circus of hormones

screaming: stay.

And then,

the silence of your absence.

The echo of the door slamming

becomes a siren in my skull.

“Enjoy the silence,” I say.

But this silence

has teeth.

I can’t shut up.

I just want to scream.

To cry.

You had me completely,

and now you’re a ghost.

Tinnitus screams louder.

Sleep is war.

My heart roams, rabid,

searching for you.

How do I explain

that I tried to love carefully,

but ended up

losing my mind?

I look in the mirror.

I’m someone else.

You’ve become my addiction,

my self-harm,

my velvet-wrapped blade.

After weeks of no sleep,

no thought, just raw nerve,

I decide:

I’m cutting you out.

I grabbed the kitchen knife.

No anesthetic.

Cracked open my chest.

There you were.

So easy to find.

So hard to kill.

I sliced the heart in half

while screaming,

have mercy, you beautiful fucker!

Bloody on the kitchen floor,

I stitched myself up,

but your half kept beating,

defiant, romantic,

refusing to die.

What kind of witchcraft is this?

You’re not in me anymore,

but you’re still alive,

a tumor with rhythm,

dancing in defiance.

I’m dying slowly,

naked and shaking,

watching that stubborn chunk of heart

throb for you.

My vision blurs.

Breath shallow.

You’re the last hallucination,

your smirk,

your eyes like black holes.

Allison, is this real?

No.

But this is how it feels,

when you leave.