Shells. It has been days since everything changed. I don’t know what day it is now, and I don’t care. I think I was at work when I heard, but I have no recollection. Did I leave with you? Can I? Time and hope were just a mirage in a feigned utopia that no longer exists. Life with you in it is gone and so is everything else. The universe has collapsed unto itself and what is left behind is nothing but dust and vacancy. A big gaping hole gasping like a fish on dry land. And I can’t catch my breath. I feel guilty when I think about the devastation I feel. This isn’t about me, but that’s who you were. You changed everyone you crossed paths with for the better. We didn’t know what was missing until we met you. The shine of you cast light upon all that was good but also all of our ugly, hidden, dirty, shameful, broken, lonely, and the loss within us, and you loved us like we’d never been loved before. A rebirth. And we will never know that love again. You gave what was once meaningless—meaning. How could someone who carried so much pain deliver so much joy? Your heart opened wide for us and we suddenly knew what it felt to be safe, seen, and accepted. The essence of you swaddled all of us no matter where we were. No matter where you were. I met you when I was at my lowest. You knew how to navigate the rubble I was under, you were there too. Our connection was so deep, a true soul connection. Your words both said and written spoke to me as though we had always been together since the beginning of time. Just thinking about the depth of you moves me. We both struggled, but our souls together could sustain it. And now you are gone. I should have called you more. Texted, written. Reached out more. I cannot process this pain. I know there are stages to grief and so I tell myself, this too shall become tolerable. A new norm. But I know better. You were a once in a lifetime human. And for that, I try to convince myself to focus on the blessing of that. And that’s true, I know that most will never have the fortune to meet a soul like you. But your human death is different. And I don’t think I’m going to survive it. I am ruined, I give up. I love you so much. Your energy is next to me but I don’t think it’s enough. Something changed when you left your body, and I don’t want to acclimate to humanity without you. I feel guilty for being selfish about this. But I know you would understand. And that’s all that matters. How did you make everything okay with just a word or two especially when I know you too were hanging on by a thread. Even when we didn’t talk for months, you existing made life manageable. You were and are an angel. A light. Energy that cannot die. You are a part of me, of all of us, and I feel your presence. I know that you are okay now. I know that peace and love everlasting has washed over you and you are everything you ever were without the pain of flesh. You have been and will always be the purest and rawest and realest of all that is beautiful. But for us here, we are stopped in our tracks. Putting one foot in front of the other because that’s what we do, but where are we going now? What is the point. “It takes two people to make you, and one people to die. That’s how the world is going to end.” William Faulkner.

A sickness moved through us

Paroling fog in the gut, and

Escaping heavy through

My chest gaping towards you—

You there burning in your Appalachian coal, and

Tobacco long highways

Grieving loud in your sigh

Til one day I fell, too far—

Deeper than the Southern sand, that is

Whistling above Earth

Oh Solemn, I pray.

Our love grew dense and tangled, and messy that summer

Foggy and yellow, and stained wrought like

The pews of your youth.

For Heaven cried loudly with its yawn and blue tears—

I remiss.

I weep for you.

Sleeping, there, as big as stands Time—

Snuffed above the smoke rushing higher than your ghost

And the stench of impermanence drifting lonely

In that river, Hell moaned, moving fast and out of sight.

She prayed beneath the moon

Begotten is the sun above Jupiter—

She said.

Sighing praise desired by Mars

With eyes watching me cry

Into my pillow.

Every night your soul waltzes

Into my room—

And I wonder now, if

Mercury ever noticed.

The way your tone deflected the pain

In reverse and ignorant too—

When you said my name

Against all odds.

I love you here and into eternity

Holding my hand—

Tobacco stained, and

The wrath of humanity held strong in your grip.

But you let me go.

Like sands through the hourglass—

I am dust in the wind.

Unattainable and gone,

Wine turned sour and dry—

In a cup runneth empty and dumped.

We mourn alone, together.

I once dated a man who was obsessed with the song Ave Maria. It should have been the first and last red flag. But true to form I churned the image of him into art. Something deeper than he was. Which is where my story begins. And dies. Just does my hope for love, everlasting. I think, sometimes, that I have given up, or perhaps I never started. Not really. Pipe dreams and unrealistic fantasies borne from fiction and make-believe—but only it was my imagination, she said. High for just a scream. I sit here now, sound— bottle: half empty; memoir: unwritten. What a failed fatale I have been unto myself yet alone to others. Echo alone, alone. Gone, gone she blows lost drawn by the wind, dust begotten is the now. Mist under sun. Breeze-sneezed. Scattered and strewn. And missed.

He sang to me in silence

Behind closed doors and blind

His words spoke smoke of glass

Broken numb against my mind

Fallen deaf unto the pass, I called

And beneath betrothed in kind

My throat lump cries too heavy now

And woeful are these times.

Sorrow now, as sorrow heaves

True sorrow grieves—

He sang to me in silence.

Behind closed doors and blind.

Finally, I write.

I’ve been avoiding you

for so long—Afraid

I will let my emotions fall

Like Ash in the wind

White burn with charred hope

Wound so tight, and twisting

In my gut —my pain cries

And I long for you.

My own blood fresh drawn

On paper, and ink

But this is how it ends.

Speechless, and homeless

And who am I but not

A poet—Sad, sad, and

Long gone before —

I took my first breath.

It wasn’t supposed to end like this. Sinking heavy into a mood squatting cross legg-ed next to a giant pink elephant laughing “I told you so” under its breath.

We agreed: no strings. No attachment, no expectation. Just an occasional hiccups in time to  escape the day-to-day. To remind us we are alive. And combatting the loneliness, the misunderstood, the human condition—and  your wife.

Well, you’re not actually married now, are you. Common law, as they say. Is it the same? Can I escape the moral implications on a technicality? This time.

Am I wrecking your home. Am I that cold lonesome steel ball swinging selfish on a pendulum of desire and sin corrupting and inviting you into my very own Hotel California.

I hate that you smoke menthols.  They are aggressive and only half committed. But the nicotine hits, and so it goes —

We are going down in flames. You and me. There is no other way.. The way you grab my neck and curls when you kiss me—

We are destined to burn in the path of a falling star.

Will the memory of us remain?

Our charred flesh is the undergrowth, and it is suffocating under the life of our last embrace. And the way you kissed me.

My heart is crying. And my soul is crushed. The constant pain of this loss wells deep in my eyes and my tears are acid.

I could have loved you forever.

I could have loved you.  Forever.

In all the ways you needed love, I would have given it to you. I could have been your constant provider, and I wanted to give you all of me. And more.

I love you. But this is how it ends.

I can’t breathe. The despair of this heartbreak is killing me. Its knuckle-white grip is wrapped tight around my throat like a noose hung ready to stop the pain, But I can’t let go. So I hang onto the rope of you in limbo, but my hands are getting sweaty and I slip: hope has its back turned to me and it is moving further and further away.

I miss being in bed with you. Wrapped tight limb-to-limb within the core of your being where you kept me. Close . And I was safe.

But this too shall end. It is over.

And so it goes.

We hid under the Mulberry tree that had been scarred by the knives of Southern mischief two summers ago. He was seated across from me on a turquoise antique. The afternoon held its breath for us as he offered me his hand resting palm-up on my knee. And it unfolded slowly. His angled posture was straight, leaning forward to complete the missing half of my triangle. And his eyelids were partly drawn, set meditating on my forthcoming move. When I placed my hand upon his, for a moment, I was a child. I found safety in his comfort, but our love was a wildfire. The shade caressed the mood and from behind its veil of landscape, the sun eavesdropped and he sighed. Sweet molasses lacquered my heart and its beat bellowed baritone. He smiled. Then too abruptly I retrieved my hand from his to salvage a silkworm lost on his shirt. And with that, our moment became a memory  We lost grip of our hope. But removed from the chaos happening everywhere around us, we spent one stolen hiccup in time under a tree with each other. And it was perfect.

I think I am sad.

Sad to fly, to experience, to know

The traveler —

Sad, to be free?

And even sadder

When sitting alongside peace

An unfamiliar calm

Kundera said:

The unbearable lightness of being —

And I understand.

When the weight of the world

The burden, the pain, the obstacles

The bills, the kids, the hustle —

Those heavy crashing waves of darkness

Beat against your chest

One after another —

That man. The many men.

Heartbreak, loss, grief

The unknown, and nothing is promised —

The girth of it. The literal and

Physical and mental heaviness of it

Freedom is fleeting.

The anchor eventually becomes

Your comfort

Your stability.

A weight that keeps you grounded

Despair cries, and so do you

Loud and fierce but beaten

Into submission, you oblige

You conform and crawl beneath

The barrel of joy long hollow

Steel upon sulfur upon pewter dreams

Gone stifled and chorused

In a blue heat of arrest

But then one day —

You are light like dawn

Almost empty, and ascending

And floating above endlessly

The expectation of boundary gone wild

And you gasp

Am I alone?

Can I go here, or there —

Yes.

Nothing and no one is detaining you

The noose of submission has been tethered

And the sadness you feel for

Your captor gone romantic is perverse

But the reality is freedom pounding light

So light that your fist penetrates the wall

Fallen in Berlin style

And nothing is real

Just fabricated borders collapsing

And it is sad.

It is a dichotomy of arriving and —

Am I lost.

Used by the pillars of angst

Who am I now

Free?

Weeping am I behind a pink moon

A sigh so loud that no one looks

I am free.

And perhaps I am afraid of

How far I will fall

With no shackles to stop me.

The way he left bruises on the backside of my arms

The way he rolled a cigarette

That tongue, licking the paper just enough

Looking at me through his lids

Always half-closed

He disappeared for days at a time

Again

Distraught, I nosed through his papers

I was his Saint Bernard

Searching for his scent

In poetry, unspoken

Thoughts shared only to the grave

Woven in leather, and

Ivory tusks rolled smooth and thin

With fibers of reality reminding me

This too shall end.

Oh despair, hung obvious on a can-can girl’s thigh

I loved you too much.

Left behind in the shadow of the moon

With a stray cat and empty wallet

Do you remember me

And the way I made you howl.