The weight of your vacancy 

Greets me each time I wake

Languid ashes of our memories,

The one thing you didn’t take

 

You know no deity or saint 

Could ever save me from it,

The highest summits of our love, 

Windy peaks from which we plummet

 

When we fell, we had danced

In iridescent summer’s breeze

When we crashed, we had shattered

In a grave that our hearts would freeze

 

Every breath’s sharp like the edge 

Of a butcher’s coldest knife

I miss you like I loved you 

For the entirety of my life

 

I can hear you in the notes

Of every melancholy tune,

When words catch in my throat,

And every tear of the old wound

 

You had faded me away,

But I’m still scarlet to the touch

I know I tried to be sorry

Did I apologise enough?

 

I’m sorry that I broke them

Before they went to sleep

But your promises of forever

Were never mine to keep

 

Did you know enough to care,

Or care enough to show?

I can’t leave all that I know

No, I can’t let a bad thing go

 

I was lucid, I was dreaming,

The happiest I’ve ever been

Without knowing it at all

Until it unravelled from within

 

So tell me, “Leave it all behind”

Toss it, a body to the waves

Go back a girl I’ll never find

Forget all the times that I roused fate.

 

Down the road I’d still consider

Donning my shield and blade again,

Fight every instinct to unlove you,

Defending what’s gone, buried, and dead

 

No part of me could’ve known

That temporariness behests a price

Living seconds that we loaned,

Throwing caution like it’s dice

 

The way our ghosts had lingered,

We both knew it’d not suffice,

So take all love I’ve ever known

And break my lonely heart 

Not once,

 

Twice.

​

— 19/12/21