I wonder if we ever meant to let go,
a heart skipping beats, a record stuck on repeat

I wonder why we said it,
thought we meant it,
hoped we’d dreamt it

you get to be yourself completely
in the arms of another
only once

(if you’re lucky)

and we were lucky

so when we said it, meant it, dreamt it,
was it spite?

“goodbye”

spite
malice
an adult temper
tantrum

I’m feeding myself snippets of memory
in the hope it will ease thebhunger I feel,
this hunger I’ve felt since you’ve been gone, ravenous and raw

I devour a lifetime of photographs,
so that I never forget the curves of your face
an “all you can eat” of your name
swallowing it over and over again,
so that my lips never forget it,

I am slow to realise that this hunger
is grief, triggering action
I sit with it long enough to soothe
the need to act on the fact I’m empty

to just be empty

and wait for your memory
to softly echo back to me

It’s hard to believe that a heatwave
has such a chill in the air,
the wind that carries a whisper
of your memory,
distorted now and distant

have I forgotten you on purpose?
is forgetting easier than remembering
how much I loved you
how much I miss you

Is denial my friend?
Washing away your name
as if it were the sea and I had
drawn it in the sand

the heat makes the flowers
wilt before their time
and I cannot bare to see it
to see you in a rose petal,
brown and withered

deny, forget, erase

but I cannot forget
the flaws and imperfections in you
that taught me how to be human

because I am flawed now,
scrambling in the dark
like a child lost in a maze

there is nothing I can do
to honour you enough
to thank you enough

forgetting is a pretty poor way
of repaying you
but I have to survive
I have to survive

because I am breaking
otherwise

I miss you, but it’s not enough
to say that. I ache for you. For all
the memories we will never make.
For knowing I will never hug you again.
Hear you laugh or let you see me cry.
It burns like a fire lit in the
pit of my stomach.
This ache that no pill can take away.
The never memories rippling across
my skin, like waves I am fighting
desperately not to be engulfed by.
Fighting them is useless, though.
You just have to let them
wash you in salt water
and hope it
cleanses you

somehow

this is my deliverance,
away from the torture, away from the pain
that you inflicted on my body and mind

not a day passes when I don’t think
of the way you grabbed me from normality,
from safety, from peace

a day when I don’t remember
the agony of you forcing yourself
into my body, my heart, my soul

but this is goodbye, farewell to the days
of the constant nightmares,
the fear, the shame

I am my own salvation,
digging deep inside to find
the courage to heal

to let the soothing balm of love
rub over my skin again

you are nothing and I am going to
rise from the ashes to be something

magnificent

This is the first year
when the tulips grow without you,
and as they bloom my heart bursts

with a kind of melancholy I have learnt to nurse
during bitter cold mornings and ink blank nights
my eyes searching for you at breakfast, your coffee mug still intact

unlike your body, unlike my heart

but the tulips bloom and so too
does something new

peace,
peace settles in my soul

my head stops spinning with
what if and might have been

and those tulips,
those gorgeous silk like
purple, orange, yellow and red tulips

save me

I have weathered storms that shook
my heart against my rib cage

Battled lightning bolts
that gave my brain electric shocks

and yet -

I cannot withstand this goodbye
that tastes like battery acid in my throat
everytime i try and say your name

I cannot find the strength to let you go,
even though you are

- gone

your face echoes, wild as the wind in my memories

all I have is love
this love that was not enough to save you
so how can this love save me

from crumbling with grief