i'm trying to walk
on eggshells with feet
still bandaged from
walking on broken glass
and you wonder why
i step so delicately,
why i turn and run
every time they
start to sting
again.

sometimes
the answer
to the
"what if"
hurts more
than never
answering it
at all.

I cleaned my own
blood off your knife,
mended the wounds,
you gave me.
still kissed you
goodbye
when you left.

i'd like to take apart all
of my pieces, unstitch
the skin, untangle the veins,
dismantle the bones -
let them clean, air dry.
let all the dust and the
ash settle elsewhere.
maybe then, when i
wear a body you've
never touched, will
my grief begin to
untether itself, only
then will i unshackle
the anger, only then
will the wall you've
built between me
and everyone else
come down.

Did you know I loved you
when you left, last fall?
I didn't tell you
but, I thought you saw.
Now, you're not that far
still you never call.

I'm happy now
well, I want to be.

Sometimes, I wonder
do you think of me?

You
With your words
The Knife.
You.

Me
Knowing and not knowing,
Afraid and clueless.
Me.

Us
A thing that used to be,
The dust on the mantle.
Us.

We
Will never be the same
The blood that was spilled across the floor.
We.

This crime scene filled with pain and sorrow and regret.  The murderer and the victim one in the same—but also separate.  Two hearts that both dance to the same miserable song.

i wish i could remember the
day everything popped, the
day the fissure ripped me in
two - broke me into pieces of
Feeling and
Unfeeling.

or maybe it was just like
poison in the water, not
enough to destroy but enough
to sicken - to warp the
sensations, the perceptions -
hot, cold, hate, love.

how happy and empty
seem to be the ends of the
extreme with no in between.
how it can change in a moment,
how the turning of the planet
manages to yank the ground
right out from under me.

how quickly the fruit sours,
the heart hardens.
the gardens turn graveyard
and i am left once more
with the wreckage of all that i
once loved, burned to ash.

maybe i am the villain.
maybe i am the virus
infecting all that i touch.