Spring Cleaning

I open my eyes and sit up in bed, it’s early, but I’ve already resigned myself to nothingness. No hopes No longing No anger because there you’ll be in all of them.

My feet swing out from under the blankets and touch the floor they are brittle, made up of every lie I’ve ever told, and I am wearing at the soles. The soft pitter patter of flesh on the floor is the sound of my apathy because I am not allowed to care about you. I was never allowed to care about you.

I float around the house all day. The ghost of myself. A shell. An empty pack of cigarettes When you just need one puff. I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror and gasp. I can see how much you’ve wasted me.

And I would gladly curl up inside every laugh line on your face, inside twenty one years of you that came before me. But I never will again. And I’m wondering if you miss waking up to blonde hair on your pillow.

I put on a record that sounds like your laughter if I stop moving now, I’ll see your smile in my mind. and just maybe, I’ll smile, too. But god forbid that happens, because something that holy, that sacred, doesn’t belong to you anymore.

I set your memory on fire, your old shirts, notes on bar napkins, pictures of you with that smile. I burn it all in the same fireplace we once sat in front of drinking laughing hurting melting. I shake you out of the sheets on my bed, and in the sunlight I see you in the dust.

All of you disposed, just as easily as you did of me.