alone in an abandoned room
i embrace the cold encaging walls
much like a dead man would the blood-soaked floor,
palms pressed flat to feel the irregular textures,
i roughly kiss the already-peeling paint,
and the pale pastel layer comes away on my lips,
intoxicating me with the scent of old chemical memories

your footsteps have long ceased echoing
in these seemingly interminable halls,
your tears evaporated through cracks
in the collapsing roof, and our poetry
is buried underneath mounds of toppled
bookshelves and dusty yellowed paper

i could dig up the pages you scrawled
with me in mind and read them over
and over until my heart cracks at a
critical area and i come pouring out,
splatter on the rug and seep between
the floorboards, return to the earth

it’s hard to believe everything’s all over
yet i’m still here to bear witness to
the emptiness, the silent mirrors which
will forever reflect the sombre look you
had on your face last i saw you leave
and never return, leaky taps and flickering
lights still wired to enough water and
energy to keep me breathing

stare outside the grimy window and there
is further despair, the trauma following
chaos – the wind mourned your absence
for days, but now even it has died down,
and since you took the sun with you, there
is nothing but desolation sleeping on the
barren ground

i swallow the layer of paint easily, although
some part of me feels uneasy about this
consumption of memories, and i leave
teeth marks in the dead wood, in your side,
scraping away at all the lies you’ve painted onto
our rough structure to make us look decent




the paint falls first, but soon
this whole house will crumble




i can’t wait to climb out of the ruins