the smallest little scraps of memory recall themselves
from conglomeration,
fragmented keepsakes
useless pieces of a broken whole,
even the sweetest carrying barbs
that catch and claw at the most delicate place of all

your mismatched dimples,
the time we set the self-checkout on Spanish
phlox, spicy chapstick, mantelpiece angels
people-watching, locker room kisses, the smell of you
the rip of fireworks, tucking myself into the crook of your arm
under a dark sky rent with fleeting glitter

how I blew on the window,
traced a haphazard heart in the cloudiness
you grinned

the way our bodies fitted in the backseat of your Civic
and how the world narrowed unnoticed, encompassing only us

the afternoon I passed you on the schoolbus,
watching you trail your finger along the picket fence
and thinking then that I knew what love was,
that you knew too

misregarding love as a reciprocal equation,
feeling too much, deeply and vulnerably
finding untrue truth, overreading the honesty
in what you said

the memories resurface as they settle,
unending, unimportant
but armed all the same,
inner weapons
wounding and re-wounding

self-inflicted hurts,
seeing my replacement
a role once scripted for me,
erased and obliterated and wholly given over
taken within weeks,
so you would never have to miss me

and I remember then the slow reclamation
fading fingerprints on glass,
a cold heart disappearing into the December backdrop.