I brought a box of your junk
back and laid
old weapons on your doorstep
it’s an armistice
to begin this new chapter
full of treaties and thinly veiled hostilities.
We each sign sallow documents
with our own pens
so much for every touch
we used to share.
Negotiations begin over warm drinks
in a quiet cafe on Main Street
the same place where it ended
and we didn’t cry
as we looked back over the battlefield
we had walked through to the
other
side.
Allies
still. I hope.
Discussions about Friday nights
and mutual friends and
old past-times
it’s time to disentangle ourselves
but when you stand to leave
I still feel knotted up and
ill at ease.
Every street seems to be inscribed with your name
and a memory
and my name is only scattered
somewhere beneath the snow.
I remember when you kissed me last
fuck.
sometimes it’s so hard to be alone.
We can still laugh and I ask you about your mother
if I get the chance
how’s she doing and how’s your dad?
but it’s a much emptier question now that
you’ve emptied me from your life.
I find the streets look different now and
sometimes I can’t remember what it is
we used to talk about on those long walks
back from my apartment to your house
or how we used to fill the silence
of a summer afternoon.
I started seeing someone else
and it’s been a month since I met you
in the cafe and
it’s been 46 days since
I thought my heart would never be the same
but the guilt
it tingles in my bones
and the shell shock of a different
hand to hold
makes me wish I’d never
met you at all.
There are more things left between us still
to sign and divide
but this time
the mighty pen
lays on the table between us.
