I study my face in the mirror:
the lines like throughways
leading back to the places
where you & I
converge
I travel them wearily,
studying the landscape
for directional cues
to the places of myself
that come from you
The dust on the road settles like sediment
in the chambers of my heart,
where you’re buried so deep
you have turned to stone and
I try to dig you out
just to figure out
if it’s possible to change
what started everything,
if it’s possible to erode
the space you take up in my life,
there is so much grief inside of me now
that I don’t think any more could fit
so please don’t die
because even though you are already
dead to me
I can’t possibly stand
to lose anything else
If you’re a monster now
what
does
that
make
me?
I study my face in the mirror
wondering how much of you
is still inside of me
wondering which parts
belong to you
can it just be
the good ones?
When I think back on it all,
the only happy memories I have
are with you
but I don’t know if I can have them still
I don’t know if they still belong to me
I don’t know if they are allowed
like:
the time we camped for three weeks
at the base of the Sierras,
how we dug out a home amongst the firs,
how I had never known air that clean
or quiet that flat—
stretching out as far as the needles would lay,
I
watched her lay our clothes out on rocks
to dry in the sun, I
felt so close to you then,
in the depths of the alpine lake
looming love
above the totality
of the horizon
If you’re a monster now
were you always?
If you’re a monster now
weren’t you always?
If you’re a monster now
what does that make me?
If you’re a monster now
why
did you
make me?