Aftermath

The air is thick. I lap it up like soup.
I smell you not just from where you touched me,
but from everywhere. Your scent carries and wafts
and jabs violently at my nostrils, reverberating
through my body until I am overcome by you.
I cannot cleanse myself and wash who we were away.

You say you regret everything. How can you claim that?
I do not regret anything. I do not regret the beads of sweat
that dripped from our foreheads nor the topography
of your back, which I cradled gently,
nor the words that tripped across our tongues, playing about
on the surface of our minds. I do not regret you.

There is a certain amount of pain in finality. Enough
to make me wince, but not enough to occupy me.
That takes the pain of aftermath. Being without you hurts
no more than being with you. Don't apologize for things
you have no control over. They are what I loved you for.
They are the sirens that called to me.

I guided your hand as it drove nails into my veins.
I swaddled myself in your glory, smiling
with the corner of my mouth. I reached to touch
the glint of the water and fell into the frigid pools
of your eyes. I loved you too much
and noticed too little.

I can almost feel you presence leaving me, breaking
out of my chest through a carefully made slit, breaking
out of the gilt box I held it in. I only have the energy
to stand and watch, pretending that I ever possessed you.
Part of me is calling you. Part of me is damning you.
Most of me can't care anymore.

There is a line that must be drawn between loving
and being in love. I threw myself across that line
only to find that it was made for a reason.
Now, broken and bruised by the fall, I realize that
now I have gained the permission I needed to try to breathe
again. My precious, deprived lungs are still intact.

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