Love&Leave.

From our days together
I hope you learned two things:
1. There's only one way to make me cry.
2. There's only one other way to make me cry.
You don't know it but,
I only cry in a certain room
Inside me
Where something
Settles like a shiver,
Falls like a timber, and
Runs like a river
That's severely off course
And a little ambient,
Arbitrary and indecent.
Because you're my winter.
You're my closed eyes
That can't deliver.
You're a retired surprise
Burning up with a whimper.
You're a cult hit
One hit wonder of a thing.
And you make something in this room
Stir like an eddy,
Melt like candy, and
Sprout like weeds.
Forgetting you not
Is a problem still unfolding
A solution still with-holding.
I take sidestreets, backstreets
Passageways and avenues differently
So I'll pass by the place you grew up
As many times as it takes
Until I don't think of you as I go.
Now, this hasn't worked yet
But I cannot detail any better
The cacophony of relief
That rings in my belly,
Wraps around my ankles,
And boils my soul over
Just because I didn't leave
A piece of me
With you.
No, only a mark of me
On you.
Or so I hope.
The thought of the possible world where
Parts of me were with you now
Pricks the back of my neck
And jerks me awake at night.
It scares me to the stars to wonder
Where all I would be.
You'd probably have scattered me about
Bits and pieces here and there-
Certainly keeping some for yourself.
But I'll bet you didn't know
You left a mark on me as well.
Because we grew up together,
You and I,
In this room with the dead-bolt lock
That can't keep me out
When there's this glass window
Paired with this rock in my hand.
And when the smashing passes,
I'll squirm right through the tiny frame
And in doing so
Be ripped apart from the outside in,
Shards of glass,
Sharp as your stare,
Sticking out every which way
From every angular space
As designated by your
Sidewinder smile.
And your seeming lack of compassion
Or decency of any measure
Delivers deathly decibels
That you don't know what it's like at all.

No. You don't know what it's like at all.