I can hear the bones of the city rattling as I lie awake dreaming about you.

You are broken, faded snapshots of a love that should’ve had more time.
There are still days when it feels like the air is too heavy to haul into my lungs,
And I gasp and I gulp until my brain blurs
The look you handed me as you walked away—
Forgets how that look crumbled my world like a house of cards.

There are mornings when I wake up to a pillow blooming salt and
Tear stains scarred into the outlines of my smile.
“You’re the first thing I think of when I open my eyes,” you said.
There are nights when I drink hard, crusty liquor
Alone in my room and dance, raw and clumsy—
Until I find myself in the arms of my mother, weeping into oblivion.

Today I deleted my last pictures of us.
I wiped your love from my collarbone and read poems that assured me
That defeat and ruptured hearts have something to do with human nature.
I whisper, I don’t need you, and I cry too often in public places.
I shatter into a million pieces on my bathtub floor
As the shower head beats the sound of your heartbeat into my eyelids.

I guess the truth is you painted my heart in colors I didn’t know existed.
The truth is I try to to rip your smile out of mine,
And find myself left with a face I can’t fathom or recognize.
I yelled that you were the one—
Soulmates or something like that I guess.
It’s simple, I danced through my sobs, if you love someone you make it work.

So tell me again how in f*cking love with me you are, because the truth is
I don’t know how to be without you.
I don’t want to let you be the one that got away, but how can I claim I love myself
When my tongue has memorized the texture of “please stay?”
I guess the truth is I don’t know how to
Mourn a love that I’m starting to believe should’ve been immortal.

So I’ll tell myself that out there, there is another soul
Who will make me feel like the stars break apart in my eyes and
The sun sits wild in my heart.
And he’ll tell me my mind can’t be tamed but
Oh how it shines when I unzip my smile enough to be vulnerable.
I’ll tell myself that out there, there is another girl—

A girl who will kiss every crevice of yourself you’ve always hated.
She’ll hold you with a touch that makes you forget the way my name tastes,
In a way I wasn’t able to.
And I guess the truth is love is the sea, coming and going like waves
It isn’t my place to tell the ocean to stop exploding
So I will stand in the tide and let it rush over me, again and again—

Washing and breaking and building. while outside the city continues to shake.

~

Author: Hannah Liberman

Image: Núria/ Flickr

Editor: Khara-Jade Warren