wraith

I sat inside, quietly, when I heard you pull up next to the door. I heard the music, the rustle of the package in your hands. Door opens, shuts, van drives away.
 
   The contrast of all the befores when we hugged at the door, in the airport, kissing each other goodnight.
All the greetings and happy hellos.

And then that. Listening to you outside the door, neither of us willing or able to look at each other, to say hello, to share the same space.

I think of you now like a body. Eyebrows and skin. Chest and belly. Hands. knees.
Each time I think of it, I pull myself off like a sticker.  Further and further away from the sensation of you, further from the warmth I thought could be my safe place.
  There is no safe place.
I wander the worlds now like a wraith. I am not alive, I am an imposter.

All those around me, even you, are incapable of these feelings.

  You are like them, trampling the whole world to distract yourselves from ever feeling.
 I am the trampled world.



 
 

I hate you for
All the men I must put between us.

I love you for the belonging we had
To the rebellion.

I hate you for the way the world smells like you.

I love you for leaving me
with myself inside of all these colors that I can no longer feel...
dimensions all blurry and meaningless.

I hate you. How many eons until I do not think that I love you?

   I never heard you as much as I wanted to be heard.

Even today I am a little girl screaming on the floor. And so it goes.