Memories of you clutter the insides
of my heart –
every corner is filled with your presence,
and the warmth between us that
had floated around and danced in
the sunlight
is now a wintry layer of dust,
the ashes of us settling on top
of every piece of nostalgia,
and I can’t turn around
without feeling remnants
of you there.

Knock knock.
Hello?
Someone new comes in
and the mess around us
swallows up the floor,
almost dragging us with it –
it’s so plain to see that
it’s a disaster,
maybe even a lost cause,
and I just want to cover it all up
like a mistake in my story
scratched out line after line.

Yet
he’s willing to help me
clean it all out –
so we start dusting away
all the times your eyes
met mine,
and we wipe down
the moments you and I
embraced and intertwined,
even dabbing at the tears that fall
as the dust of your love
mercilessly pricks my eyes.

The inside starts to clear up
just a little more,
but he doesn’t know that
he hasn’t even seen
the skeletons of us in my stuffed closet,
that what seems like progress
really isn’t,
because at night when he leaves,
even when the room
appears clean,
I’ll lie in my bed
constantly haunted by you
because no matter how much we wipe,
vacuum, and wash,
your presence is still stained,
engraved
in the walls around me,
and even when I wrap my arms
around myself tightly,
I still can’t stop my heart
from falling apart
because I don’t know
how to get rid of these cracks
or how to
erase you
so your ghost never returns.
I’ve thrown away
so much of you already,
so tell me,
why is it that after all that
I still hoard you
inside my heart?