I bet he made love urgently, like a train leaving the station.
Here, this is every ounce of salt I gathered from his hips with my tongue.
Here is every canker sore he implanted in my mouth when we kissed.
In Ancient Greece, mourners placed coins over the eyes of the dead
to help them stay shut in the afterlife. As far as I’m concerned,
I can do the same to you. Last night I saw twenty-seven fireflies
collide in the dark, so hard and so fast that you’d be surprised
the light wasn’t knocked out of them.
You knocked the light out of me by taking him away;
now every breath I take is filled with his name,
and you can have this language of scars, this way of struggling
to express feelings, but there’s one thing I want you to know:
there are calluses in every place he ever touched me.
I am not soft anymore.
I am rough and toughened and the first time he called out my name,
it was louder than a thousand tsunamis realizing they have far to go
before touching the shore.
That’s pretty damn hard to beat.