I know both you and I are too old for bruises, that whenever
I break a dish in the kitchen, I’d rather break your heart
and find someone new. It’s been months since our mouths
last spoiled one another rotten, since my eyes have
fallen victim to your stare. In the beginning we turned away
from one another in bed, building blankets around our naked bodies
like sandbags peppering the walls of a dam,
too shy to drink from the river of one another’s skin.
Now we lie back-to-back beneath the covers like reverse conjoined twins
not because we’re afraid we’ll feel desire at the sight of a bared thigh or soft elbow,
but because we don’t want to touch each other anymore.
We’re mosaics of disgust and self-pity, full of scar tissue
from all the weeks we spent learning to un-love one another.
Following the instruction manual backwards.
I know both you and I are too old for bruises, but there’s so much
bitter satisfaction in wounding someone who already has internal damage
inflicted directly where their heart used to be.
Our long silences are salt in the margins of every waterlogged page of our history
that slowly binds itself into dust with each passing day.
We’re re-treading the steps of the first time we fell for one another,
hoping that somewhere along the way
we’ll find the exit route that was there all along.