The Things You Leave Behind

Photo by Matthew T Rader from Pexels

Wish I could return your plain white T-shirts

To the hell loop where Satan caught three fevers.

The news call my exit a violent seizure

When you’ve barely loved me for two whole seasons.

Letters keep coming so I write off my pity,

Dry my hands in silk dresses from the long lost city.

Your bitter tears echo as my tongue grows slippy.

The diamonds you bought no longer fit me.

And I lock the gates, cover them in barbed wire –

In case I want to flee my soul and retire,

In case I seek out a gun for hire

To kill your belongings in a ceaseless fire.

Doesn’t mean I don’t have the means to do it,

To drown the reminders, all the nights in Munich.

But they won’t imbibe touline or lighter fluid

And I know one day I’ll profoundly rue it,

This abyss of my own wrong doing.

-JW