Pieces Of You / Acquisitive Affinity

Pieces of You

It's been one week since we've broken up.

The poetry you wrote me lays scattered on the floor, crumpled sheets of paper ripped from your notebook.

A hurricane had torn through the room and dropped pieces of you in every corner.

Your razor sitting on the edge of the bathtub.

How could you have been so cruel as to leave it there?

I can't bring myself to move it.

Touching it penetrates the tough layers of skin that only you could break through and taps upon the very heart that you still hold in your palm.

My blood sheds and won't stop flowing until I taste it in the coffee at the bottom of my mug.

Your presence dances upon my tongue until I can no longer bear the sound of your name.

So I place my thoughts on a pedestal and sacrifice my mind, the only thing you didn't take from me. But I continue to clutch to the last scraps of myself in a sweaty hand, leaving blisters that will become the only sign that I ever loved you.

I'll push and pull, fighting both sides of the battle till my brain begins to reject even the smallest idea of you, purging myself of the sour intoxication you forced down my throat.

In my final offering to us, I burn every word of my love for you.

It's been a year since we've broken up and I can still taste you on my tongue and in my teeth.

I sweep the ash under the floorboards and find crumpled pages of the poetry I didn't mean to keep.

Acquisitive Affinity

By the time I met you, you were at the peak of your youth.

You drove an old Harley and took me on rides at 2am.

The wind whipping around my hair.

The intoxication of your laughter.

Short staggered breaths between kisses.

I had always hated the smell of cigarettes, yet the taste of ash on your tongue drew me in.

We hopped on your Harley and moved to New York City.

We knew our love was damned from the start but we pretended love was living on week to week pay stubs and Saturday night shifts at the diner.