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Crime Scene

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After you tell me        it’s over

The elevator’s metallic cables deliver you to the foyer,

The hesitant choke of your car’s ignition takes you down my street

for the last time.

These are the sounds that carry you away from me.

Undressed,

I wait for the sky to fall in, for fissures to break the sidewalk.

I long for vast, geophysical reasons why we can no longer be together,

but the knife you used to cut my body from yours

was made only of words.

I lie face down on my pillow and remind myself to

Breathe in

Breathe out

 

I watch                        bad t.v.                        a blonde detective solves cases with tweezers and a microscope.

I realise there must be tiny shards of you all over me:

your hair         your sweat      soaked through me.

Last night your cells fell down on me like snow.

I feel strangely close to you               even though I know you are gone.

So, I go to bed             I don’t wash.

 

At night I dream of an albatross         circling the cliffs        after their partner has died.

If I stop breathing       they will come here    put tape around my belongings: my desk, my

dresser, piles of unwashed laundry.

They will conclude that I did not put up a fight,

and pity the luminous nakedness of my thighs.

They will        dust me with powder  until I am white,

glowing in the phosphorescent maze of your fingertips,

and my body will lead them to you.

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