Arti Rathore
There’s nothing left of you anymore.
Nothing whole, anyways.
Just a trail of breadcrumbs you left around my home.
Bits and pieces of our time together are
crammed between the mattresses, or
jammed within the crevice between my pillows
and the headboard.
Some memories are tucked under the duvet with me,
keeping me warm.
Others send a cold chill as they blow through
the cracks of my broken window.
Your scent clings to the sheets and the towels
and seeps out of the pores in the drywall and the gap between the twists in the carpet.
Remnants of who you were, once tacked up with pride,
hang lopsidedly across the room while
abandoned dreams of who you were meant to become
remain perfectly crucified against the opposing wall, looming over the top of the bed.
Your prized possessions lie deserted
under and over messy piles of now disheveled jeans and shirts and socks,
all of which you’ll never wear again.
Your shadow creeps along the chipped baseboards,
which once covered in white paint lays barren,
brittle wood exposed and weathered away.
It pours itself through the opening under my room door,
filling the air with your dark silhouette.
A silhouette that sat on a pedestal of grace and beauty,
reduced to a corpse or cadaver or something of the sorts,
a stench of death and decay nestling itself into the throw at the foot of my bed.
Your voice pings against the walls,
echoing in the hall outside my door and screaming out through the vent.
It whispers sweet nothings as my right ear hits the pillow and cries in agony into my left.
Your taste lingers on my lips, peeling away at the flesh
and filling my mouth with the taste of iron.
Thoughts of you suppress my appetite, orders of takeout half eaten and pushed aside sit and rot,
only filling to flies and maggots now.
There’s nothing left of you anymore.
Nothing whole, anyways.
Just breadcrumbs in my bedsheets of
what we once were, and
what we could have been.