i can feel the half moons of blood well up on my palms as my oversharp fingernails cut into them

shaking fists and throbbing temples

is it frustration or simple contemplation, a restoration, an emancipation, a declaration of love that will never be

love is a broken boomerang i continue to throw hoping one day it will come back, but it is just a stick with a subtle curve, an optical delusion, a sign of things not to come

a ritualistic dagger of my own demise, if it came back and pierced my chest would it do anymore damage then these errant thoughts

memories like shotgun pellets riddling my mind with holes large enough to drive reality into yet winding and imprecise

i hear the subtle notes of music in the distance

i mumble the words i can’t quite recall, but the cadence is familiar enough that any will do

j’adore vous, parlez vous stupidité

these clumsy feet find the beat and stomp on the remnants of this village our empty promises created, the broken bones of belief and fractured dimension of love ever after

never after

running ever faster

the escape hatch a crudely drawn tunnel on an all too solid wall, cartoon physics and the ground made of sludge

i can feel your fingers entwined with mine

the echoed beats of our hearts as we lay in sweaty sheets, tangled together but never so far apart

lying together, lying to each other, laying on the shattered mirror that was us, uncaring of the cuts and seeping fluids, intermingling blood sweat and fears, the best parts of you and the worst bits of me

so my hands ball into fists, my fingernails cutting deep into my calloused palms, hardened by digging through the wreckage in hopes of finding us again

the psychic reads my palms only to find a set of scarred yous

the scars made by you, made for you, my only remaining signs of us

this jagged topographical map of lingering pain and hope, no x marks the spot because it was an ex that wrote directions to candy coated emptiness that was a heart

no number of licks to the still born chocolate center, no eager lapping tongue, nothing but the slightly curved stick, the broken boomerang of past regret