she turned to face me

one last time our eyes met

and even through the tears that streamed down my cheeks

capturing and multiplying the sunlight into a prismatic glare

i saw her mouth

ever so faintly whisper one last time

i love you

and then she drove away

i wanted to scream

to beg her to stop

fell to my knees and sent every ounce of my bitterness and ache to the heavens

praying to any voice that would listen to make her turn around

and like all prayers muttered since the dawn of time

since man crawled out of caves and worshipped the ball of fire in the heavens above

it went unnoticed

unheard

unanswered

no way to leave a voicemail or send an email

no delivery service in which to send the offering of my still beating heart on a bed of roses

speaking to myself

sending my entirety

all hopes and dreams into the ever hungering maw of nothingness

inconsolable grief the connective holding my fractured being together

i lost track of time

camped out in the tear soaked grass

waiting for her to return

eventually the howls of remorse

the convulsive fits that threatened to tear down the universe around me

shaking as the tectonic plates of the essence of my being we’re torn asunder

as magma boiled from bones and sinew

evaporating the blood and bile

left empty

discarded

my paper mache heart turned to compost as the rains fall

washed away onto the dry seabed of broken promises

the arid salt beds of god’s own eyes

my briar crown

her pound of flesh paid for a thousand times over

the vacuous abyss of eternal devotion carved in her final words

fetid and meaningless

the definition of love

an ode to oafishly believing in anything but the endless cycle of this war of attrition between chemically inebriated and emotionally castrated

altering the composition of joy into a hybrid coalescing ball of regret and hate

until all that remains is a viscous film

tainting everything with the rancid undertones of desire and atrophy

shaping the remains of dreams into a jagged sculpture

peeling off the detrius until nothing brings comfort

until all you have is the tear streaked image of happiness as it drives into the sunset

a bird no longer able to be held in the bamboo cage lined with broken glass that is your soul

your trap

the essence of existence

the very summation of giving oneself to another

is this love

or another broken spoke in the wheel of time

a final ball of phlegm spat into the cataract eyes of fate