azure gems cut through the glass portal a world where everyone appears happy your face had begun to evaporate my memory losing its grip on you and your ethereal aura but dead left-over tendrils of you remain in place rotten and withered threaded throughout my system two months ago, you left me newly soul-wrenched now your visage reminds me of those translucent hushed moments during the seasons of us
streams of rain forging new rivulets that criss and cross a delta over our huddled forms under a bus stop the beams we hand one another show we care not about the scene only that one is with the other you laugh once more, those gorgeous notes snapping my heart taut, scattering off the walls of the tapering lane we stumble down hand in hand lapping up all the time we have been gifted halting every step or other to give our other electric flashes delivered in little mouth-sized kisses elongated rays slide through the window beside you as you head nestles into its usual resting place my right should and I lay mine on yours hands mimicking the pile-up above the sun finally drifting below our spinning rock's navel ending the final day we will spend together hands drop to their sides as the tone goes dead phone reduced to a repulsive onyx brick a bearer of unbearable news stomach clenched so tight it's a ravenous gyre hungry for all my innards as your words spin around the centrifuge of my disbelief - I've met someone
I received no word from you in almost two months other than when you questioned me about my acceptance of the new terms as if I couldn't actually be whole - as if I'd forever be wrought undone - as if you'd always be everything those digital unblinking eyes still slash a path through me carelessly cleaving until they have traversed this heart of darkness yet this time rending those dead coils wrapped around and through my heart and lungs I can finally breathe you stun me you always have maybe always will the photographer capturing this beauty in faithful facsimile cemented in colour forevermore but as radiant and exuberant as you look and are I no longer see the woman I'd loved instead I find a stranger borrowing her face.
This piece was written in April 2018. Lot’s Wife accepted the piece for their print edition – Issue 1, 2019.
Not Yet Returned - Cody B Strange 