he doesn't like people leaving

the room where love simmered, thoughts sprinkled over

the four white walls 

is empty. They cleaned the nooks and crannies 

to remove all traces of my life. 

what became of me are four boxes 

containing eighteen years of photographs and diaries 

memories infiltrated between yellow pages and dry compressed flowers.

nothing ever stays with me. 

they all leave: the dawns and dusks 

absorbed with friends or lovers, hoping that those unslept nights 

will bring enduring friendships.

promises made while we could still taste wine on our tongues

and the soft summer melted on our skin

we never kept them. What fools, what fools.

there is an order here which drives me mad

days come and go in a dance of broken machinery 

I am scared of the uncertainties brought by each new day. 

I am terrified. 

it is a visceral love that I crave for

to kill the rickety feel of my life, always unstable 

every night I can hear it

falling, a chronic sound of 

hundreds of faces, of souls, of small babies, of red hearts

all mine

falling apart. 

breaking sounds of endings, soft goodbyes slipping out of your tongue 

footsteps further and further and further away 

until all is silent. Until all I can hear is my breath, so loud

a clock I cannot shut or turn off. 

I do not think I can take anymore endings, not even my own.

I was so sure I reached the bottom 

that I could fall no further. and yet I still go

down down down 

like a rock, unable to push itself back to the surface.

the temporality of it all scares me

as everything drops around me, no matter how hard I hold onto it

no matter if it is carved inside me: my heart drops with it. Nothing ever stays.

eighteen years of letting go, of learning to mend quick enough 

eighteen years of packing and unpacking my life in different places, 

moulding my soul to fit inside others

eighteen years of finding love and losing it.

I cement a small piece of myself in every place I had to let go of,

impregnate a miniature thread of my soul on every skin I touched, 

until all that remains of me are broken pieces 

scattered around worlds and hearts

like seeds 

dry and unharvested.