no sleep tonight

i flip through old photos of us/ and i realize that, yes, the poetess was right-- sometimes love ends just like this-- in 2 dimensions/ so i comb through our skeletal remains/ polaroids of past passion/ we are frozen in memory of ourselves, the you and i that was us at one time/ captured smiles & constricted muscle solidified under ash/ it was not the eruption that killed us, not the lava that burned us-- it was the debris & the secondhand smoke that constricted our airways/ and so here we lay/ freezeframe tricked into being genuinely happy because this midas touch we had sounded like such a good idea until your heart turned to gold, no longer malleable by the warmth in my palms-- baby you turned cold/ and so i turned around/ in hopes that you would maybe come back to life if you thought i wasn't looking/ but one swift about face later, she had you standing at attention and i haven't felt at ease since then/ i love you/ but only because my heart loves you, only because my spirit longs for you, because our souls, they match/ & so i just do what these things tell me because love itself is incapable of reciprocity & unlike violence & racism & war, there is no justice or peace in love/ no piece outside of the ruins of what was our pompeii/ the mighty has fallen/ & the mighty was me, & me only/ a king mourning his metallic daughter/ an emperor bathing in the remnants of a dead city/ i have melted what was left of you & formed it into a locket/ &, yes, i make pilgrimages to our mt. vesuvius from time to time/ but if this sounds like a heartbroken lovesick take me back piece, just know that my heart is far from it/ this piece is just my periodic hero worship eucharist in remembrance of the one that taught me to love in the first place/ i in no way regret you & sometimes i may even miss you/ but i'm tired of this brian mcknight internal longing for what once was, on some "do i ever cross your mind anytime" bullshii-- miss me with that, "i will no longer audition for your attention"/ so when you come back to look at our photos, i won't be there/ see baby, i found my pulse in my womanhood, heard myself smile until i could not see & while you were turned around not looking, i came back to life again.
♥