Shells

A sketch of regret.

I live inside a ghost that thinks it’s still alive.

A body that remembers like second nature how to dance with someone, but can’t recall anyone ever dancing with me.

A scar I don’t remember getting, but a stomach that drops whenever I look in the mirror and see, unmistakably, that the collision of us altered me forever.

A keepsake I don’t remember being gifted, but spent years learning how to weave masterfully, tenderly, perfectly, into something I could have with me to remember always, and yet let slip through my fingers anyway.

Forgetting is not peace. It’s emptiness.

The holes left behind where the shape of you used to be, just out of reach, have taught me that we are not separate from our past.

I don’t know how I got here, where I came from, or how I spent my youth. But the shadow of you haunts me everywhere, in every line on my face, in every flirtation I use as distraction, in the way I know to tuck the sheets just so, for someone I can’t remember ever sleeping in them.

When I erased the space you filled, pieces of me went with you.

I keep my company with monsters and con artists, a madman in a war zone, constantly asked why I don’t run.

The truth is there’s nothing left for anyone to take from me.

The truth is no one could ever hurt me more than I have already hurt myself.

The truth is, you could find an empty shell anywhere. We come cheap.