The Anatomy Of Absence

I carry the scent of your being

laced in my entrails,

like cyanide on apple seeds —

helpless on the skin, poison within

You are rot,

painted in nostalgia,

a ghost with lipstick smudged

on the rim of every thought I sip from

I can’t scrub you out —

you live under my fingernails,

in skin folds

where memories ferment quietly

into grief

You are the silence

I mistook for safety —

a stillness so precise

it carved absence into habit,

until I could no longer tell

if I was loving you

or learning how to disappear

Some nights,

I dream of plucking you out

organ by organ,

but wake up

choking on the scent again —

sweet, sour, rusted, ruined

like bruised fruit

left out too long

You were never poison in a vial —

you were the kiss

before the drink,

the breath before drowning,

the lull between pulse and flatline

And I,

I am still

sipping silence,

wearing your absence

like vows

tailored in grief's shadow —

learning to rot

gracefully on the outside,

while maggots of memory

feast on the inside

where love once lived