You linger
Like the aftermath of the wine I finished last night
You said I drank too much
So after you left I drained all the alcohol
And roamed the halls of this house
I wanted to be sober for you
We poets are connoisseurs of tragedy
Yet tonight even my blank pages are no use
Because the only words that flow from this pen
Are ones that rhyme with you
You
You who smelt like the sea every time
Washing over me
Walking away and coming back like a tide
Flowing on its own time
You who never held me without an agenda
Who only dreamt of the inside of my pants
Who never once wondered what lay in the deep folds of my mind
You don’t leave
Even the walls remind me of you
They whisper sweet nothings in the night
I touch them like I had touched you
A soft rub here a dig of the nails there
They moan just like you did
They don’t wander off though
You used to, at the very start of our many conversations
“I don’t do frivolous talk”, you’d say
And keep looking for intelligence on your phone
Not these walls
They absorb every last of my words
Tonight I write on them
Desperate to draw you out
Then I stop
If you didn’t love me then
Why would you love me now?
For now, the paint awaits
The walls could use a coat
It’s got scars where it was hit by things that missed me
Like prisoners of war, these walls have seen it all
The torn up insides of our caustic relationship
The silence and the violence
The chaos after a brawl and the calm before the storm
Everyday playing out like an operatic tragedy
Not tonight
Tonight these walls are a shrine
Entombing pieces of you
Tonight you will be immortalized
I stare at you and wait until the paint’s done