Disintegration
“It’s over,” you say one day,
while I look on, dumbfounded.
“It’s time to go our separate ways,
for we do not go together anymore.”
“But how?” I ask. “Where do I go?”
“I don’t care,” you say.
“I love you, but I don’t care.”
So we begin to separate,
one strand at a time,
the life we had built together.
“This thing is yours,” I say.
“And I think this is mine,”
but I’m not sure because I cannot see
where you end and I begin.
So we pull apart,
looking at each piece of life,
staring under a microscope,
as we dissect what once was us.
We slough off old habits,
that once endeared or annoyed,
like dead cells scratched away.
Each piece is cut away,
sometimes very carefully to ensure
that no misplaced molecules go astray.
Other pieces are hacked from our bodies,
leaving only gaping wounds
where Love once stood
that cannot be cauterized, it seems.
And we tear from one another
leaving ragged flesh behind.
“This part is mine,” you say.
I agree and hand you another piece
of who we were and what we hoped,
handfuls of particles and atoms, flesh and blood,
like sand spilling between my fingers.
As we finally part,
I realize, as you walk away,
that I have ceded to you all the vital organs,
and that there isn’t enough left to me now
to make an entire man again.
Just a broken, unwhole thing remains,
left to dissolve in the rain.
while I look on, dumbfounded.
“It’s time to go our separate ways,
for we do not go together anymore.”
“But how?” I ask. “Where do I go?”
“I don’t care,” you say.
“I love you, but I don’t care.”
So we begin to separate,
one strand at a time,
the life we had built together.
“This thing is yours,” I say.
“And I think this is mine,”
but I’m not sure because I cannot see
where you end and I begin.
So we pull apart,
looking at each piece of life,
staring under a microscope,
as we dissect what once was us.
We slough off old habits,
that once endeared or annoyed,
like dead cells scratched away.
Each piece is cut away,
sometimes very carefully to ensure
that no misplaced molecules go astray.
Other pieces are hacked from our bodies,
leaving only gaping wounds
where Love once stood
that cannot be cauterized, it seems.
And we tear from one another
leaving ragged flesh behind.
“This part is mine,” you say.
I agree and hand you another piece
of who we were and what we hoped,
handfuls of particles and atoms, flesh and blood,
like sand spilling between my fingers.
As we finally part,
I realize, as you walk away,
that I have ceded to you all the vital organs,
and that there isn’t enough left to me now
to make an entire man again.
Just a broken, unwhole thing remains,
left to dissolve in the rain.
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