When I press my ear to the walls I can hear a heartbeat

How can I believe you’re real
when every morning you leave me
with nothing more than your spit
on my lips
and the memories of bruises
slammed against the bedhead

This is no place for violence

This is the perfect place for violence
hit me until I feel something
I just want to feel… something

Some days I think I dreamt you
to be filed into a memory bank fantasy
to be grazed over in decreasing increments
so that I might find your substance
in the abstract of the whole
like an artwork so devastatingly beautiful
it can’t be taken in all at once

So I wear the scars of you
to remind me that you’re more than
a screaming whisper behind my eyelids
a bittersweet taste on my tongue
a scalding tear on my discoloured cheekbones
that haven’t seen sleep since you materialised
into the hollow shell of  my life

© Indie Adams 2014