In Another Life
Part 1
Her and I
were once a pair of fingers
that spent months musing over the fretboard
of a freshly thrifted bass guitar.
We spent handfuls of hours
whistling white noise.
We bounced back and forth between barren parking lots,
buried in between each steel inlay,
slashing away at aisles of rose bushes
while our blood splattered Renaissance murals
on top of newly emptied-out pavement.
We spent semesters sprinting across sidewalk paths,
seeping our bare heels into the sheer cold
of vacant chorus-composing concrete,
with rhapsody speed bumps embedded into the seamlines.
We spent seconds salvaging patches
of our skin that shedded and blistered
while we
were feeling
the stammering
and seething stings
radiating off the four steel strings.
We never knew what song we were going to play,
nor which verse we started on,
nor how long the interlude would linger
nor how we got here in the first place.
All we knew was that when a pattern was made:
our laughs choreographed themselves into a catchy chorus,
and our kindred souls captured that,
manifesting it into our matching heartbeat
for this very moment.
Part 2
I was once blue splattered first onto the palette
while you were red laid to rest beside me.
God was the paintbrush.
His bristles made us dance together in circles,
where I twirled you in waves
while sunsets shattered,
and eventually
we gave birth to a purple pastel.
With every stroke that was smeared onto the sanguine surface,
she filled up the canvas
with her obnoxious smile
that had segments of us
scattered thoroughly
within the still life sketch
of the sunrise.
Part 3
Her and I
were once two sides of the same electrical cord,
often tangled between each other,
building knots and kneading bundles of bridges
on top cedar, oak and birch floorboards.
One evening I broke my back
bracing myself into high beams
to build us a humble home,
with sky-high ceilings,
auxiliary offices on every sixth floor
and underground parking lots
for our hordes of indoor slippers
and outdoor shoes.
I remembered how my arms
baled around her body in the bed,
how her beige eyes blinked mindlessly,
gazing endlessly up and into my angles.
I remembered her swaying softly
while I held my breath
to change into a hammock,
holding onto the thought that she
could never despise this haven I assembled.
But I shrugged it off,
convincing myself those clusters of sparks
slugging off her skull were signs she loved me back,
but really they were just empty shells of a shotgun.
I passed out,
waking up to the fumbling dance
of a fire no longer flickering
but instead loitering leisurely
on top where scars foamed up on our flesh
and flakes of skin were filtered
across fissuring gaps
upon the charred up floorboards.
I blamed myself,
battering the bullet point
straight into the streetlines of my brain
that I was a buffoon for not hearing her beg for mercy.
I wonder often if she tried slithering out to escape.
Or what would’ve happened if she slipped a sliver
of a whisper into my ear to tell me:
“Please stop suffocating me in my sleep.”
Or what would’ve happened if she slamped her shoulder
into my stomach and seethed her teeth
into my skin while she screamed:
“Let me out!”
Or what would’ve happened if she slit my eyelids
away from sitting shut to let me see the signs
that I was doing too much in such a short amount of time.
Or what would’ve happened if I stopped thinking
and actually tried to save her,
instead of reminiscing these tragedies
and turning them into scattered tattoos
to commemorate for the next lifetime.
I
am
sorry.