Spiderweb Shadows

I see you in the tea leaves stuck to the rim of my cup

And taste you in the sweetness lingering on my lips.

There is a whole world I have swallowed, or rather,

Pushed to the bottom of a grey piece of pottery that

Glows in the amber sheets of light pouring in.

It colors the tile this pretty sort of orange,

Prehistoric in its intensity,

And I am stuck with silence lodged between my teeth

Like some kind of old popcorn kernel half-chewed.

That's what the glow of your memory does to me,

It irritates the finely woven fabric of my spiderwebs

And disturbs the carefully kept dust atop my soul.

That's the problem, isn't it, that you disrupt these

Carefully curated places of stillness inside my bones.

You have rooted around in the foundation of my sanity,

Dug dirty fingernails through the compacted dirt

Making up the basement of my being and I...

Am suffering the loss of my sanctuary.

Who wants to hear the voice of another echoing

Through their marble halls of their bones?

I don't want to see you in my mysticism

Or taste you on the back of my tarot cards.

I want to be alone in my pursuit of myself,

Alone in the forest with nothing but bacteria and fungi

And feral beasts to wrap their arms around me.

I want to be alone in my trembling reflection.

I don't want to see you in the mirror anymore.