When Love Leaves Bruises

I’ve shoved you deep inside a cave.

I’ve built towers and moats and catapults and placed a dragon outside the walls, so you cannot get out and I cannot get in.

I have left you to rot deep within the earth and run far far away, yet somehow the stench of your molding body laughs in my nostrils and your sunken, hollowed face haunts my waking eyes.

So I turn around.

I go back.

I rewind the time and stand, hands shaking, outside the fortress, outside the cave, over your dead body.

I see the memories etched across your skin.

I see the binding of two souls into one and the ripping apart of one into two tattooed on your forearms like burn marks,

Like bruises.

I roll up my sleeves. I have them too. My body has turned black and blue from strike one, strike two, strike three, strike four.

Why could we never find an open door?

I ask your lifeless body and you do not respond.

I try again and again and again.

Give me an answer

Your silence burns holes in my chest.

It kills me to let them burn.

Yet deep beneath the fire, I know that

Somehow

Someday

Roses will grow from the ashes,

These graves will blossom into gardens,

And though I will never forget you,

I will finally let you go.