Raw

I can feel your absence in everything 

that reminds me of you, 

in the book you left, 

lying on my dresser 

underneath the lamp where we used to make

love. 

In the language 

I never realized was ours 

until we stopped speaking it together. 

Even in the men

that I force myself 

to feel something for, 

but I never can

because in them, I see parts of you, 

a deep voice

(that lacks your conviction)

a mess of curly hair 

(that never suffices my longing for to run my fingers through yours)

but they are only parts of you 

and they are never enough. 

In every lonely cigarette I smoke 

and in every corner of this city, 

I find you taunting me

reminding me that you’re not mine anymore. 

but you’re not really there

You are just a memory,

slipping through my

shaking fingers. 

It is in this realization that I suffer the most.

you are going, going, gone. 

there are no more words. 

I am incomplete. 

I was inspired to write this because I was recently talking to one of the girls I work with and she told me her story of how she had to grow up quickly at 15, and how she was always scared of someone leaving her. She felt like she never had anyone to lean on, she was just raw material. How every time she met someone new, it hurt her, because she was so scared of the uncertainty of their motives

some powerful lines here, Stina--