Without Edges

On what remains when nothing remains

I lie on the kitchen floor.

My cheek pressed against the cold tiles,

as if something outside of me

could make me feel again.

The bed still breathes of you,

of something that felt real for a moment

real enough

that I believed it.

It doesn’t end when they leave.

That’s the first lie.

The second:

that it was only one night.

As if time could explain anything.

As if length were the same as meaning.

My body is still open,

a quiet wound of skin and silence.

Not destroyed

just estranged from itself.

I run my hands over my stomach,

as if I could bring myself back,

piece by piece,

breath by breath.

This hollow inside me

has no edges anymore.

It breathes,

pulls the world in,

spits out memories.

And sometimes,

just for a moment,

it sounds like peace.

I thought closeness would heal,

if I held onto it tightly enough.

But you were only there

where I had already stopped belonging to myself.

I didn’t want to love.

I wanted to be light

tender, to the point of dissolving.

Now I lie here,

and the tears

find their own ways,

past me, through me,

as if to say:

this too is a kind of touch.

Nothing spectacular remains.

No drama, no scream.

Only this quiet knowing:

I am still here.

And maybe what remains of love

is not the other

but the way

you gently

find yourself again.

Samu