i grieved you until my belly filled with salt that rivals this place

found curls trapped in the pattern of my tights from the day we spent first snow swimming with all our might towards each other, but the ghosts still came back to sing our names & slather our hearts with mud.

i will always curse the ones who hurt us, whose hands never stopped squeezing.  curse them to burn in their want for as long as we burn at their memory:

may our soft bodies haunt their home like fingerprints

may our voices melody through their floorboards & in their cats’ meow
because their false i love yous have obliterated every umbrella we fashioned to weather the flashback of our femmestories, no matter the materials: bone & waterproof-skin this, metal & waterproof that

may they forever weep, never be able to hold the loss of us quiet, & may the other tremble before their quake splits the hill to expose meat & brick

may they shuffle their furniture around that cavity of a house, always shifting to find some kind of click of release

may they compulsively give everything away, try to refurbish the rest, but still move in the world with splinters just under the body of skin

may cars continue to be broken into by all they did not return

may they never trust each other

may they never come in the ways they once did

may the moon remind them of our smiles & burn through curtains & comforters 

may every pan that emerges from the oven clatter clumsily to the floor

& may they never forget our names & never be able to speak us again.

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