Cracking

A poem.

Photograph by Giuseppe Bartoli.

Your factory-sealed cherry chapstick

still sits abandoned on the nightstand.

That makes two of us.

You left it standing, the same way

you stood me up on countless occasions.

I just didn’t want to see the telltale signs,

but being too casual with one’s feelings

has its fallouts as you open yourself up

to let left in the shape of the last to go.

Now sadly, I know how it tastes:

of cherry, of chastity, of vulgar inexperience.

My heart is still chapped by your departure.