More Than a Simile
A prose poem on longing that engulfs us.
Cold air hits my cheeks like a slap to the face. Or was that just your memory, whipping like the wind again?
No, that’s not quite right. Your memory doesn’t whip like the wind, you are the wind. You are my breath, you are already under my skin. A simile doesn’t do you justice. You’ve taken on an infinite number of physical forms so that you exist in every detail of my world. You can’t be compared, you simply are.
Does life imitate art? Does my life now imitate you?
No, you’re more than that; more than a simile. You are the flecks of colour in my irises making my vision course with the grains of you. You are my personal, unending metaphor.
I steal a drag from a cigarette; but it’s you between my fingers and my lips are brushing yours again. Your empty words are the fumes blowing back at me, diffusing through my pores, pervasive; clinging to my favourite jacket. I already know you won’t come out in the wash.
Now do you understand how entrenched you are in my very existence?
This is what happens when you carve open your chest and let someone climb in: you can’t pry them out of all of the crevices of a now shared body that you used to call your own. They douse your paper heart in gasoline, and each memory of them becomes a match, ready to burn you from the inside out in an instant. And even when you try to stitch yourself back up, the gnarled scars shine white and spell out their name.
I lift my shirt; run my fingers over the ridges where I keep you with me and repeat, there you are,
you are, you are, you are.
