it started with little words exported from

our lips— sentences packaged in our heads

and shipped to each other’s ears through

throaty yowls sailing across the blacktop—

talk that bore a feeling worth more

than silver, or gold, or the salt we

unknowingly carried in our tears but

never shed. i didn’t think your stories

could break me, instead cast their

ethereal onto my heartstrings,

breathe me back to life when i

couldn’t recover my own body

from this illusion of a thing called

trust. and i was wrong about the future

you promised me, and i was wrong

about the beginnings you gave to me,

and i was wrong about the love you

never had for me—

but now i am right about the spell

you forced onto me, a passage that

never had a way out except to follow

the pieces of a passion gone cold.