Glass

What’s left now but a glass

that once held roses? Each petal

another shard of blood I poured, my throat

raw as a wound, gasping your name

in rooms where love was the salt,

thick on the tongue, sharp

as the dark.

I tried, you know, to hold

that old, trembling flame,

but it burned a hole clean through

my chest, left my hands scorched,

curling away from touch. What now

but silence, this clotted ache,

this scar tissue stitched

tight as a coat?

In the end, I buried the heart,

that glass heart, deep, somewhere

the light can’t reach. A dark cave

where echoes go to die. I trace

its edge sometimes, whisper it open,

but the thought of trying to love again

is a bottle smashed, a shard at the throat.