Poetry: He left before he arrived.

By: Emma Lou Pike

A heavy sun broke a silver shadow path in the ripples of the river,

a coy finger teasing around a bedroom door I'd thought I’d closed.

Its ghost followed my gaze to a stain on the bedsheets,

but my eyes were liars and told me I saw you when I switched off my light to the world.

He was to me as cracks were to the tiles on the bathroom floor,

broken so devastatingly into pieces that I could not be repaired;

only replaced by something new and glittering,

but resembling the shape I had left behind. She filled the space,

abandoned on his birthday,

and she wore the shattering pressure of the weight of his love.

In moments of quiet,

he screamed in my thoughts.

Sitting in gridlock at the passenger side,

imagining I had hit my head so hard I obliterated the window

and my soul took flight into the Milky Way.