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⚠Trigger Warning: the following poem contains religious allusions that some might find offensive⚠
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Memories belittled by dust,
preserved with taxidermal fashion
inside an anthology
of vintage photographs.
Though,
I am aware that
"vintage"
is only a euphemism
for a possession
that was once beautiful.
Your treason
has turned all the photographs
ugly,
their corners curling up
like the spiral of a chameleon's tail.
Vivacious colours devolve
into lacklustre,
sepia tones,
blending in with
the palette of my
surrounding melancholy.
Ensnared in a dilemma:
Do I miss you?
or
Do I hate you?
(perhaps a bit of both,
but never
I love you--
not anymore.)
Apertures mewl,
bruising the gallery walls
with tears.
I frame your
betrayals
with gold and
garlands of daisies
in an attempt to soften
our past
(it never works).
These
vacant
hallways
trap your phantom footprints
beneath the cobblestone.
Was it really
such a guiltless task
to walk away from me?
Embedded
across the rungs of my spine
are the scuff marks
from where you wiped the dirt
off your boots only after
wrenching the welcome mat
from underneath me.
I have accepted that
our (fri)end(ship) was
merely transactional
to you;
I served up
all the love I had to
give
like John the Baptist's head
was served up upon a silver platter.
You feasted
while
I starved.
Yet,
full is this menagerie
of lost things.
I know
I should burn
the polaroids
in the name of closure.
Perhaps
I am just afraid there will be no art--
no poetry--
left to sculpt
from the cinders that
remain.
Image Source:
The pages of a book come to life gif (n.d.). [image] Available at: https://ebookslibrarydownloads.blogspot.com/2004/10/books-aesthetic-gif.html[Accessed 23 Apr. 2020]
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