By Anupama Unnikrishnan
My coffee mug had the aftertaste of your cigarette
I break it till coffee and my blood blend.
My scarf smelled your cologne
I wash it in tears to atone.
My book dogeared at the page you left
I burn it to the ground while my heart smelled like ashes.
Your shirts stole the corner in my closet
I throw away the key along with my happiness.
Poems meant for you choked my breath
I grind them to stone and swallow to death.
The letters you wrote, a rotten mess of kisses and promises
I shred them to pieces and heard your laugh in them.
My palms hold your palms imprints
and the lines still spell our names,
the blade slash through them
a hopeless love to cut and condemn.
Faded love bites and songs hummed into my neck,
I tried to kill the ghosts of our love
and they look too much like me.
I try to remember life before you ,
like reading a book in scripts unknown.
Searching for a home where I no longer belong
and wearing grief like a crown.
I mourn a living person with the dead dream
I strangle my thoughts to ruin.
Tear at my skin to remove traces of you
I dig a grave for love, yet it refuses to die.
Then tell me how to kill the best
A pyre where I burn alive
or a sea to drown my heart.