Cracks

(image credit here)

Our love is spelled out on the cracks in the pavements

and the dirt caked into your fingernails and your once fair skin

now illuminated by neon-light signboards and faint lighter glows

and the cigarette fires screened by the hazy clouds of smoke

pumped out by blackened lungs and nicotine-stained gums

and curling into spirals around your fingers laden with cheap imitation rings

to hide the patch of whiter skin on the fourth finger of your left hand

like a scar, now clutching a fistful of empty, polluted air

as everyone else goes home to their partners or families or

imaginary happy relationships or procrastinated papers

and you order another drink, a tall glass of your own

choice of poison and watch the stream of people reduce

to a trickle, looking around hopefully for another soul as lonely as yours

But like as many nights, you fail yet again

with nobody but the bartender to bother

Who every night wears invisible headphones of indifference

and slaps on a fake smile of concern

for vagrant misfits that assault him, not with broken bottles and glasses

and spilled alcohol, but with the deepest pits of human consciousness

awakened by spirits and the hidden need to be heard and understood

And you, the you I now barely recognize, were the bar's regular,

the girl with the reserved bar stool of sorrow and shame

Drowning your tears in liquid numbness, the alcohol dulling the pain

of unreturnable yesterdays, regretful todays, and lost tomorrows

As you retell the story of the day you never wanted to remember

you look up and around and realize you were alone, more than ever

The bartender was clearing your glass, wiping the tears and drool

you left on the table, and tell you, not too unkindly, that it was closing time

And you reach for your wallet, groping at crumpled bills

and finding the last love note I wrote you

before stumbling out of the bar and the bartender lets slip 

the fake understanding to give way to real sympathy

And you stumble out of the cab that takes you home,

kick off your shoes, and fall face first onto the bed

You let the sobs begin, shaking your whole body

from every tangled hair on your beautiful head, to the toes that curl up involuntarily

against the raw truth of it all, all that has happened and all you have refused to accept

As you fall asleep again this way, your body is a lonely apostrophe

in a bed that was too big when you shared it with someone before

I long to wipe away the tears still falling from your closed eyes

from the happy dreams you are having

of the two of us together

hand-holding

laughing

breathing

alive

But I could only make the breeze blow softer on your face

Jealous that it could touch your skin, ruffle your hair the color of baby corn

in the first hours of the morning, while I sit here

Denser than air but less solid than water

Cradling your head in my arms

Holding you, but not holding you

Always in the void, the in-between

Of nothingness, and almost-somethingness

Our love is spelled out on the cracks on the pavement

Broken, unfinished roads to once familiar

now unknown destinations

Of what was once whole and known

into fragments of what we've built

Our love was spelled out on the cracks on the pavement

was my last conscious thought

as my life's essence flows away

Filling in the cracks in the concrete

but cutting unhealing wounds

into your heart

and mine