Refusal. A Ramona Convent Literary Magazine

When you left, my mind was not only blank—it was blurry.

I replaced your lips with burnt cigarettes while trying to figure out how to crawl again; it was never enough to stem the vessels bleeding out of my chest.

The scattered remains of an unfinished story resembled all my open wounds and the scars engraved on all the parts of my skin you once touched.

You came back telling me you tried searching for what we had in empty bottles and in mouths of strangers but never found it.

And I took you back into my wasted arms.

Just like that.

You had once warned me you were dangerous to anything that breathes.

Loving you was destructing, but I knew that leaving you would evoke death itself.

The thought of your absence haunted me, reminding me of the possibility of one day having our memories become blurry without me having your kisses to bring them back to life.

And when I told you you were losing me and received a blank stare from your vacant eyes, I knew you were far gone.

“Kiss me,” I said. But you stepped back once you felt my lips growing cold.

I cried and noticed you were numb to every tear.

I no longer sparked your wings and, ever so willingly, you flew away in search of a better heaven.

For you I was a slave incarcerated in the prison of infatuation.

I was loving you while you were teaching me everything that love was not.

You dug my heart a grave, and I am dead now.

Place some flowers inside.

Tear every petal and sprinkle on my tomb the crippled remains.

What’s left will be the epitome of a deceiving phenomenon.

An arrow was once shot and I overdose on a toxic love.

The malice and agony my once-pure heart endured is existential proof that for the first time in recognized history, Cupid missed.