Make me gone

Make me disappear

Delete me

Erase my name

Wipe it from your lips

Wash me, wash me from your

Skin

Purge me, purge me from your

Pours,

Clean me out.

Scrape me from your future’s fingernails

Let me be the forgotten the yesterday the last night

Rake me like dead leaves and dump me behind the brush

In time, I will become the unrecognizable the distant the stranger

Make me gone

Throw away the pictures and the cards

Lay the fractured amethyst in a lonely drawer

The wine’s heart has crusted over

It lies dying at the bottom of each glass

Rinse them, put them away, forget

Forget me

If that is what you need to do

Fade me into black

If that is what it takes to move on

End me

I promise I will not scream or shout or kick

Even as you cast me into the fire

Even as you rip me from your stomach like a fist

Even as you curse me

Denounce me

Distort me

Destroy me

I will go quietly like a forgotten fog

Simply shut your eyelids over my face

And I will walk softly into the dark

But know, I could not help that my skin was on fire

That my throat burned for what it never tasted

That I could not stop dreaming, especially when I was awake

And even if I could, you and I both wouldn’t want me

I am that universal fool, that heartache...

—I knew your hands as well as you did

And the curves in your back far better

I knew the sound of your heart against a broken moon

I paid attention to your pulse and

I—

Let me navigate the rivers of my own ruin and return

I will collect the scattered ashes and the broken pieces of myself

I will pick them up and put them back together

And one day,

Maybe I will hold you again

Even if only for—

Make me gone