Tangible the Solidarity

The nights began --

A too-spacious twin bed, all the spaces
of the still square screaming
               tangible the solidarity

suffocating, the openness --

body smell of you clinging
    bittersweet,
          precarious to the pillow.

From inside,
in my place
    against the wall,
with my arm laid across the right side
feeling phantom remnants --

and in the daytime, the remnants were true
in tiny, wiry
black pieces of you
missing from their frizzy whole.


The sheets with all the colored spots
went unwashed
      and unwashed
           for weeks
                   into months --

the scent all but imperceptible
    still --
even after burying deep
and inhaling
full.

Replaced with my own.

Obstinate body laying claim on the space.


And soon I followed suit,
letting me sprawl across
           into your borrowed domain.

while, like the musk,
your memory seeped
from me
with steady takeover
    and desperate push
of my own feeble,
                        needy mind.