Our Break Up Poem. Poem by Kaitlin Van Zile

we’re pulling the sweat soaked sheets above our heads
and praying that in the event of emergency

(on the off chance that your vocal chords finally sing loud enough
to burst my ear drums
to shake me to my core
to knock our arteries loose
to carefully untangle the lattice work of my circulatory system
and my eyelashes tangle together for the last time…)

(or perhaps
my fingers will wrap around the porcelain branches of your body
and grip you til your rib cage corset tears at the seams
and your lungs run away in fear of the fresh air
and your last breathe catches between our lips
and the hummingbird in your veins forgets to flap it’s wings…)

that the mortician will be able to make us beautiful again
but that he won’t be able to pry our frost covered fingers apart
and separate you from me
he’ll have to take a seam ripper to the quilt tangled around our legs
and pull apart all of the plural pronouns that have double-knotted our names together for so very long

“Bunny ears, bunny ears,
playing by a tree.
Criss-crossed the tree
trying to catch me.
Bunny ears, Bunny ears,
jumped into the hole,
popped out the other side beautiful and bold.”

that bunny rabbit will pop out of his hole beneath our willow tree
and pitter patter around the weathered trunk counter clockwise
he will run to tell our families
that we had loved too hard
our willow tree had stopped bending
and finally broke

they’ll bury us beneath it’s weeping branches
a sample of the earth that will always be mourning our death
tucked in the soil, in the earths fresh cotton sheets
and their eulogy will speak only these simple words

they never finished
writing their break up poem
they never had the
oppourtuni-