Something Lost Poem by Oliver Roberts

How will you remember me?
Wet hands redeeming flesh,
my liquid smell spread across your body.
Those nights we spent hidden away like ghosts,
our contorted dying by way of serrated tongues,
the blood from our eyes screaming and spilling.

When we loved we shed our violence,
and picked at each other’s seams.
I tore you in two and sharp stars burst from your cries,
their echoes seized my ears and seeped into decorative wounds.
For hours we lived stitched together,
we played at being thunder and lightning,
we stretched and burnt our cores over the fire.
In your convulsing face I watched a summer freeze over,
I felt you writhe beneath me and cling to my heartbeat.
When you were done I painted my lips with your sweat,
I tasted the sharp release between your thighs,
and you held me to your breasts for one last drop.

Where are you now?
Have the rainy mornings washed me off you yet?
I don’t feel the bruises and cuts anymore,
now it’s only my soul that limps when nobody is looking.
We became mirrors that reflected all of this;
each parting kiss and every tender reach gleaming,
all your breaths spent colliding with mine in the dark.

Now you are emptiness,
a breeze that sounds through abandoned harbours,
the sight of a door closing in the distance.
I remember and then I forget and then I remember,
I go looking for open windows to throw birds from.
I’ll never know when you’re touched again by someone else,
or when they feel the first sink of your original kiss.
When that happens I will go,
I will depart from you like sleep on a cold evening.
Then you will be new again, carrying only faded scars,
and in time you will forget how we happened, how we glistened.
But how, how will you remember me?