Three months later and I still hear your voice in my sleep.
Subconsciously, I still catalog the parts of my day
that might have made you smile.
My thoughts are wallpapered with images of us
and I can't bring myself to paint over it,
not even the parts that are peeling.
When I met you, I was not whole -
I was half-formed and new and still slick with slip.
You made finger prints in my sides and cast me into the fire,
and I emerged with those marks baked into my skin.
"No one will ever love you like I do," you said,
and I believed you.
When you left, I tried to fill them with other things,
other people. Nothing fit, but I kept at it.
They felt so empty, like tiny black holes.
I'd run my hands over them when I felt most alone,
and I'd hug my knees and think of you.
I still touch them often, I think to remind myself
that you held me once, and what your hands felt like.
My fingers don't fit very well, but they fill some
of the space you left.
I don't have to fill these holes -
they are as much a part of me as anything else.
They do not make me incomplete or any lesser.
I have loved and I have lost,
and I am whole, all the same.
