i remember the way the vast expanse of terrible carpet overwhelmed our room

the mirrored closet doors that caught my horror just in time to throw it back to me
the wretched ceiling fan that loved us as much as it could muster on late nights in july
but this
this was september
all that was left was the mattress
i made everything else disappear
the hangers in the closet seemed almost like they would lose their grip
as they dangled naked
i vacuumed the pink square of floor three times
to avoid leaving behind an an errant earring 
for you to find months later
but the mattress
it sat unflinching in the middle of the room
lost with the absence of our bodies
it’s white expanse chiseled into perfect right angles
like a block of ice that refused to melt

(submitted by Star St. Germain)

I wrote this the last time I was staring down the barrel of an ending so big I couldn’t find the edges of it. Here I am years later, in the same place, trying to stagger into a new chapter.

It will probably be a while before I can write about it, so I will let this stand as placeholder until I can regroup.