They never belonged to me

Every one I ever loved left. They never belonged to me.

When they chose others they said my lips tasted of emptiness and my breath like a syncopation of loss and longing.

There, in the silence of their departure, a peace not harmless or fragile always enraptured me. I was glad to still have felt something.

They left, and with them, all my labours and all my toil. All my twisting and shaping and forming; all my cutting and measuring and harming to fit their needs, their desires-all that they were. I cut and always measured not sufficient.

There, in their departure settled a restful calm, a joyful quiet, and me seated in the belly of it, willing the silence to devour me that I may never live through such pain ever again.