The time for is grace long gone.
I leave flowers with unsaid apologies,
an offering to our happiest memory:
another casualty of a casual me.

I mark our best with a simple stone,
its location known only to me.
If you ever marked us at the same spot,
I will never know.

We let love poison sacred land
with blood shed and acid rain
with ravenous fire and unearthed pain.

Perhaps
our salted soil will lay inert until
our war-torn wasteland finds new life
in the embrace of the open sea.

Perhaps
new memories will take root and
new buds will dot the landscape
where our bitterness once bloomed.

Perhaps
our visits will overlap one day
after we’ve grown deeper into ourselves,
witnesses to the other’s renewal.

I’ve never been more certain,
I don’t want to know that version of you.

I leave this place
and you in memory.
I leave in search of fields,
where new grass finally dares to grow.

When I find that once scorched earth,
I’ll repeat myself for the quiet grave,
of a different man.