Shake

He's gone but he's still here.

Look at yourself in the mirror, an obscured reflection in the same manner as rippled water, shaking and shapeless. You thought maybe if you could sit still for just one second it’d be different, things would have never come to this. But things came to this anyway.

 

If you had held it all in, let the vibrations stutter inside your chest instead of against your tongue, maybe he could have been better. Maybe he could have loved you. Maybe the picture wouldn’t have blurred, and the birds wouldn’t have descended upon you, and the waters wouldn’t have risen past your ankles, and maybe he would have smiled again. But the birds descended, the water rose, and he learned to clench his fist and strike. And after all this time you still haven’t learned how to stay still.

 

Your reflection rattles even as your fist meets the glass, fractured and frameless and frightened as bloody knuckles and broken hopes finally formally meet. Even after all this time you still shake.