this is why i can't return your jumper or sickness in youth

in your clothes,
you never left.
i never gave up
my hope,
in love.
never wanted
a pale angel
or a mind
i could touch.
you still write me letters
in your cramped hand and
sealed
with your lips
in your clothes
we still kiss.
and my feet
that i never let you see
make their home
in the socks
i bought
when we were still eighteen.
i gorge
on the romance novels
fight hard for
your oversized t-shirts
maybe
i see myself
as some kind of heroine
intoxicated
(comforted)
although the smell faded
longer before you did.
this is why
i can't return your jumper.
or your socks
that we folded
inside-out
and hung on the line
as you took me
on the kitchen counter
with the afternoon sun
brightening our eyes.
why do boys
get so ugly inside?
as they grow up
and lose the innocence
of body and mind.
girls,
the soul's sickness
and the neuroses
of the glass.
we couldn't last.
so i keep
your cotton jumpers
and the jogging bottoms
that held your naked body.
holding mine,
touching me.
i can pretend
we still shine.

(keep your face in my mind)

Reviews

[Ed Hart]

the music you make with your words is so beautifully sad; it's like what's most alive is the bleeding past

[hanzabonanza]

mine is good? this is perfection I could only hope to aspire to :) I'm at the stage in the night when this sort of poem hits the spot- that shiver that love gives me in the pit of my stomach. This is so full of loveliness, you're amazing x