splinters

It dropped to the floor. Splintered and broken, I swept the fragments into my hand. Clumsily I tried to glue it back together, but after a few feeble attempts I reealized that I was missing pieces. I recall leaving a large piece in the smooth hands of my first, his freckles and green eyes melting me into a pliable mess. I handed it over to him, it was still whole back then, and he cradled it in his gentle way. For a time. But something shifted and the ground shook and it slipped through his fingers, shattering on the pavement. We stooped to fix it together, and when my back was turned he deftly shoved one of the fragments into his pocket. I imagine it stuffed away in his guitar or perhaps his army-issued gun case. A holy temple to love lost.

I moved on, the gaping hole in the pulsating flesh making my movements difficult and laborious. My health suffered. The next sauntered along, his dark hair and shifting eyes were both charming and dangerous. I did love him, in a different way. It was volatile and violent. Words thrown back and forth as grenades, the craters left behind we patched up with false hopes and disillusionment. I was a child then, as was he. It was doomed from the beginning. But he still has his fragment, probably hidden in the liquor cabinet behind the half-empty bottles.

Others I did not love have held onto pieces I never freely gave away. Treacherous thieves that swept me up in their empty promises and saccharine words. Some have jagged pieces that cut as easily as knives. Others have splinters, beckoning for infection. There is the dark shadow of my past who comes and goes, crooning sweet lies into my ear with perfect pitch. He fools me every time. And so I kiss him, and we swindle ourselves into thinking it is so much more. There is him, his tattoos and piercings or the All-American with his blonde hair and blue eyes. There have been those in between. The mysterious charmer and the blatant asshole, the sincerely hopeless and the casual smooth-talker. I no longer care for any them.

I just want the pieces returned.