By: Linad M Crate

the softness of silken
petals against
my lips,
and the warmth of your hands against
my own;
these are things that i still crave
even when i know they
cannot be mine—
these memories i wish weren’t in possession
of me
because you said we ought to be strangers,
but what we ought and what we are
are two very different things;
we’re ghosts
you haunt me all the time
no matter how many times i banish you from
the house—
i wonder how long i must be haunted
hounded by memories that cannot save me from
the peril of the truth that you
never loved me
just held me up in the strongest noose of lust
until you married the woman you cheated on me
with?