when I speak of you it is only in coded words and phrases
never wanting anyone to know how deeply I once loved you

when I speak of you it is only in encrypted speech and expressions
never wanting anyone to know how deeply I failed at that love

and when you called, said you were leaving…going far away… I wept
alone while cooking my evening dinner
tears salting the wounds of my misery

did you know how much this would hurt…
to see you go away
start anew…without me

did you know I would be pulled apart
layers of my being snatched away like siding…
ripped out like plumbing from an empty building
…then abandoned to rot

did you know these things…
would you have left me still

on the break-up trash heap of your life
sitting on the curb waiting for Tuesday morning’s pick-up

tossing over your shoulder a generic I wish you well…
a dime store band-aid to cover my cardiac rip

afraid of erupting fluids drowning me
I held on to my tears…called them back
kept them welled up inside my head

could not blink…lest they would fall
and you would surely know that I was doomed to die without you

I stood mute…eyes pleading the fifth
as you and your things drove away with my life in tow

if ever these words reach you…
scrape my heart from the page
do your best to care for it tenderly

# # #

Faye Turner-Johnson is a retired elementary teacher with an insatiable desire to keep re-inventing herself. Besides teaching, she has also been a local t.v. talk show host, actor, and theater stage director. she has been published in Wordpool Press, The Forum Magazine, Crack the Spine and will have a poem published in the upcoming issue of Whirlwind Magazine. she lives in Flint, MI, with her husband, Joseph.

Photo credit: Terri Malone