She left.

Just like she leaves every other night.
Her pillow will still be fluffed when I wake up in the morning,
but I will still cook her bacon and eggs in our iron skillet
so she won’t get anemic.
I am made up of billions of living pieces—
Almost comforting except thinking of life as science is so clinical.
And I think of how sterile she is, we are, when she eats her eggs.

I tell myself it’s penis envy.
She wants one so bad that she has to feel it throbbing inside of her.
I tell myself that she fucks him for me.
I tell myself a lot of things
like “love is blind”
but it’s just the tears,
and “it will get better,”
but it never makes her come home.
I tell myself I don’t want her to
I tell her I don’t want her.

When he called looking for her
and I was drunk painting my toenails,
He told me I was lucky to have a woman like her.
But I don’t have her,
only a hundred pieces of my heart carved into paper,
ripped to pieces and put in a shoebox on the top shelf of my closet.
She doesn’t even read them before she tears them up.
Sometimes I don’t even finish writing them before she tears them up.
Instead I write something I want to scream at her on each piece,
tearing through the paper with my pen.

The next time she leaves I will throw all the scraps up in the air
and lie on the floor,
surrounded by my anger
and I will draw my arms back and forth
and make a carpet angel.
I will lie with her all night
just to not be alone
staring at the ceiling, letting the paper cuts put me to sleep.
I will close my eyes and tell myself I will be too tired to make eggs in the morning.
I will tell myself a lot of things.