a poem for the last day of our shared life

I.
feeling like i've been torn apart
  a train running thru my heart
  crushing everything on the tracks
  turning me into pulp

II.
i want to write down every memory before
    i forget
before it's washed away
    before it becomes too gone
                                   too the past
                                      too lost
                                        too never again

these are the last times i will ever think
   about you

III.
so much emptiness around me
   the room divided in half -- yours and mine
    but now you're gone
  half an empty table
     half an empty dresser
             half an empty bed
         a limp and empty pillow case where your head used to lay beside mine

your coats are gone
    your shoes too
     all the little stray hairs cleaned up
           and scattered somewhere else

IV.
i always thought when we left here we'd be leaving together

packing up our stuff for a new adventure

but you leave without me to start your life
   and i remain in this half empty apartment
                 alone
      every corner a memory
         every moment a ghost

i never prepared myself to be abandoned like this
  i don't have bags packed for this trip

V.
the left and leaving feeling
       the reality of loss
           you don't feel the finality until you see the physical emptiness
suddenly surrounding you

VI.
i watch as you pick thru things and
   stuff them in boxes
   what you choose to keep
     and what you leave behind

notes you wrote me, i find them crumpled
   and discarded in the recycling
  like small helpless birds with broken wings
    i pick them up and unfurl them in my palm

my heart sinks when i find those pieces of us thrown away

a picture of me from Occupy, left on the refrigerator --
    you don't want me coming with you

pictures of us in California --
    a fortune cookie message we somehow got twice
        "Your dearest wish will come true"
    you pinned them to the pictures above our desk
you left those behind too

in one of the pictures, we walk towards each other
    thru a maze of sea stones --
    forever frozen in time, never reaching each other before our moment ends
stuck in the amber of time

scraps of napkin with tape on the back
   a poem we wrote together
   where did this emerge from?
   you kept it safe all these years, only to leave it behind now like trash

a book of pictures -- The Story of Us --
  our happiest memories, a gift i made you
  that gets left behind too

the scarf i made you for Christmas one year,
the only thing i've ever knit, you took that
i imagine you wearing it around your face years from now, not even remembering me
     or maybe you discard it in a Goodwill pile when you wear out its fibers at last