The Autopsy of Us

I wear gloves of memory,

slide open the lids of yesterday,

peeling back the layers

of the man I loved and lost.

Each thought is an incision,

each question is a scalpel,

cutting through the skin of what I

thought I knew,

searching for the heartbeat

that no longer answers.

I probe the hollow chambers

where laughter once lived,

and find only shadows,

traces of rage, of silence,

of a life slipping through my hands.

I trace the map of our betrayals,

my hands trembling over the terrain

of love and lies entwined,

trying to understand

how it all ended in a single shot.

I cannot stich the wounds,

cannot repair the fractures,

cannot revive the pulse

that left me in darkness.

But I still linger over the truth,

sifting through the pieces,

examining the grief, the guilt, the love,

until I understand—

not the how,

not the why,

but that even in death,

we are bound together

in the fragile anatomy of memory.

Chloe