these salty grown eyes

salty grown eyes by konwomyn

hollow floors speak of lonely footsteps,
ghosts shaped like the shadows of yesterday
linger in the hallway,
longing for a body to inhabit,
or a body to visit
but no bodies do.

so i’ve resorted to playing ditsy love-songs,
and long memory games
of ‘remember that december when’
that cause tears to slip into a tea cup
sweetening it to bitterness.

like a child these salty, grown eyes must re-learn
to read without your name
to spell my alone-name again,
and remove the hyphen from the bloodlines
of history's unchartered lives

these salty, grown eyes, wrinkled by love,
must learn to forget memories of moonwalks
and plant an icebox where the heart lies,
and grow a new pair of steel, salty grown eyes,
impervious to love.