You buried me six feet deep in a pine box, casually.

Here lies another one of your ghosts, lying neatly.

Save your parting red rose for your coal black heart.

You set fire to me, emotionally.

You said you loved me, but it was only conditionally.

Long after you left, the embers blazed.

Fire shot up and down my grave, like an S.O.S. call for my mayday.

Chalk it up to another experience, get blazed and go on with your day.

Drink me down with all of our memories.

Bury them down inside yourself like you buried me.

I never existed, she tells herself. she’s just a ghost, she reasons with herself.

Just another one of her love conquests to lay on the shelf.

No amount of Captain or Loud will quiet my memory.

She will invade your thoughts in your coming and in your going.

She will haunt you like an unfinished sentence.

Her beautiful soul. Her glimmering eyes. The way she loved you unlike anyone before.

Go ahead and crumple her up and throw her away like trash.

She’ll remember the way you mishandled her, devalued her.

She’ll burn in silence, and one day raise up from these ashes.

She’ll see the truth and go on to be set free.

Rising from these ashes triumphantly.

By then, you’ll have become a ghost to her.

Merely whispers in the dark, love and laughter into the dawn.

By then she will be long gone.

Just another one of your memories.