The lipstick stains on your light blue shirt will wash off with a little lemon and hot water - like I showed you. Will you do it well enough without me? (Don’t squeeze too much of the lemon, it’ll ruin the fabric) I know your hands might tremble when you see the deep red leaking into the basin - try not to think of it as the lifeblood of us. It’ll just be lipstick to you when I leave.
If I leave.
If I leave.
Will you change the arrangement of your bookshelf? Will you take the pain of going through your gargantuan collection, and run the risk of finding two or three books that we bought together? What if you find an unruly note that I wrote to you? Will you return it to its rightful place, or will it make a home in the ashes of your hearth? I have a hunch that you will collect any paper, parchment, letter, ticket, recipe, bill, photo that bears my cross and store it in a box in the last shelf of your study table. Your hands will run to these bits and pieces of me against your will. Your wistfulness betrayed you when I first met you, and it will betray you when I leave.
If I leave.
I sense a pattern here - I’m worried about your hands the most. Will they go cold and numb when a new texture touches them, and it isn’t my hair? Will you see the ghosts of curls wrapped around your fingers when you go to sleep? I hope you don’t, I wish you a good night’s sleep every night, with or without my head on your chest. Will your fingers dance along the curves of a new smile and freeze? Will your palms cup the happiness and light of another world after me? I hope they don’t - that would be terribly unfair to both of you. I hope I don’t hold the generously loving parts of you hostage when I leave.
If I leave.
Will your shoulders droop when you step out for a walk? I hope they don’t - you know I hate bad posture. Will your hands be anxious without the anchor of mine? Maybe they’ll settle down in your pockets like old pennies earned from the written sale of melancholy when I leave.
If I leave.
