xxviii.

I found a photo of him today.
I could feel my tongue turning to ash,
my hands start to shiver,
my eyes start to sting.

I thought we'd gotten rid of them all.

It was an old, torn thing of back when I was a child.
We were at the zoo, there right in front the elephants.
Looking at the faded faces, you wouldn't notice anything out of the ordinary.
It's only when you look deeper-

My mom wasn't wearing her wedding ring.
He towered over us all
and I stood as far away as possible.
The subtle shift of our bodies
pointing away from him.
The faraway look in our eyes.

We cut him out of all the other photos
but the memories still haunted us
so we burned them all.

I burned this one too.
I'll burn all the memories
until there's nothing left,
not even the initials of his name.