Whisper in my ear "I know what you're doing here"

She doesn’t look back.

Flashes of the past in her ear recede into the hum of her own heart and before she knows it her hands are smudged with ink and she’s not even thinking of what she’s lost.

She would paint her last day in pastels smudged with grays and blues because she can’t quite spit out what she wants to say. She stares into the light and forces back tears that she can't quite face yet.

Michael makes a speech and she holds back (tears), only hearing hours wasted being a voice on the end of the line. She feels a wisp of regret with arms around her and “I’ll miss you,” is an echo of what she could (should) have said to begin with.

A smile and “hey, (this doesn’t matter anyways)” isn’t enough to keep her anywhere.

She leaves the curtains open and sits on the floor, shivering and sifting through her past. Breath catching in her throat, papers in garbage bags she cuts out the past. A post-it note is a waste, and she steels herself with a breath before lugging the bags out to the dumpster.

She doesn’t have a shredder but the sound of ripping paper reminds her (I promise I’ll start over) because a blank page is better than nothing.

She sits in the dark letting what she hasn’t thrown out yet slide through her fingers. Paper doves in the air for me to shoot down. Shadows move around her and this is safe because anything that could hurt her is tied up and in the dumpster behind her building. (This is over)

In the morning she drinks tea and smears paint on canvas, (paint the future and I’ll show you a dream).

She leaves the garbage bags (like she knew she would) and tries not to imagine shards of green glass and torn white paper.