The Taxonomy of Goodbye

I loved you not as metaphor permits—

but as roots crack stone: inevitable, slow.
Your eyes rewrote my cardinal directions.
My promise? Anvils wear less than I owe.

Love stayed love (no alchemy to acid,
no blessed wine turned vinegar with time).
Had it rotted, I’d have torched the orchard—
but the blossoms cling like guilt to every vine.

If grief were smoke, I’d let the sirocco
scatter every ashen memory.
But this heart refuses pyres—
it keeps its arson quietly.