Sub Rolls
The week before you left
You bought a pack of eight sub rolls
Like you thought you’d be able to eat eight sandwiches before you got tired of me
But you only managed to have five of them
And now
There’s a bag of bread getting hard on my counter
And I don’t want to throw it away just in case you come back and you’re hungry for your last three sandwiches
I could never stand the way your socks smelled
But I’d take them all back if your feet could be inside them and you could be here right now
I was never
The hopeless romantic
I never found myself so completely blinded by love
I was never the girl who cried in class until the day after you left
I opened the Ken Kesey novel you let me borrow and I saw your writing
You wrote “hand out of the fog, page 121”
And I read page 121 over and over
But not once did a hand appear to liberate me from this haze you’ve put me into
I tried to hide everything in my apartment that reminded me of you
But you’re embedded in the walls
You’re weaved into the fibers of the carpet
I think I’ve forgotten about you and then I’ll find a string of your tobacco on the floor
Or I’ll be brushing my teeth and I’ll imagine you in the mirror behind me
I know
That social constructs make you dizzy
That the thought of “settling down” makes you sick
So I’m trying to move on
Trying to imagine a life without you in it
But that life
The life without you
Tastes
Like stale bread
But that life
The life without you
Tastes
Like stale bread
