Kill the part of you that believes it can’t survive without someone else.
Start with the hands.
The feeble way they shake
holding your morning coffee,
the way they did his dishes, his laundry, so willingly.
How they itch from the want of undressing his memory.
All lonely. All empty –
you.
Cut them off.
Undo the trembling in your knees
when you licked the blood from his lips;
Undo the weakness in your feet
when he stole the breath in your lungs.
Stand the fuck up.
Go for the stomach.
Destroy the butterflies giving you
sleepless nights and make a painting
out of their corpses’ wings.
Spit him out.
You can eat fire if you want.
Do not let his absence take away your magic.
You are not hard to love if you can love yourself
and no one has the authority to break you
except you.
You are a calamity, you are a force of nature,
and there is thunder crackling in your veins.
Can you hear it? This is your funeral song.
Now, burn —
Explode.
Sade Andria Zabala is a twenty-four-year-old Filipina surfer and nomad currently residing in Denmark. She has self-published one collection of poems called Coffee and Cigarettes and has appeared on literary sites/publications such as The Chapess Zine, Berlin Artparasites, The Thought Catalog, The Rising Phoenix Review, The Undertow Review, Grammarly, and more. The poem above is from her second book, War Songs, to be released September 8, 2015. In her spare time she likes to eat words and drink sunlight. You can reach her at SurfAndWrite.Tumblr.com.
Molly Lichten is a young, talented photographer. View more of her work on Flickr and Facebook, or visit her website, Molly Lichten Photography.