My world ended when you told me

you would come back to Saint Louis then

changed your mind. I was

already looking at apartments for us — how 

sad and how beautiful. I trashed my apartment. My world

ended when you told me I was too much

for you, too much for your family —

how sad and how beautiful, to be so alive,

to be too much. My world ended when you gave me that look

that told me, so much anger it was terrifying, “you are

a piece of scum.” My world ended when the therapist

told me the news, my world ended and inverted

and collapsed all weekend —

and then I slowly went about my work,

which was to begin rebuilding – 

how sad and how beautiful it was.

(photograph by me, originally written in September 2016)