The silent treatment — a poem

I read once
That forced isolation,
Ignored, silenced love,
Is as painful as
Being stabbed in the chest.

The day you left.
My chest ripped apart,
And I cried myself to sleep clutching it.

And the day after
When I called again
And you were only ready to talk,
When you were ready to talk,
My chest grew wider.

In the days that followed,
When I told you I loved you
To reverberating silence,
My rib cage creaking ajar,
With each passing hour.

The hole in my chest,
Made wings of my ribs,
As they curled
Behind my back.

They became a sphere,
And I crawled inside it
And stayed there.

And here I live,
Encased in the safety of a cage,
made from the hole you left
In the heart I gave.

Poking my fingers
Eyes, teeth out.
Nourishing my battered body,
Reading, writing
Meditative-research.
Growing.

What an odd feeling
It will be,
When you turn and find me
Entirely gone.
Entirely different.
Stained red from
My own rib cage.

That I’ll look at your eyes
And see only blue,
Not the person I gave
My soul to.