The 7 Hours between loving you and leaving you

 6am: Cape Town is sad in the winter. I open the window and the air sticks to my skin like a diving suit. I can still feel you on my fingers; a glove I cannot take off.

7am: Back in my room I do not lay in our bed. The sheets are arranged perfectly like the clothes in a coffin. I fall asleep on the floor as the traffic winds up for morning. My sleep is the sleep of heaped scrap yard; everything rattles here.

8 am: I wake up and remember a love poem I wrote for you and then think of the first night you stayed in my bed and you told me "I missed this so much, I love you and will always love you more and more." I did not respond. I watched you, the way one watches smoke leaking under a doorway.

9am: I stare at your phone number; rehearse what I will say like a nervous salesman. For a month I have spoken to you in the language of stripped gears. Lying smoothly, promising our teeth will still fit; I can fix anything ,everything

10am: I tried to convince myself, what we had was not love. Breaking into it, gutting into the metal. This is only a misdemeanor, the police are already gone.

11am: The difference between a crime scene, and an excavation is only a matter of volume. When I imagined  you whispering into another man’s ear I thought there would be sirens. Lying beside him afterwards, sifting his hair with your fingers like archeology.

Noon Clock Strikes: Last time I hear you, like the faint whispered scream of a sex crime victim.
The only window opened above a burning inferno, The kind you would jump from each night as you slept beside me. I had a choice, till it wrapped in the air our bodies had created. The heavy fabric of sex, or to let the reek of that mess inside,That sour petrol smell. I opened the window every time.
"I’m sorry, I never wrote you that love poem; only this one.”