Pain/Art

There is art in pain,

And there is pain in art.

I hadn’t known this truth

Before I sliced my heart

Into poems,

Into love songs, and

Into the slurring of speech

That I left in a voicemail

You’d surely delete.

But I still listen to the ones 

That you sent me, then,

When the silence lingers

And the quiet beckons me,

Threatens me with memory:

Your voice in the mist when it started to rain,

Your hair in my shower, which clogged up the drain. 

Your shadow remains.