The Ashes

this sunday morning, there were lesser chirps, faded rays and muffled words. the refrigerator still reads, "happy anniversary", with a photograph of us. the same date, the same face, the same love, but a different year. there were music bands, there were long drives to abandoned lands. the kitchen fights, the second pizza bites, the mended heart and then the collapse. did you burn our Polaroid, the way you flared us? this sunday morning, there were lesser chirps, faded rays and muffled words. i lie down on the kitchen floor, holding his letter, looking at the ashes, tiny pieces that are left of us. "It was 12am and my google calendar pinged, Happy Anniversary. I was half drunk and almost raged. I destroyed the journal with your poems in it, only to realise our Polaroid was burning too. I woke up and I found your letter in the mail". piles of all the letters i could never send.