Mine

You are shouting in the next room. I can hear you rage, everything that comes from your mouth horrible and meant to hurt. I am beyond tears and still they flow, dropping furiously onto my shirt.

Handfuls at a time I stuff what I grab into a bag. This is mine, this is mine, this is mine. I stuff clothes that don't fit and single shoes on top of damp towels and lid-less hairspray. Bits of jewelry, hopelessly tangled, balled into socks and crammed into jacket pockets fight for space with the cord to the lap top and the birthday card my grandmother sent.

This is mine, this is mine, this is mine; I chant as I cram what is left of my life into a bag meant for trash.

The bedroom door doesn't sit right in the jam and I am lying on rumpled sheets, the scattered contents of my closet half unpacked and piled on the floor in haphazard ruins of a fight surrendered hours later as you sleep peacefully beside me.

Inside my heart the naked thing that guards my soul from you whispers this is still mine.