Somewhere inside me there is an entire country named after you. Doors to rooms I built into the sides of mountains. My ribs; that tender mountain range of muscle and bone that still holds the memory of us. When did you leave? In the beginning, I mean? Where were the exits? Did we mark them?

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It’s been four years since I made that pilgrimage you did to the borders of our little country. Mapmakers charting the backwoods of love loss. Strangers in a strange land. 

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I once wanted to inhabit the people we were in the beginning; when we believed that what we had was rare. When we were carving out a home made of muscle, bone, and the beat of something ancient. Every memory twisting itself to mimic the topography of love.