The Fallout of Loving You
by M. Allshouse
You dropped into my life like an atom bomb—
devastating and unplanned for.
I didn’t even have time to react
before I was engulfed in a cloud of ash.
Breathing within you was impossible.
But without you…
I don’t even know how to inhale without pain.
Radiation left me like a flash photograph—
a shadow scorched into pavement.
Who I was?
She doesn’t exist anymore.
Nuclear warfare I was never prepared for—
you wiped out my internal landscape
through destruction,
just to remake me into something useful:
clingy.
Desperate.
Disoriented.
The plane was so loud.
How could I not have seen it coming?
But I didn’t run.
I stood beneath it,
arms outstretched
like it was offering salvation
as it decimated all that I am.
The explosion was…
so…
warm.
And now that it’s over, I feel
cold.
Ashen.
I am ruined.
How could anyone else ever love me
when I reek of instability after the chaos you