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