Heart Apartment

Heart Apartment

by Olive Elzinga

@oliveor_twist on Instagram
18-21

In my head exists an apartment I built for us.
A big corner apartment, with yellow walls in the living room,
They reflect back the beam of your smile at all times of day,
and large windows framed in brick,
that pokes out between a collage of what few things I’ve seen on our separate walls,
stitched together with lyrics of songs we both like.
There are two bedrooms
one for us to sleep,
and one for our hobbies:
makeup tables, art easels, and the Mary Poppins Bag of closets;
Always a never ending reach of tulle and patterns that the 80s is still leaving voice messages for
us to return.
There’s window seats along the main room with enough storage underneath to house all our
books, binders, and odd ball trinkets.
And this is our apartment.
Where we dance around for no one but us.
Where I would bake you pies at midnight.
Where poems read aloud become our background soundtrack.
This is the apartment I built for us.
But I think it’s time to pack it away.
Instead of dragging you along in my cycle of yearning for memories that haven’t been birthed
between us,
Just my own imagination.
So I’m unhanging our succulents by the windows because I’d kill everything else,
I’m painting over the pieces of your face in the photographs that will never be taken of us,
I am unmoulding the shape of you pressed into my bed,
Lifting out the stains of our lipstick mixed onto each other’s skin.
Sweeping away the soft whispers of things I can only really blame hearing on the wind.
And I have to wonder if dreams count as memories,
Because those were the best times I’ve spent with you,
But
It’s time for you to move out of my head, give me back the space I leased.

my heart’s rent is still being paid,
And I don’t think it would be right to evict you from there quite yet.
I don’t think I can let this apartment go completely.
I will live in it just for me,
But that doesn’t mean you can’t live across the hall.