When I walked away from you

I swear I meant to look forward.

I put on blinders like a horse

I held my own chin.

But somehow internally

My mind’s eye turned

A third eye in my stomach

Or a stomach in my chest.

 

When I turned I saw a salt pillar

Standing in your place

When you stepped the salt first crumbled

Then marked your leg in space

 

Footsteps forward were the hardest steps

Every step away a color away from clear crystal…

 

Now I taste salt in my tears,

There’s salt in my veins,

I pour salt in my meals

It sits in my belly where my third eye sits

It rises to my chest with each heartbeat

 

As you disintegrate behind me

Your dust surfaces before me.

I eat salt,

Inhale salt and exhale more,

I feel salt thick in veins,

Salt in my eye,

And in a few years

I’ll look back at myself

And find that I’m a salt pillar

Made of your iodine bones.

​

Emily Teall (2015)