I came out of the jungle wearing silks the color of muscle, a saucer of bone in my small hands. You laughed when you saw me. I hadn’t expected that. I see, you said before you came to me on your knees, humble as a penitent, and bled your tithe into my bowl. My eyes held no color and yours held no fear, and you watched without flinching as I lapped up your gift.

When I was done, you asked if I was a rib taken from the roof of god’s breast.

No, I said drowsily. But here, darling, here. I’ll grant you a wish, anyway.

You did not hesitate. You asked me to marry you right there and then, my fingers ringed with red, a drop of your blood in the hollow of my throat. I’d kissed you. Do you remember that? You told me I’d tasted like blackberry wine, like honey and aloe, like summer, like the last fine thing to see in this life. I told you not yet, all dowries must be paid in threes, but the truth is this: I loved you from the first heartbeat, was yours before my body could rehearse the next.

I do not restrict myself to the places we’ve seen, the places you’ve stained with your breath and your words, your insouciant description. The day before I leave, I stalk a winding canal along its cobbled path, follow the blue-green water to where it yawns into the ocean. It is a tedious walk. You’d have despised it. No shops, no landmarks to entice the eye, only an endlessness of manicured grass, and long tanned bodies plated on checkered blankets. Unbidden, your voice uncurls like a drag of smoke, resentful: I used to look like that not too long ago.

I take my time. I do not run. I memorize the topography of my silhouette, its unhurried lines, and the sweep of my hair along the meridian of my spine, the sheer audacity of it all. You loved me best when I was exceptional.

But today, I am merely free.

At a bridge, I pause, inhale the air, and Malmo smells like the first day I realized every cloak of feathers and bearskin coat is invaluable, not irreplaceable. A scent of thyme and brisket being smoked, fresh-cut grass, the rain cooling on fresh asphalt. Pre-processed potential, like only spring can articulate it. I lean over the rails until gravity beckons, hungry as a husband: come to me, trust me, fall into me, I’ll catch you, I love you, I love you, I’ll love you forever.

I laugh into a breeze, who carries my merriment like a boon to a couple lying tangle-limbed on the opposite bank. Step by step, I am erasing you, packing every instance of you into a cardboard box in the attic of my thoughts. Soon, it’d be all gone.