we didn't have a good introduction

you came uninvited

with promises of fire and flesh

and left nothing but memories

i can't remember wanting

i gave you room

thinking you were the answer

to a question 

i hadn't yet learned to ask

but you made your home in places

i didn't offer

left fingerprints on the walls 

and dirt on the floors

i scrubbed myself clean

of every touch

every taste

until i felt empty and sterile

you were the echo of someone else's hunger

and i fed you out of habit

out of fear that silence

was a worse kind of hollow

but all you ever gave me

were echoes back

a chorus of hands that weren't mine

a body i didn't recognize

now you're just the ghost i walk past

a name i erase

every time it creeps into the mirror

a phone number i no longer call