Screaming telephone lines and the way you sleep
And everything reminds me of her
And the way I cry when the microwave beeps
I show so much emotion towards all my appliances because I know they've forgotten the feel of her hands on them and I know I haven't
And clicking keyboards when all I want to do is lie on the floor and forget how to think
But I know that'll never happen because she used to make me think about the universes that are in my veins
And **** we were such cliches
But the piano strings keep snapping anyways it doesn't matter if it's been done before
So take all the slush on the highways and pour it inside my home and suffocate me because then it'll make sense when I tell people that's what it all feels like
And the bus is screeching and we go screaming by her house and I don't realize just how much everything has changed because I can't sleep at night what with the freezer yelling at me to stop putting ice on my wrists
So the oven keeps yelling at me to take my head out of it but we baked a cake in there once and I want to see if it still smells like her
But not the her at her funeral with the too shiny casket and the ringing cellphones and the smashed glasses
So many flowers and I remember wishing I could get rid of flowers forever
And now I'm living with all my metal appliances screaming at me to forget her name and remember my own
But I can't I can't I get lost in shiny countertops and brushed metal sides and forget I have sides they just disappear and I am floating in a sea if waiting for the phone to ring and letting the fridge stay open
So maybe I'll stop sticking my head in the sink when I get too sad
And just start letting the water run over my hands

Part I

When the bombs dropped, were you still standing?

We met at midnight at Julia Farrow’s house.
You had drawn stars on your skin in silver ink
And whatever you were drinking had sloshed out of your red plastic cup
and smudged the doodles
I said hello, trying to step out of my element.
You looked up, smiled, looked back down and said hey.
I wasn’t sure if that meant you wanted to talk,
but you didn’t walk away so I kept going.

At some point, we moved outside.
I think it might have been one a.m.
By three, I was in the backseat of your car,
and by three thirty, I was pulling my jeans back on.
Eight months later, I got to do the same in the bed on the floor of our new apartment.
We were together, and god, was it good.

Your mouth tasted like if heaven made cherry ice cream.
And your fingers on my waist, well
They felt like if the northern lights could dance on icy waters.
I never wanted to leave your side.
And babe, Sunday mornings lying sprawled on our sides were my idea of eternity.
We both knew **** well it couldn’t last.

I mean, I did love you.
You were a mass of colours and small explosions just barely contained in that lovely skin of yours.
And I was a tragic backstory, a half-assed galaxy reforming into something tentatively new.
And we loved each other, we really loved each other.
But it was perfect, too much to handle.
We were Rome before the fall
And I had no idea when the bomb was going to go off.

Part II*
So my question is
When the bombs dropped, were you still standing?

Because I wasn’t.
I had fallen on my knees,
Broken down in the bathroom too many nights to know that it was going to be okay.
You didn’t know what to do with your hands anymore,
and I didn’t know what to tell you,
But they sure weren’t on my waist anymore
and you couldn’t tell me if it was Sunday or not,
because the blinds were always closed.

I tried to piece it together,
I found Rome, the bombs, the shrapnel and ourselves amidst the rubble
but I couldn’t find out the motives,
where the bombs came from,
where you were when they struck,
what happened to the northern lights and the cherry ice cream and why that pond we like to go to dried up and cracked under the atmosphere.
I couldn’t find the middle please help me find it

I was in the corner of another party at Julia Farrow’s house, red cup in hand, feeling like highschool, and I couldn’t find you in the crowd.
That was where I was when they hit me.
Pulling me to my knees, dragging me by my hair
It’s been another eight months since they hit me and scratched me and clawed me
and we’ve only spoken four times since we realized we were living in shattered bones
and I’m sorry to come to you now
but I can’t figure out where you were.

So my final question,
when the bombs dropped,
were you still standing?
For your sake,
I hope you weren’t.

You’re like a white noise slushie
swirling off my sunburnt tastebuds.
I can’t quite catch you.
Those coffee driven evenings have destroyed my mouth’s ability
to make something stay.
See, whispered lollipop kisses used to work
but not half as well as my grape syrup words.
Teach me how to fix my salt-sugar body.
You don’t know how many times those candy coated sighs
“I love you”
have crossed my artificially sweetened lips.

We are surrounded by shatter broken  beer bottles, wine coolers gone to waste.
We've gone to war inside our own heads, pulling ourselves into corners and kitchens and couch cushions where all I can think is how pretty you look tonight
I can feel my heart beat to the technicolor rhythm of your butterfly gas leak eyes
"This music hurts my heart I want to leave now" is what you whisper to me under dropped basses and stepped dubs
"I know" is what I whisper back alongside the same sad forget-your-worries rhythm
So we leave, floating over alcohol puff swollen bodies left behind by unreliable boy-girlfriends sick of cleaning ***** out of the back of their pickup trucks
And we roll our sickly drunken souls to the Mcdonalds where they give  you coffee to get rid of wasted smashed faces if you're underage and alcohol-laced
we sober up over cold coffee and scalding fries
We sober up,
But I get drunk on your candy stained mouth as you pour out lies you've never told anyone before
I want to let you know all my favourites, all my secrets, all my everythings
But I don't.
And after that pretty pretty night
where we sobered up
but I got drunk on you
The only time I see you
Is past someone else's head
As I smash my drunken lips to theirs.