here’s the story of how i remember you all wrong:
i’m on the number eleven bus, top deck,
and the hair of the boy right in front
is making me think of your own
—although when i try to recall
how you kept yours
i can’t.
i can’t think of the colour of your eyes
or the length of your fingers,
but i can think of how your arm looked
after you sliced it up to bleeding
that one time,
and i do,
i think til it hurts.
(i used to want to hurt you because
i liked you; now i only want to because i don’t.
but you know i don’t want to give you the wrong idea—)

(here’s the story where you didn’t hurt me:
—the wrong head, the wrong heart,
the wrong number under my name in your phone,
the wrong sound of a nervous little brought-in breath
coming between my teeth
as i roll my fingers over your knuckles,
the wrong airport in the wrong city,
the wrong voice for the first time i say
‘i love you’
to you without a single stumble,
or all the wrong questions to ask.
don’t you?)

and here’s the story of how i miss you all wrong:
i go home and curl up under the bedsheets in the dark
til i forget the precise colour of my eyes
and the exact shape of my hands, too,
and i guess that’s how i win,
just the once.