I love you in a way I don't fully understand,
In a way
I really hope you don't either.
The things about my life that I treasure,
Each has come to hold something of you.
I love you every time the sun rises,
And I am looking through my window wide awake.
I love you when I hear a choir sing
And the sound pulls tears from me
Like my heart's unraveling with awe.
I love you when I look up and see the first star of a cold, clear night
And say your name to myself so that I feel a beam of light,
Spidersilk-thin,
Stretch between me and that star
And make me celestial for a moment.
I love you like that feeling I get in museums or temples
Like I don't want to breathe
Because the silence is so sacred and beautifully full.
I love you when I stand in my city at night in the rain,
A living watercolor painting
Smeared with neon and gold,
And my breath catches at the exquisite world I live in.
I love you through living,
And I live with a passion hotter than the sun.
I live so completely it hurts,
And I love you that way
As well.

If you kiss him
I will still write you poems.
I see you
Walking a tightrope of a choice
Leaning one way and then the other.
I see you.
I see everything, even when I try not to.
It is the curse of somebody
Who fears to miss anything
Lest it sneak up.
I don't miss anything
And that protects and damns me in equal measure.
I am ready, in some way, for every blow
But the price of that
Is that I feel them in privacy, alone and rigid,
Before they even happen,
Whether
They even happen.
I have choices.
We all have choices.
All we have
Are choices.
I could make the choice to go cold like stone
And protect myself in case you
Are upstairs right now,
Kissing him tonight the way you kissed me
Last night.
I could make the choice to believe that there is nothing else that could possibly be happening,
And crumple in on myself like a fallen souffle,
Let myself feel soft and rotten inside like a fruit hidden in the grass
With perfect skin
And decay beneath.
Or
I could choose to trust you
That I am special
That I am something
That even if you are up there kissing him
I haven't lost just yet.
I could choose to remind myself that when I met you
You were his
And now you aren't
And that
Is more than I ever dared to hope for.
What is strong, darling?
Tell me what strong is.
I asked you with my eyes last night
And the answer I got was that at that moment
Strong was not something that mattered,
And I fell into that,
Tired and released, for once.
But I never did find out-
What
Is strong?
What am I
That I will still write you poems
Even if you forget me?

Half of me is here,
In a warm kitchen
With a girl I love
Who I'm not in love with,
And she loves me too
And she's not in it either,
And she's busy from stove to cabinet,
Making food like it's art, like it's poetry, like it's smiles,
Like she makes things
Because she just does that.
And half of me is here,
Warm and content and smiling,
And half of me is here.
It's just that half of me wanders.
I feel the cold, because half of me is out in the night,
Wandering through frost
To find her,
That girl with the wild hair and the lightning strike eyes and the voice like a summer morning,
And I wonder where she is, what she's thinking.
Maybe she's putting on lipstick in the mirror,
Tying her hair up in a bandana
Because I've never seen her without one,
Not ever.
Maybe she's getting ready for a party
One that I could be at were I not here,
One that would probably end in me hurting over her
But...
She would be there.
I would see her.
I feel it reverberate through my soul, a certainty,
That she looks beautiful tonight.
That her eyes are warm like a fire dancing in a hearth.
That she is not thinking of me.
It warms me more than the heat from the stove,
And makes me shiver with a cold more frigid than the night could ever be.
I shouldn't be near her, not today, not so soon.
And I'm not.
And I'm hurting over it,
Because it's hard to do what is healthy for you, sometimes.
I miss her with a vengeance.
It woke in me when she finally spoke a while back,
And I melted at the thought that she'd thought of me.
I shouldn't see her tonight.
Her and her friends, who give me odd looks when I smile too bright at her.
Her and her boyfriend, whose stony stare, last time, made me think he knew I loved her too.
I shouldn't see her because she will not see me.
And so it's a good thing that I'm here,
In a warm kitchen,
With a girl I love,
Who has henna drawn up her arms because I put it there with tenderness,
Who has a smile in her eyes and an understanding heart,
Who will, tonight, hold me with her whole being
Should I break at the memory of you
And tears leak through my cracks
And shards of glass ****** to the floor from my crumbling heart.
She will be there in the dark to tell me
It's okay to love you.

I wonder if you're in his arms right now
And it makes me
Sick.
It's been nearly a year
And it hasn't gotten easier.
It hasn't gotten easier.
It hasn't gotten easier.
It always did wreck me, that I could wake up in the middle of the night
And wonder if you were in bed with him
Right then.
It always destroyed me
Because I never got that.
I never shared that with you.

You...
You were the only person
I ever wanted to sleep with.
And yet
You weren't the first.
You weren't the first.
You weren't the first.
Because you left.

The night it happened
I never told you I cried
Because you weren't the first.
(I wonder if I will cry
Every time.)
I wanted you to think
That I didn't care, that I could do what you did.
But inside
I never felt a thing but empty
And I will always be devastated that
You weren't the first.

And maybe
Maybe you won't be anything
At all,
Maybe I will never be that close to you
Ever.
And that's why nights like this
When I sit alone and wonder
If you are with him
Right
Now
Crush me just like always.
And inside I can feel my bones crack and splinter
Until I'm a pile of twigs and dust
And I change the channel on the television instead
Of splinting them back together.
Because I sort of want to stay crushed.
Because you are still
The only person
I want to be that close to,
The only person
I want to have
All of me.
My skin belongs to you
And to this day whenever anyone else touches me
Part of me secretly wants to push them away.
And I know I will have to live with that
Through your love affairs
Your marriages
Your children
Your divorces
Your choices
Your life.
I will have to live somehow
With that beating right next to my heart
Knocking it out of time, hitting it like a punching bag.

Tomorrow I will notch my chin higher.
Tomorrow I will smile.
Tomorrow I will be strong.
But tonight?
Tonight I don't want to pretend
I'm okay with it.
And no matter how high I turn the volume on the tv,
No matter what I read or listen to or draw or write,
I know that I will not be able to drive from my mind
The skewering thought
That maybe tonight
You are in bed
With him.

My wife, a psychiatrist, sleeps
through my reading and writing in bed,
the half-whispered lines,
manuscripts piled between us,

but in the deep part of night
when her beeper sounds
she bolts awake to return the page
of a patient afraid he'll **** himself.

She sits in her robe in the kitchen,
listening to the anguished voice
on the phone. She becomes
the vessel that contains his fear,

someone he can trust to tell
things I would tell to a poem.

I'm fat and ugly and no one cares.
They treat me like I'm not even there.
I wither away slowly and no one sees.
No one knows how hurt I really can be.
So why do I try?
Would anyone even care if I died?
Who will listen, who can tell, that I'm not happy as I put out?
Everyone thinks nothing could be wrong because I come off as oh so strong.
I'm chipping away, I'm breaking down.
Will anyone turn around?
Who will rescue this damaged soul and help me be as loved as I am told?
I'm fat and ugly and no one cares.
Does anyone notice I'm still here?

I don't hate you
I still love you with
All my heart
I just think its time to start

Building a gap between you
And I because I know
In the end we will
Only be friends

I can't handle another
Heart break from another
Beautiful boy
Who thinks of me as a toy

I can't stand by and watch
You date and **** other
Girls while I'm still standing here
Waiting for your return

No I do not hate you
I love you
But I for once need
To watch myself

Because the cutting is
Getting deeper and
The night's are getting longer
And my heart is growing colder

Don't worry about me
I'm not much to worry about
I'm not somebody special
And I have no doubt

That you'll find another girl
Who notices the special spark
In your heart
So don't worry about me anymore