I'd give up used bookstores, libraries,
old love, and free chai tea lattes
to be alone with you.


All of the things I once believe caused feeling—
Just moments and memories

in a great spectrum of
*"I forgot—just being happy. being happy.

So I prioritize
and keep going,
close my eyes.
close your eyes."

First comes love, then


              she does

735 days since my skin touched yours

In one second—a universe existed: each
with 735 Earths, each
with 735 cities, each
with 735 hundred sets of lovers, like us.

In one second—each planet had
735 extra suns. 735 cities burnt to
the end of their matchstick in 1/735th of a second,
the same second that we had last touched.

You asked me, then, if I ever thought I had loved anyone in high school. I didn't answer you, because all I could think of was if a world could feel the difference between the burn of 735 and 736 suns.


They can.

"Yeah, why don't I tell him that I ****** you too?"

I haven't held a secret in so long, but oh God, I can feel their ghosts on my shoulders still. I locked a man in my closet and the flesh fell off to show a skeleton. He did not open the door. I wish it could have been different. I went back years later and found bone-shaped holes in the floorboards. Oh God, I never knew what those taps in the walls were. When my lover is not listening I tap back.

It's not luck, lover
only privilege.

I tried to write of you.


I really tried to write of you.






\i don;t know Why i't didtn work---


I tried so hard, I tried
so hard, but it
was just a sign--
just a sign-just
a
sign.

I am in love
And I fight love like a war
I wasn't trained for.

In the simplest terms:
Love is giving someone
the power to destroy you
and trusting they won't.

But how can I trust him not to destroy me
when I have become a mosaic:
picking up my broken pieces,
again and again,
only to arrange them into something
more beautiful than I was to begin with.

I guess this is why I trust him...
Even if he were to destroy me
I'd have more broken glass
to use for the masterpiece
that I've been creating for years.

I wonder if this is all in my head...
I'm no longer an enigma
but a work of art,
and an artist's work is never complete.

I suppose I await the day
when he picks me up
and throws me to the floor.

I swore I heard him say he didn't love me
the same way I love him
and I felt a piece fall and shatter.

I must wait
to add that piece
back in with the others
when I collect the remnants
of who I was before him.

...At least I'm used to it now.