I came in through the front door
You left the rings on the counter
Delicately one on top of the other
The boxes neatly organized,
A note on the chalkboard
“I’m sorry I couldn’t do more”
Your blood still staining the floor

I didn’t breathe for a week
My body did not know how to eat or sleep
Felt you pressed against me
In the muscle memory

Laid in the tub
Wrapped my clothes around me
Try to absorb the warmth in anyway it found me
I put the ring back on
I erased the note
Listened to our song

I unpacked the boxes
Scrubbed the stain from the floor
This place wasn’t home anymore.

Does it haunt you
The way it haunts me
Standing on the shoreline
Two am it’s freezing

Salt in my lungs
You cannot see me
Held on too long
Watched the tide go out
We did it all wrong

I pushed you inside me
I watched the fire spark
At the hint of lightning
Brushed the hair from your eyes
In a mania that was almost frightening

I didn’t know how to trick my pulse
Slow it down or look away

All I really knew was I wanted you to stay.

Do you remember that day?
We laughed at mortality
Danced wine hungry
Eager for another story.

You said I was not old enough to feel the weight I did, as I circled loops around you. How could I know the ache?
You asked over and over again.

As if the the deed of grief was written in your palm, no man could touch where you had been.

I smiled and told you that you were too old to be treating poison like pop rocks,
Popping each pill in your mouth and forgetting to swallow.

Had we laughed that night at the idea that I’d outlive you? Or is that just the way I remembered it when I watched them bury you?

It shatters
Cracks
Rips the sky in half
I roll the windows down
Plunge into the downpour
Fill to my lap
Freshwater
cascades
Consumes
Small droplets trickle my forearm
Delicate bumps rise
Can you see this
It’s projecting the same
Atmospheric pressure
Foreshadowing
My breaking
Until my knees start to shake
You’re dying
You’re dying
And all you can do
Is watch the sky
Pretending it’s falling

Ripening
steady in their brutality
insecurities dripping down my thighs
I anoint the liquid as it touches the floor
the vastness that was once coddled between our fingers
now descends quicker
an illusion of control
security
close knit purity
does it matter
cuts
deepening in their impatience
while the yellow light
tricks your eyes  
yet,still nothing
no rushing warmth
pouring from inside me

You make promiscuous promises
to your aching body
tell her she’ll feast next week
if she lets you live to see the sea
you promise her ripe *******
sticky fruit
the dripping moments of honey
you tell her to ignore the tricks of his fingers
how they pull away
the tenders parts of her
you remind her she's as soft as the madrona tree
that she’s the most pungent smell of rosemary
the strength it takes for her
to live
shifts the alignments of the planets
causes disarray in each star sign
as she dips her toes
stretches her bones

he simply orbits
you remind her
she holds the resilience of each breathing forest
and though he makes his offerings
while looking for something sweeter
she is monumental in the way the world needs her.

I approached my *****
The tender charisma of something unholy haunted
Carved with my fingertips
the sacred verses
While my temple anointed fresh basins
Preparations waining
an exorcism
Chanted through pulsing
Pressure to release haunts
Hours of screams
Days of lusting
For the body that no longer begs
Wants
Where I birthed an age
Without your dark haze embedded in the sides of my rib cage
Allowed new lovers to taste
The fresh fruit
I no longer hollowed out
Begs of you

It’s uproariously flashy
The effervescent decadence of a slip
Small molecular prism
Juniper berries
Sticking from the cream of freshly fallen snow
Yet I am gliding
Through the flattened streets
trains roar in the distance
Nostalgic melodies  
Tickle the masses between ears
As the sun dips
Digs it’s way to the eastern hemisphere
I wait
stuck
Fond by memories
Yet to exist on this realm
Continuously moving
Twitching the trauma away
Until I can exist in a formation
Other than decay
Under the drunken evergreens
With his eyes amongst the hues
Of dripping blue

its the over powering aroma of similar scenes displayed in a parallel pattern
while you lay horizontal to the projections of life as they distill through the decades
I’ve lived this same night, years prior,
I’ll live this night again in the future
I want the wine to bite my lower lip
I would like to place my hand on every single lap in this bar
I cannot seem to find the weight in how extravagant just being in the woods alone felt
I lapse, the inhale of each trigger while it greets me,
seduces me to another rapid heart rate
You’d say my depression comes in phases,
that each mental breakdown holds similar to the last,
not entirely wrong,
but I’d interject and remind you,
they're all unique in the way you cut through me
consuming
I yield,
heavier than the last
tomorrow as insignificant as the past.

Loose change
Erupting from
Our dusty finger tips
Counterfeit discrepancy
For a bottle of cold

Desert blending
Silent smudges
Alluding to where we’ll rise next

Licking delicately places freckles
You hold
Had to stop an hour ago
Dirt trail
Under hungry tires
Just outside Diego

Carving, shapeshifting
Hiked up skirts
Swear soaked
Rain dances

You and I
Distance
In gravitational lulls
Spinning foresight
In the eyes of these
Hungry souls

I thought I was dying
Smog
Holy
Electrifying
Crumbling of leaves
Beneath swollen knees
Respite from
Can you call it mind altering
Succumbed by disease
Leaking
I devoured
Aspects, hints of true
Licking fingers
Until they were cold and blue
Full, chronological breaths
Eruption
Then the infite thawing
I’d echo words spoken
Between eroding teal beams
The repition
Slight hints at recognition

I thought I was dying
Forest turned
Ash soaked air
Would have taken anyone
Yet you stood there

It is the significance in a diagnosis.
You sit in the same chair you sat in two weeks ago.
Pray that in that moment,
in the middle of the busy rush of their own morning,
they stopped and felt your heart drop.

Somehow you hope their empathy transcends science.
You know it doesn’t.
You know you will come home
to them in the same vacant drips of sunlight
you left them in earlier
that morning.

Maybe the golden rings of disabling
The drip of muffled unorganized thought
Scattering through rooms
Will inevitably disappear
Allowing the graceless act
Shuffling our feet on abandoned low tides
Peaking at each rising moon

Somehow hope gives weight
To the rationality that nostalgia will re root itself in present where the slip of fragmented parrallels will reverse
And I will get my body back

I just want to hold you
I don’t want your hands to tender each
Purple sore even more
I just want the pulsing to stop
And drag your body back down
To the hard wood floor.

Pluck.
The string get’s pulled away, the tension feels tighter, the pressure builds and it stays. The release of the note never fills my ears, the vibrating motion of the string being released from my fingers and hitting the band of the instrument never touches my finder tips. It stays, tense, hard wired, pulling, cutting off circulation.
I take a deep inhale.
I take another pill.
I let his hand slide down my back. I don’t tell him that every touch stings, shocks, slowly slices through my skin as the blades dig deeper and deeper.
I don’t want him to think that he his causing the pain.
I hold.
I wait.
I roll.
I wail.
I wait.
The fluorescent lights sting sharper than his hands did
The monotone typing of the keyboard while they input symptoms.
‘i’m sorry. there isn’t anything we can do for you.'
to going back to rolling
wailing
waiting.
the string grows tighter
the band slices through me
as the fog rolls in the
the perpetual motions
where I plateau
and he is here
sharply pressing his weight
until I can hold my breath long enough to stand up
to slip my clothes on
to walk out the door
pretend the sting doesn’t bother me anymore.

Let’s just stand here, **** on these hard lemon candies and watch the evergreens turn to ash.
once stone etched
Molded by the cascading
ever flowing
torment of a river
that had sprung a leak
Millions of years ago
Now man made, clad iron.

I don’t know you.
I don’t love you.
I’m angry with you.
I’m uncomfortable around you.

We stand hand in hand
The ash engulfs each lung
As if our cells had prepared for the event
We keep breathing

Dim lights of the train receding  
I ask you my insecurities
You muffle your ignorance
Displeasure

turning
Looking at you, as you are
A sore in my
Psychiatric dismantling
The one time
I forgot
We existed after
The ones we love
Disappear

I can see my life with you
the way we bicker
twenty years from now
you scrunch your nose
eventually the argument subsides
and you pull me into your chest, brush the hair out of my face
and tell me you love me
the same way you tell me now
as if this way of loving someone
is so profound
new to you
the look of shock
admiration
devours your eyes  
each time the words
come out of your mouth

So I’m six feet under or I’m twelve feet above and there really is no in-between, the pendulum of projection but my heart is racing and it’s ten pm and the pavement feels safe, unrequited, like you are not here and i am not here and it all makes sense but it really doesn't because most of my days are spent rationalizing my existence to myself on this repetitive loop but then I feel something like love. I feel something like adrenaline. I feel something like, I’m hungry but I want a body pressed against me and I want to hear you say all the right things but I also want it to be quiet and peaceful and I want everyone I have ever loved to be on this bed with us holding me and saying all the same things too but I also want to be completely alone and stuck in my head creating something magical and once Im alone all I want is to eat an entire burrito but also climb a mountain and feel the fresh air on my skin and your hand in mine and how do I enunciate all of that when I feel like it is literally leaking out of my chest, my elbows, my knees and then there are these flashes of the one time someone died and all I hear is the gunshot, the thirty seconds between their final breath and the pavement but I also think about the time i ran down the beach naked and they just stood there and giggled, looking at me like the entire world was mine and how lucky they were to witness such a moment and I think about how lucky I was to live in such a moment and ******* I want to be able to rip it to shreds, eat it like a pomegranate or a mango or something that is sticky and messy and the flavor just stays on you for days no matter how many showers you take. I feel the way the bark felt on my barefeet when I used to scale trees and climb so high the tops of the tree’s would not be able to hold my weight  fully and they would kind of tilt and I almost died so many times but i didn’t and the one time i tried, i really, really tried it made me so ******* numb and I still feel that numb a lot until they love me or they leave me or I drive really fast or I chug the bottles i am absolutely not supposed to chug or I stand on stage and I tell my story over and over again and I feel like the entire audience is there with me in the moments I have lived and they are holding their breaths like I was holding my breath for hours and hours and then days and then years and when the story ends they get to breathe a sigh of relief and for a second i get to too you know?

It’s the way I feel you before you’re even here
the silent tremors that glide down my spine
as I quiet down
tighten my grip
and swallow
The desperate pleas I make with you each breath I take
on my knees
insisting that my life is worth more than
one simple mistake
retracing my week, trying to find when
I accidentally left the door open
and you snuck back in
pushing me back
driving manically
to the four am Emergency Room
blood stained floors
as you pull me from another
night of sleep
another day of work
another arm wrapped around my side
I won’t try to climb mountains anymore
just let me live until March 4th
The moments when the hospital room slows into relief
when the medicine finally kicks in
and the nurse looks me in the eyes as she
tries to tuck me back  into the
white light sheets
hoping that will make you slow down
wishing the warmth  would loosen your grip
she taps into my veins to catch a glimpse
at the way you dance around inside of me
clinging onto my lower back, poking your fingers
through every layer I have left
whispering into my ear as they ask me why
I was in the hospital again
Oh it was just a routine check-up
You pull me by the neck
force my eyes open
to stare hungrily through the glass you built around me
day in and day out observing
the pace the world moves in,
orbiting around me
on infinite time
on a clock that’s hand doesn't just land on
on moments between IV drips
on moments between
when you decide to pull me back into bed
when you decide to hold me down and cloud my head
for days
for weeks
for months
Flooding my mind with memories when I wasn’t filled with orange pills
when my insides weren’t leaking faster and faster
with each passing season
Kind of want to keep living
but you’ve promised to
stop giving me a reason.

Ten years go by.
You survive. You find a way to create your reactions to trauma, you twist it, tangle it around every heart that beats for you. You bite your lower lip so many times that the scar sticks. You find the way matches, when applied to your skin feel safer than his hands did. You don’t let him win. You don’t win either.  You find the freedom in slipping away, you drink your friends under the table, you sneak out of the home after they fall asleep and you walk through the empty streets screaming his name, hoping he comes out of the bushes so you can finish what you started. You’re unarmed except for the empty bottle. Ten years go by and you jump into the way lovers make you feel safe, you show them all of your scars and you sit on the living room floor for hours - begging for them to place the delicate band-aids over each and every one. Some do, some walk out and don’t look back. You hold back physically assaulting several therapists because they ask you what you were wearing, they rationalize what was done to you as an act of your early peak into sexuality and that no one should be sexually active at that age, they forget you weren’t sexually active with the opposite ***. You wait five years, until your legs are up in the same chair, and they’re there, holding you down while you writhe in pain and no one really seems to be there to call but it feels the same way it did - but your family is two states away and all you wanted was a voice but they hung up so you swallow countless pills and wake up three days later. Ten years go by. You find the challenge in the sober moments when the fog is clearing on the north side of the mountain and you forgot to pack a lunch but you’re five miles in and you need to get back to your truck because the sun will set in two hours and you don’t have a flashlight and suddenly you hear his voice in the back of your head, the monotone pierce of realizing you could be anywhere and he’s still sitting casually on your shoulder. You wait seven years to slowly peel your victimhood off your skin, you sit in the bathtub and soak it through essential oils, apology letters written on soggy paper, words of hate, words of pain, words of realism. You respond slowly with moments of empathy, you allow others pain and trauma to top yours, you stop trying to push the labor of your life onto each heart that holds you. You hold yourself up, you climb slowly, you pedal faster, you feed your body, you whisper back each time he hits you with his voice, you say that you hear him but he has no power over you. Ten years go by, you take your voice and you allow it to lift others up, you take your body and you allow all the strengths and scars to be seen, examined, you take the vulnerable parts of you and instead of band-aids, you delicately sew in sutures, you show the ones who love you, the way you can stand up straight, tall, off the floor. You hold their hands and you grip into the power of ten years went by, he didn’t **** you, he tried like hell, but he didn’t **** you. You survived. You looked it dead in the eye and you forgave it, you pulled what you could from it and you moved on the best way you could. Ten years go by. You find the beauty in your trauma, you find the roses overpower the thorns and you celebrate. Ten years.

Define how you see me,
take your fingers and allow them to slowly climb up to my collar bone.
I paint you in scenes.
I find the familiarity in the way you mirror the comfort I always craved but couldn’t allow my throat to clear long enough to ask for it.
I wouldn’t find the absolutism in this moment, I wouldn’t be so present, I wouldn’t be so focused on the curvature of your lower lip as it edges closer and closer to mine.
I would be numb, you wouldn’t even be here, or your would be and I would have forgotten your name already as you climbed on top of me.
It’s like a receding hair line,
the pungent smell of betadine, the risky slip of ‘she’s not breathing’ but I heard them,
it’s deceiving.
lucky to see the way the sun rises, lucky to feel the pain
your terror exposes
how do I clarify the explantation
that unconditional only comes with the
vivid understanding that
god, it goes by so quickly.

Exhausting.
The last drips from the shower are plummeting down the drain as I focus on the slurping noise the water makes as it cascades down the old buildings plumbing. 
Exhausting.
As my lower back aches, my toes squirm, the pulsing beat behind my eyes hums along to the same rhythmic migraine it’s been stuck in for the better part of the last five years.
Exhausting.
The nervous tick of sweat beads down my back while my mind whirls through scenarios, ways I could have been better, ways he could be thinking about me, how soon this will all end because,
Exhausting.
Remembering the day I sat in the dim room
“Anyone ever told you, you’re bi-polar?”
The relief the explanation laid out in front of me,
the look of pity on his face.
“You suffer from years of PTSD, this is going to take a life time to conquer.”
Exhausting.
“With your chronic illness, this is going to be an uphill battle, each flare up will set you back.”
Exhausting.
“Of course, we cannot medicate you with your other medications.”
Exhausting.
“Please call the suicide hotline the next time you feel that way.”
Exhausting.
The way the same cut and dry of cold desolation their turned back screams as I play victim to a mental illness I’ve never bothered to master.
Exhausting.
As I play victim to a physical illness that never subsides.
Exhausting.
As I ride out the same perils each lover faces while they face me, naked, dripping, towel wrapped around my hair, gritting my teeth with a Iknowwewerejokingbutpleasedontcallmethat
Exhausting.
It’d be easier if I was dying, it’d ward them off quicker, give them a time limit they could count on.
“I love her but I can’t handle these mood swings, I never know what to say around her, I can’t keep doing this if this is all it will ever be.”
Exhausting.
As each partner holds a seance, brings up every dead lover they can muster and finds all the right avenues to trigger, poke, ****, promise, and be gone.
Exhausting.
I’m here, until your mania isn’t quirky, I’m here until your mania directly effects me, I’m here until you become a mirror to everything I fear.
Exhausting.

I ate the petals
One by one
The delicate euphoria of
Rushing hues from yellow
To maybe it's you's
I sipped the same wine
But somehow I
Was the drunk one
Rolling around on the floor
Whispering
More, please, more.

I am aimless in the typography of simple moments where the lines change and suddenly they’re asking from me. 

Where did I go? 

What am I thinking about? 

How do I feel?

The endless parade of the safest valley on earth. 

The way the mountain ranges hug the fault line and enunciate that I will be ok while they keep me sedentary, 

watching as the snow piles on the hill sides and melts away with each season, 

I became addicted to the fog

hugging  the ethereal realm of consciousness,

 unlike the bitter evergreens tickling the sides of jagged rocks,

lightly dipped clouds slowly secreting drops of dew seemed to delicately keep me at ease, 

calm my bitter, ever-growing disease.

you told me it would end the way it needed to

I thought those were the worst moments in my life.

somewhere inside I heard the senseless pounding of hope compromising  

repeating the same thick mantra of I would only claw my bloodied fingers onto simpler heights

The way the rings delicately sat on top of each other

how it steamed up the sides of the white walls

expected nothing less from existence when my eyes finally lifted

from the heavy slumber

how the florescent

at first glance

did not bring me to my knees

any kind of inspiring prose

or please

it just lulled me into

another moment where my

eyelids

begged for visions

of

from the highway you can see this one view

twenty minutes north of California

my hair is blowing in the wind, caught by the ripping shards of desert tempermant

the way you smoke your cigarette as if

any day one of them will be your last

succulent gliding allegory of the brutal

moments of leisure connection brings

while it rips itself from our absent moments

the sun is right above

if you listen closely

there is the song

slowly humming

the one i played

repeatedly for you.

Hey it's me. Can we talk?
It's just the the full moon is rising right now
on the last month of this year
and I am feeling the way you used to press on
me
the existential dread of
everything existing since
I last heard your voice
is yanking me under
six feet of soil
and I know you
don't know how to swallow
when you hear my voice
I know it makes the heat rise to
the tip of your chest
and you ball your fists
but can I just hear you
one last time
tell me
that it will all be ok
can we pretend
that this year never happened
for one second?
Just one ******* second
I want to absorb the decent
life that once  
kept me glued together
once held the image of you
that wasn't just fractals
spewed with hate
distaste
bitter notes of
'I ******* hate you's'
It's me. I know
you forwarded the call
and I know she's home
there with you
while your new life
boils in the kettle
the steeping bags
of I once sat on the same counter
and tried to not die
from the heart break
I just want to pretend that  
one day
we'll be at a place where we can
silently lay beside each other
hands clasped so tight
and fade into
a sleepless night.

Anyway, I wish you well
and I'm sorry for all the times
I told you to go
to hell.

"But, the ******* screaming you know?"

Lavender

"You know like the lump, the lump in my throat. I cant breathe anymore"

Rips the flower from the bush.

"-- And I just, I just. ****"

Rubs the lavender petals between palms.

"The ******* screaming. Are you listening? The screaming"

Puts hands up to face and inhales the smell of the crushed flowers.

Trail  
eyes blending the murky colors
as they slowly lick the landscape
tickling with the edge of tongues
warm pastels
as if
creamsicle dripping
the edges of fingers
somehow now
lining evergreens
rushing turquoise blending with navy
denim white caps
as fresh water churns alongside
smoothing edges of rocks
I dip my spine
the hemispheric shape of my back
as it extends over the damp
dripping moss
you cradle my body
the warmth moves between
the sensations
of shudders
as we cling alongside
one another
your lips part
as the foreign color
of red
stands out to the cold,
dimly lit nature
I bite deep
gasp,
scream
weep.

As your falling asleep
Rolling over to turn out the light
Pulling the covers over your shoulders
While the rain lightly falls outside
I hope you absent-mindedly say my name
I hope the habit
Of sleeping beside me
Has become so ritualistic
That for a split second
You forget I'm gone
And you hear the echo
Of your own voice
In the vacant studio
While the murmur of the
Machines whirl outside
Your closed door
you close your eyes
And remember what it was like
To wake up next to me
With the coffee bubbling
And the cat purring
I truly hope
It stings
the moment the vowels of my name come rolling off your tongue
You're struck with the blinding guilt
You'll never have that again
The blonde hair
On my old side of the bed
Will never be mine
The coffee bubbling will never be made by me
I want it to grip into you
As you lay awake
Thinking about the world we created
And easily you let it break.

in love with
linoleum pressing into the side of my face
the familiarity
lapsing reminders
to sleep
eat to
give into ritualistic habits of
living

exchanged the need
desire
with the pulsing sensations
of a beating heart
drying salivary glands  

is this existence
once your brain cells have all lined up
two decades in
the never ending string
pulling through your throat
repeating the same
anxious anecdotes
of

no one could possibly
relate to this
narrowing pit
that we're not going to
make it out of this alive
no one ever has

She used to lick
my hip bones as if they created a special taste
specifically for the tip of tongue  
sides of me would squirm while she danced rhythmically above
sunlight was made from the strands of her
dripping hair
I would perk my lips
gesturing my existence to the sound
of her fluttering lungs
at each giggle  
patches of grass tickled below my back
small specks of clouds
planes racing from the ground
I felt her voice
in the coils of
percolating vowels
safe precocious sounds.

If I could have begged for anything else
the freedom escaping small
egocentric
prophetic nuance
of
I loved
lost
never satiated by the cost
fingers
skin
the moments of avoidance
I've covered my years in
blanketed by
capturing each
humanistic,
societal win

I don't want to talk about it really

I was just sitting on the grey couch
While he sat across from me with a pen and paper
And we were laughing
Laughing about how
I never really had to watch someone slowly die
Because everyone I've cared about that's passed
Was shot point blank
Close range
And my therapist giggled
As the morbid humor rushed out of me
And it kind of just echoed through the small dimly lit room

Until I started to scream
Crying hysterically
He just looked at me slowly
Realizing the moment had quickly passed
And turned into a very visceral flashback

He's trying to talk me down but all I could see
Was the footage looping over and over again
In my head
Why was he holding a knife yelling 'dont shoot'
Why the **** was he holding a knife?


So no,
I don't really want to talk about it.
I just want to lie here and focus on the pressure you're applying to my chest
While you hold me
Wrap your arms around me
So I can finally fall asleep.

There's this wire I keep tripping on
the string that lays parallel to current divisions of reality
a plane of moments
strategizing time fragments that correlate with the general population
but keeps me cloaked behind a veil of
they call it
dissociated
the illusion that I cannot fully connect
my atoms don't seem to just align properly with the whirling visions around me
and I slip into the seconds of grandiose prophecies
consumed with the mentality that I will never be enough
that my moments will never really
quite line up.

last. words.

You want to give me the speech
you want to act like I haven't heard it before
assume you've existed purely for this moment

that death
dying
don't
refer to me
first

my own worst enemy
these words trail
down the stairs
morph a train
behind ankles
as the morning coffee begins to percolate
they don't just sing me to sleep
they roll over just as Im starting to slip into a dreamless night
and bite the end of my ear
nibble away
licking my neck until
I pulse only for them
how each moment
each passing breath
I cannot forget
when the time ran out
for each fragile discipline of atoms, molecules
I loved so tenderly

as they slowly exited my life
as I severed them from my cerebral cortex to protect myself
as they jumped from the tallest bridge in Portland
shoved the needle deeper into their skin

left me to remember them
left me to forget them
left me to watch as each leaf falls to the ground
wave crashes around my knees

grief
will sing me to sleep
I'm
my
own
worst
enemy.

I don't think about the leaves
or I guess I do
but I try to not think about them too often
I don't really think about you either
or when I do,
I don't see your face
I don't feel your body
I don't even smell you


I think about the way the world looked,
1,200 miles above ground
the cloudless sky
You looked at me like
it was hilarious
I was a cat in water
wanting you to hold me
but you peeled my arms off of you
slowly
how you walked away when
I tried to order the coffee
as the plane was boarding
I don't see your eyes
Your hands don't wrap around my waist
in my memories
I don't think they really ever did,
did they?

I think about how she must feel lying next to you
how similar the side of bed
is to the cold vacant moments when you
turn the light off,
sigh and push the pillows under your head
the distance it's gaping
I still feel it,
a mile and a half away  
in the dark your back
stands out  
She'll spend years chasing
nothing

I think about how he made me laugh
he found this eruption of giggles
and ripped it out of me
until I couldn't stop
the bed shook in this
rhythmic pattern
and I could just lie there
knowing at least he wanted me
at least he knew how to stop time
at least he understood each line
unlike you did
I think about the compromises I made
to be seen after you

the times I turned away from
lashings because
at least I can remember the color of his eyes when he looked at me
at least I can place exactly where his hands laid on my side
at least he knows my favorite line of every song

he knew how to pull
the world into the slow melancholic
better than you ever could have,
how my heels turned toward him when the buzzing of street lights
didn't distract me
his hands could at least slide up
grip into
anything  
and I didn't have to beg

I
didn't
have
to
beg  

even when I knew,
it was wrong

he could quote back the words to me
the moments we shared
held purpose
made me feel like this where
I could belong.

allowed the scent to stain the tips
of each appendage
as I rubbed the delicate petals between
watching how hues of purple
slid gracefully along side the curves, the honey
gold sunlight dripped
ignited the slight variations of dark nightshades from light creams
the hint of white, the shudder of black in each tint
I turned my hands upright
watching fragments cascade to the sidewalk below me

Introduced him into my life
slipped the necklace off my neck and gave him
the exact directions to the destinations
that made me safe
scared
weak
strong
the potions that awakened each aspect in my life
granted him the open doors to each variable that
emulated my entity
turned the side of me, the numb variations that dictated logic,
reason,
protection
and forgot to listen to the words he spoke
as the evening rose above the
firs, evergreens.

Somehow my body
Still rolls to the side of the bed
You once slept on
And emulates the same positions we held each other in
I watched the trains glide past today
The small specks led to the northern part of the river
And the stars began to illuminate
All the spots in the city
Where you once slid your fingers
Inside me

I think I loved you
I think that this meant something
But it comes in these waves
Recreating the horrific storms of being
Caught in each time
You couldn't breathe
I held my own breath
And how can we stop drowning
If it's the same
Sedative sound?

He said I was anything
He wanted me to be
I broke through hours
Of visiting rooms
Open caskets
Dreams of tombs
I ripped the fingers from my
Bleeding
Maybe it's too soon

Inexplicably he found the facets
Of my neurotic
Triggers too
Satiated
Too expendable
Left me
To wrinkle and dry
In the stale porcelian tub
Never really grasped onto
Why I was so numb

I don't
See the act of missing
Nostalgia
It takes place in the center
Of expectation
But how can I expect
Anything
If the world lights up
Tomorrow?

The difference between you and I

"I just dont feel it anymore"
-Did you ever feel it?
"I'm not sure."
-But you don't now? So you once felt something?
"I think so? What about you? Did you feel anything?"


-I wouldn't have moved in with you if I didn't.

"Oh."

-Yeah.

It's spelled the Irish way
The old Gaelic notes that ring when you say it after a few beers
Sluggishly lulling through the world while you find the rhythm of living vicariously
You stated once so boldly
I was the only reason you should save
You called the way I live
Brave  
Licking the copper clean as it whistles
craving a soul
Like I stand
another goal
But the sun slips in these autumn months
Ive visted the same places
Each kicked back bitter
different from the latter
you maniacally send me
Chapter after chapter

I wish I could just roll the windows down
Run through each noun
as it hits my ear
Turn in the moments I lived in fear
Cash them in for a year
Like the way you effortlessly describe me
Forgetting the constant flux of my
Internal neuroses

Things that remind me of him:
Target.
Stepping into Ikea and smelling the cafeteria food.
Long drives with the radio playing softly.
The rain, pooling up in my boots, the smell it leaves on my jacket, the way it tastes on my lips.
The north side of the mountain, the one that is perpetually foggy and jagged.
Throw pillows, tucked between my knees and alongside my back, emulating all the nights I used them to pretend he was there, holding me.
Tea kettles, their incessant knack for screaming at the worst times, when I finally sit back down and get comfortable.
Empty hospital rooms, sterile cleaning supplies and the times I would refresh my phone hoping he'd at least called.
The floor, specifically the grey and white carpet on the hardwood floor, how towards the end I just left the glass shards in it because I wanted to feel a sting.
The desert and the red dirt, how it ground between my toes when I finally figured it out.
Darting eyes and their need to validate inexcusable actions with the justification that it would all calm down eventually.
And finally, elevators, how my worst fear only seemed to be exacerbated with him by my side, trying to hold back laughter as he let go of my hand.