I can never unremember discovering how much we both loved 3eb
that day in your bed at the yellow house.
Maybe that’s when I should have known
that I could never have you.
You knew that before I did.
I'm the one that's
Stupid.
And there’s still this
BURNING.
Like there’s always been?
I’ve always felt so alone.
I’m not sure that I’ve ever felt
Alive.

Do better!
Be better!
Want me!
I screamed into the void of my thoughts.
I wasn’t sure who I was screaming at
but I had at least a few people in mind.

The reality is:
it could have been anyone.
No one had ever been enough.

I had always believed that I had not been enough for anyone.

The trouble it seems:
He was right.

No one had been enough for me.

Maybe I was my intended audience.
****.

It’s the t-shirts on parade
and imagining that the new girl feels bad for me.
It’s that the new girl isn’t the new girl
but that she is the girl.
It’s that I wasn’t ever actually the girl
and she will never know the significance of each shirt.
It’s the feeling that I will only ever be a footnote
in the partners I’ve shared.
The feeling that I won’t ever be the headliner
only the one that came before or after.
I've got great taste in t-shirts though.

I love you and I used to could talk about it
But now it feels like manual labor
forming orders inside my mouth.
I want to say “when did it all come to be so hard?”
But it has always been this way, hasn’t it?
reasons Reasons REASONS
For bizarrely monogamous reasons
it has always been hard to talk about the way
I love you.
We were married and that was
reasons.
And then we were married but IN LOVE and that was
Reasons.
Then we were divorcing and HURTING and that was
REASONS.
And now we are friends and have all new
ReAsOnS

“Emotionally Impregnated”
was the phrase that came to mind
when I tried to make sense
of what had happened to me
half way through listening to
the song he had sent

“You know you gave me all the time
Oh, did I give enough of mine?”

It was the unchangeable joining
of thought and feeling that produced
within me a growing emotional experience
that no more asked permission to be
than did any other seed and egg.

“Say you don’t know me anymore
But that’s a bullet on your floor”

I have never been a reliable narrator though
how many negative tests have I produced
even amid ******* that imagined they were swollen
nausea that persisted for days
and blood that stained sheets much later than expected?

Had I just spent the last two years
in an elaborate emotional pregnancy scare?
Had the joining of lyrics
of hungry bodies
of insatiable hearts
produced within me an embryo of empty hope?

Have I sabotaged my own lifeblood
in a desire to force from my womb
some monstrous and malformed product
of what had been lifegiving friendship?

Night sits on my chest
Squeezes poems out of me
And grinds my poor soul

He sleeps while I lay awake
No news.
I think this is the nature
of boys.
How many times have I lain awake
while a boy I was ******* slept?
Sometimes when you are faced with absurdity
All you can do is sleep.
I think I've made a terrible mistake
but this isn't the first time I've felt
this way.
I am not to be trusted.

I don't think I've slept in nearly two years.
Instead closing my eyes only in the merciful combination of desperation and design.

Last night he went to sleep at 12:03
I listened for his breaths to slow.
I rubbed my feet together
softly;
In near panic.
And didn't turn on Josh Ritter until
12:33.

Aside:
Falling in love =/= being in love
Life is all about lessons. Choices.

🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶
I never felt alone until I met you.
🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶

Not alone like this.

Do you dwell in this space also?
Am I less alone in at least that much?

Sleep softly, babes.