I guess I should be haply
Finally I am free of you
Done with the fighting,
Done with the way you get angry
Done with the alcohol you give
Done with continuously trying to please you

We're done, for good this time
Never again will we say another word
And that saddens me in a way
That I've never been saddened before

I can tell you about the girl.

Her freckles were beige constellations,
and her voice was husky and rasped
like birds before the churning of a storm.

She was weird and laughed at everything I said -
which made her even weirder,
because I'm only funny in certain photos
and in certain clothes.

Her left arm was covered in scars and burns.
"As you can tell, I'm right handed," she said.
Arthritis surrounded her wrists and other joints,
and all I could think about were my
grandmother's arthritis crippled hands,
and if the girl would thank the arthritis, one day,
for no longer allowing her to self-harm.

One of her feet were bigger than the other
and, when she walked, she would lose balance.
"I'm not sure if the world is too fast
or if I'm too slow. Then again," she winked,
"it's probably because of my feet."
I liked her because she treated me like a person,
but didn't take me as seriously
as I took myself.

I struggled with self-respect
and she struggled with a drug addiction.
Her arm was needle park
and sometimes she missed ******
more than she missed me.

She wasn't the type of girl to shake
without her drugs -
she'd, instead, talk about them
like they were old friends.
She understood them
more than she understood herself.

After a few months of ***
and, "I'll be sad when you leave,"s,
I called her my girlfriend
and she smiled.
Flecks of speckled angles, bright,
I saw her, first, she accepted
my night.

Five days later,
she overdosed on morphine.
I picked her up.

Her eyes were glazed over.
I said, "I love you,
but this is *******."
She cried and said,
"Forgive me."

I lain in bed, next to her -
next to the avoidance of death.
She asked how I was
and I said, "Everything I write is ****,
but I'm glad I can write ****** poetry
about how we'll be okay."

She asked, "We will be okay, right?"

I hope.

Everyone sat
criss-cross-applesauce
in our hearts.
Perfume is made
with dead things, right?

I try hard to sound
important,
when I write *******
because
there are bodies
reading this *******.

And bodies grow and wither.
They thrive and survive.
They get married
and die alone.
They die.

To become dead.

Perfume is made
with dead things, right?

We used to make paper planes
as flimsy as our confidence.
Nothing ever flew the same,
smothered by the thawing sky.
We counted the seconds
until rain ate their bodies,
"5,6,7,8".

Too afraid to go outside,
mom and dad are gone.
Hovering hips beside
the holes in our walls.
Staring out the window
as foggy breath falls.

Seaweed salad and water
before we sleep.
Thinking about
if the paper graves
are as deep  
as the cheap cliches
in our head.