You waved the tool in my face
Causing a switch to go off in my brain
My thoughts distorted
My body springing to action
Trying to make you stop
What you had already done

The new raised lines on your upper arm
Caused by simple office supplies
Wouldn't have happened
If I hadn't left you for just a second
For the moment my back was turned
You were half past gone and a mile away from better

Both of are breathless
The shiny twisted piece of metal
Somewhere on the floor

Sitting across from each other
Your shoulders shook against mine
My tears burned into your shirt
And were mopped up with your brown hair

I spoke through choked sobs
As hurt memories flashed through my brain
Like the trailers of movies
Showing only a quick remembrance
Of my past
That leaked into your present

But you feel as though your present is not a gift
For you're falling down the rabbit hole
Not to Wonderland
But to the land of pills and hospital beds
Where it is not wonderful in any shape or form

Your scars can still heal
If you stopped retracing the red lines you've made
And realized
You are something
I care about you
And so do others
So if you won't try for yourself
Try for them
Try for *me

also known as a lesson in anatomy 2:
this is my heart,
it is both a metaphorical
representation of an oversimplified
concept of a highly intricate
detail
and
a thick ball of senew
which throbs to pump
blood through my veins
distributing oxygen and nutrients
to the backwater parts of
the clusterfuck known as my body.
sometimes I like to take it out and
look at it,
turn it around in my hand for a bit
before pitting it back.
sometimes I can't remember how the
arteries fit
so I just jam them in there
and its a real mess.
the thing is molding a little on
one side and kind of wrinkly.
think of an orange that's been hiding under a cabinet for too long.
they say when I person burns to death
the last part of them to turn to ash
is the heart, since its
so tough, the thing takes forever,
just sitting there in the fire.
I don't think that's true.
I think its the first thing to burn.

***** has got thinner hips.

Her thighs are clean lines
where mine are a ven diagram.

Collar bones, stomach, all negative spaces.
My figure is convex in all the wrong places.

Here's a bedtime story:
Once,
I got him drunk and he ****** me,
it was fruitless.
But he makes love to her.
He finishes with her,
while I had to push him off me.
But I digress,

he cups her face with the same
hands that he used
to push mine into his mattress.

But her and me,
we are still sisters
of the same anatomy.

So sister,
I hope you rip up his lungs
and drag him out to sea.

he only wants you in the way that means
he can wrap himself around you like a cocoon to help you
change you'll be
a butterfly
something different from what you are which is
flawed so flawed i don't want to touch you don't want
to talk to you just
write poems about the way your hands fist in the pockets of your jacket
i hope you'll go with him because
no matter how many poems i write about the way you
hurt and hate and hope in helpless hollows i know
it'll still burn
like a rope you tried to catch when you fell but
it just caught the skin of your palms
[please don't ever open my notebook you
look at it sometimes when i'm writing i
don't ever want you to see the way
i romanticize
your pain it's not
beautiful or poetic it's just sad
i wish you were happy but i just keep
writing poems about
your misery
and when you surface when you emerge from your cocoon i will
write odes dedicated to the selfishness
that would keep you hurting so i could
feel something when i look at you]
he only wants you in the way that
stitches want an open wound and
i know you want to be mended but no,
no,
nobody can fix you but you and they,
they will try but just
stitch embroidery
into your back
you are the seamstress and the shredded quilt:
you can stitch yourself together you just need to find the thread
and love is no substitute
for a sharp needle.
don't unclench your fists for
any lover who promises to
fix you
don't shotgun old wounds like thick smoke
if they promise anything more
than to hold them
in their
lungs
until the pain eases
just a little.
he will cocoon you
and let you out confused
and hurt
and hating yourself because you didn't change
you are
not
a butterfly
you will not wake up beautiful:
just learn to be full because the end of the word
is all that matters
and the last words of a relationship
are the most honest.

when you stitch yourself together
i will wear the rope that caught your palms like
a silk collar
pour your perfume like lighter fluid
and burn my notebook
and hope that no one writes ballads
to your clenching fists
again

He wants to tell her of a story he read once
About that gorilla who could sign
And taught its baby to sign
How when the baby died
The flailing of her fingertips
And the movement of her hands
Said more about loss than anyone ever cared to know

She looks at him
Hot pho steam moistening her face
There is a man pacing outside the windows of the restaurant
It is a whole in a wall
In a small city
The city is *****
Next to the restaurant is a bar
They listen
Juke box bass hick thunder through the walls
She ***** a noodle into her mouth

“Is this a date,” she says
    If you want it to be
“It’s not exactly romantic”

He smiles
thinks about what it means to be romantic
Remembers the list with the boxes to check off
  Of will she **** me later

It’s all too generic
And we are so talented at romanticizing the trivial
That people forget how to be charming

He thinks of death-beds
And what she might say to him

Maybe it isn’t now. But later, you’ll remember this guy
And you’ll think of that weird place he took you to this one time.
It wasn’t exactly romantic.
But for whatever reason
You will remember me for doing things like this.

He wants to tell her of the gorilla
With the sad hands

His own hands tremble

He thinks of languages people spend lifetimes learning

She sips her water
Wipes sweat from her face
She smiles
It is beautiful when she smiles

He smiles too
Shivers as the doors open and the cold comes in

Maybe in some other universe
The words would have meant more to her
They would have made sense

He fills the silence with the sound of soup
She looks at him again
The thunder through the walls stops
And all he can think of
Is the gorilla who learned the language of love
And lost the need to use it