it has been
five days
since we had that big fight,
since you told me you didn't
love me anymore it has been
five nights of me dialing your
number but not pressing call
listening to songs that i did not share
with you to send me to sleep
it has been
five days
since you told me that i was unrealistic,
a dreamer in the worst way possible,
all hung up and angry at what i cant change
and i have spent
four of those days chasing away my sobriety
once because my friends told me that
i needed you out of my head
once because i sat in the middle of the grass
and closed my eyes and took what was
handed to me because i told myself i
needed you out of my head
once because it was late and i didn't
want to keep dialing your number without
pressing call
once because i wanted to drown you in
the poetry but my hands still shook
too hard to make sense of the words i had
left it has been
five days
since you told me you didn't
love me anymore and i'm not checking up
on you, i'm not asking how you're doing no
matter how much i wonder and if you ever
asked i'm sure the words would come
spilling out of me no
matter how many days have passed
or how many times i reason with my chest
i am not sure
i am really ready to do this the rest of my life

a terrible poem about how i fell in love
when i was a child and i grew with it
like moss on an abandoned building,
and i stopped being a child but
i held onto it with the winsom that only
a fresh-faced little girl knew how to
handle things with care,
how to touch gentle, the only way
you can when your heart
has never been broken.

a terrible poem about how i write about
you every day and i'm not sure if anyone
who reads it knows what you did to me or why
i cry in airports and i don't think i can write
enough terrible poetry to explain it

a terrible poem about how i leave my bed and
i see my friends and i do whatever i think my
ribcage can handle and i'm not sure if its a desperate attempt
to forget or a desperate attempt to revive
that girl who knew how to
feel things without breaking her wrists,
how to love things without suffocating them,
how to touch gentle because her heart
had never been broken.

before the maroon 5 concert
chaz said his mom wasn't home
she had stripped his mattress and
put everything in the wash
and I only remember wondering
why it hurt so much
and the silk threads of the seams
catching on my bra straps--
I had thought it was
supposed to be so much more
than pumping and churning
like pistons in a truck,

the difference was you
stopped when I asked
shiverin' above me in
a warm sweat
and all i could do was
run my fingers through
your hair over and over
stay silent and move slowly
because no one has ever seen
me like that, wavering
and rocking, working my
way up, using your hips
like training blocks, stretching
my thighs out over your bed--
lord I ain't ever asked for more
never bruised nobody 'cause
I wasn't thinkin', he's got
these welts i don't even
remember, he sayin he let me
in like he left the door's open
during the storm and I was
rain, hail or wind, a noise,
a knock, just me.
but I opened the windows,
the basement, the attic
pulled out the chairs in
expectation, I have nothin'
to say for my fears, they're
there and sometimes they
shift gears and gun it
but that don't mean
i didn't look at you
and wonder about
things I shouldn't
or replace my daddy's
name with yours just
to
see.