Alone on Silk Road
Caught in her own web of lies
The black widow curled.

kissing you was like swerving into oncoming traffic

i can never tell if i am more haunted by empty picture frames or the ashes of their contents

you taught me that the saying "pick your battles" meant not answering when love was at the door

sometimes when i drink whiskey i swear i can hear your voice in the creases of my bedsheets & i sleep on the floor

i still catch myself running my hands over things you touched the most, looking for the echoes of your fingertips

i practice things i'll never say to you

i remember the day you told me you didn't like poetry, how "everything's already been said" & how "nothing meaningful can be captured without being cliche" you know, i don't miss you like the sun and moon, i do not miss you like tide bent waves crashing on the shoreline, i miss you like a chernobyl  swingset misses children

rumor has it that drowning is a lot like coming home, that drinking bleach can **** the butterflies in your stomach

for your love of cigarettes, i would have been an ashtray

this halloween i want to dress up as the you when you loved yourself and show up on your doorstep

i never understood what you meant when you said i was an instrument, back when you would cup your hands around my chest and breathe through the holes in my heart, i still wonder if the sounds i made remind you of wind chimes

i never paid much attention to abandoned buildings until i became one

in my dreams all the flowers smell like your perfume

i am the only person who has ever wished for the same snowflake to fall twice

if i could go back, and rewrite the definition of audacity, it would be how when we lost the bet of love, you said "we never shook on it"

i love you, if the feeling is not mutual, please pretend this was a poem

the only apology i want from you, is to have you repeat the names of children we will never have in your parents living room until they *****

we are the same person if you find yourself up at 4am dry heaving promises, or if you are kept awake by the laughter of those who've abandoned you

nobody ever told you that goodbyes taste like the back of stamps

sometimes i'm convinced that the only reason we hug, is so you can check my back for exit wounds

She approached me
Tiptoeing from across the room,
Although no one was asleep around us to wake;
I watched her lower lip bleed
From biting too much,
As she deciphers the DNA codes on her hair
With her fingertips,
Stroking the life out of it
Up and down-
And up and down again.
She said don’t get me wrong
But I found myself;
I found myself lurking underneath the light of your words
Bending with your o’s and standing straight with your I’s,
Because I
Got lost;
I got lost in the stories you wrote
About the girls who broke
And they felt just like me-
Dazed
By the love poems you cried down for her,
And I wondered how beautiful she must be.
I got flustered
In the blank spaces
That you chose not to write in,
And it felt like I should cut parts of myself
And add them in the vacancies
But I just don’t know what to add.
For every time I rest my soul
On the tip of a pen
I feel like I’ve said too much,
And every time I scratch my words
Throw away my being
Behind
Unread books and dusty light stands
I believe I haven’t said enough
For I could give more,
Be more,
If only I could start over,
And you
You seem to know me more than I know myself;
You have built bridges
Out of my paper shreds,
Tunnels out of my unexpressed thoughts-
You have created your haven inside my brains
And settled down in my heart.
You’ve managed to make me chew your words
Like breakfast
Was a poetic meal to be served
At all times of the day;
You’re an image,
I re-create you in my mind
Before I sleep
After asleep
And even during I sleep-
The thoughts of you never quit my head
Like a gamer would never quit
A game of Warcraft
In the midst of hunting season”
She took off her glasses,
And I could see the marks of them
Being there for too long.
She closes her eyes
As if she was about to take a leap of faith,
But instead she leaped two steps into my arms
And that was when
I got to ask her
What her name was.
And that was when I realized
It didn’t even matter.