little dark girl with
kind eyes
when it comes time to
use the knife
I won't flinch and
i won't blame
you,
as I drive along the shore alone
as the palms wave,
the ugly heavy palms,
as the living does not arrive
as the dead do not leave,
i won't blame you,
instead
i will remember the kisses
our lips raw with love
and how you gave me
everything you had
and how I
offered you what was left of
me,
and I will remember your small room
the feel of you
the light in the window
your records
your books
our morning coffee
our noons our nights
our bodies spilled together
sleeping
the tiny flowing currents
immediate and forever
your leg my leg
your arm my arm
your smile and the warmth
of you
who made me laugh
again.
little dark girl with kind eyes
you have no
knife. the knife is
mine and i won't use it
yet.

yes i said i was done loving you,
but i would be lying if i said
that my heart doesn't jump
at the thought of you.

I think about you every single day still.

even though it's been over a year since my heart was ripped out, I still wish it would be you to stitch it back together.

I don't want some guy who's name I don't even know stitching it back together after I've drank so much my head spins, but that's normally how it goes.

a new boy told me he liked me today and since he smelled like you I almost kissed him.

but if I would have kissed him, his lips wouldn't mold to mine like yours so willingly did.

sometimes I can swear I can still feel your fingertips tracing my thighs.

my fingers still aren't very sure how to grasp things because they still want it to be you I'm grasping, not the toilet bowl I'm throwing up into after a night of drowning my sorrows in *****.

my thoughts still echo your name, but  I can't tell whether it's from me missing you so dearly, or from me wanting to strangle you for cracking me in half.

I think about how we knocked the pictures off the wall when I pushed you into it with lust, and then we laughed so hard that we ruined the moment so beautifully.

sometimes I think I can hear your voice in the blanket you gave me after I told you I couldn't sleep without your arms around me, which then causes me to start weeping and shout your name into it which somehow still smells like you.

I've washed my hair over 300 times, but I still can't seem to get it to go back to the way it was so now it's still as tangly as it was that Saturday morning, and still smells like your pillow and cologne.

the butterflies in my stomach turn into piranhas whenever I see you, and they rip apart my insides and it leaves me bleeding for days.

I still think about that one time when I woke you up at 2 am when I called you sobbing, and you picked me up and we drove for three hours because you thought I'd rip my veins out even though I'd been so good for so long.

my dad asked me if I wanted him to paint over the writing on my wall from when we'd been together for a year and you wrote that you'd love me forever, but I told him no because it's all I really have left of you anymore.

you grew daisies in my heart and watered them with your kisses and love, but now there's just dust left from the tornado that ran across my insides the night you left me.

I remember when you told me it was over and I collapsed on the sidewalk where we had out first kiss, and I screamed at the moon swearing I was going to die that night.

I told myself I was going to close my heart and close the box of butterflies so my love for you would die.

I closed it. there is no more heart. and there are no more butterflies.

i fell in love with you.

not after we spoke for hours on the phone
and not after i fell asleep in your arms
and not after you sang me a song to
help me sleep.

but when we kissed it was the sweetest taste
of your lips stained with coffee and tattooed
with the taste of cigarettes and *****;
they told me a story about you without
using words...
and that's crazy, isn't it?

i fell in love with you before you said a word to me.
and it wasn't your perfectly placed brown hair or
your eyes that glistened under the sun,

but it was how you could tell me a story without even
opening your mouth.

perhaps i make
too many metaphors
about the ocean.

but i can't help
but compare you to a wave,

for each time i've almost got you,
you recede back to whence you came,

into the tide.

(a.m.)

you have never given me
a reason to stay with you anyway.
why should i risk everything?