I'm living rent free inside your mind
asking why you don't miss me
you're scratching
aching
trying to get me out

I show up in your mind
you blink trying to make me fade away
I'm whispering questions
wondering why you stopped loving me when we never wanted to end up this way

I've sunk into your skin
every time she kisses you where I did you still feel the tingle I left
when she touches you there isn't a spot that doesn't burn from me

I've made a bed inside your chest
each time she lays on you she doesn't hear your heartbeat
she hears mine
simply because that is the only tune I ever sung to you

I cursed your nose
I soaked your bed sheets with my perfume
your bathroom never ceases to lose my scent
both side of your pillows have my breath melted into them

I hope you still taste me
you can't escape me like you want to

I’m mad at you for keeping the book open
and not telling me what chapter we’re on,
what pages you skipped, what summary
you tried to read but got bored with.
I’m mad at you for telling me you would stop in
and you didn’t. I’m mad at you for keeping me
in sheets all alone waiting for a phone call,
pretending that I wanted to just stay in and paint
pictures that I’ll tear up anyway, or that I really
really wanted to do laundry on a Saturday night.
I’m mad at you. I’m mad at you and why

is that so hard to tell you? The words reside
in my chest—they are rehearsed. I’ve whispered
them a thousand times to myself in the shower,
about how I’m frustrated and worn down
and confused as to what happened, how I could let
something I swore I memorized slip through my fingers.
Then you show up, clean shaven, perfect curves
from your hips down to your knees, and I lose it.
I swallow all my syllables and drown myself
in a kiss I’ve begged for. I can’t tell you

because I’m scared that one wrong phrase
and I’m out the door, just a girl you used to run away with.
I’m scared that I’m losing something, that I’ll wind up lost
if I disconnect myself from something I’ve envisioned
over and over again in my future. So I don’t say

anything. I just wait until the last possible second, minutes
before midnight, and I cry myself into a bear you gave me,
trying to figure out where I went wrong, what happened,
what page did I miss?

Does creativity spring[?]
boundless
from the well of the abyss,
so we can sing.

When you crawl up out of that well and
up my ankles up my
jeans
up over knee hills
through thigh valleys.

Reach a finger tentatively
approaching
my hidden alley,
a dark moonlit crater you're
encroaching.

My Annabelle.
My Annabelle
Lee.
Hate me later,
love me now,
then
take your leave.

Perpetually pantheistic
endless cycles keeping man
in a vast panorama of
meaningless[?] accomplishments.

Is this it?

We are embryos patiently awaiting our birth.      

We are gods,
each
awaiting our flock of faithful followers.

We are embryos awaiting birth.

I will always think fondly
Of the park bench
Near the sad man’s statue
Whose beard of stone
Was sloppily painted
By a bunch of overenthusiastic pigeons

That silly park bench
Where we first kissed
And had our first public argument
About nothing at all
And at the same time
About everything we thought we had

At first our memories
Turned the grass greener
And the skies bluer
And sometimes it seemed
That sad man smiled
Though it might have been an malevolent grin

But soon it became tainted
A symbol of fleeting love
Of passion’s mortality
Its habit of swiftly disappearing
Like cagey, distrustful pigeons
And illusions fuelled by sentimentality

Now I understand the sad man
And consider his faith to be cruel
To want and crave and hope
Yet to be sentenced
His life writ in stone
Near an empty, broken bench