There are certain people never meant to be written
with matching socks, or with expensive funerals.
Assume you can love me, even though I’m one of both.

No, take me by the shoulder. Tell me I’m ridiculous
in our own haunted, bony kind of language.
Here we go: most nights I want to miss your mouth
and kiss the hollows in your biceps. Listen.
I want you to see me cry so hard,
I flush out my nose with all the saltwater.
Everyone’s sick off of all these poems,
but a song made up of four chords can still be
some lonely kid’s messiah. I swear, I want to stop,
but you’re so ******* warm. Shh.
Lately, I think maybe that’s what art is all about.

I’m the lopsided inkwell, loving so hard
I can ******* stain you. I’ve got plenty of skills.
Surviving in the desert. Resisting atrophy. That’s right,
brag to your friends about my impressive
rate of infatuation. Make me a bumper sticker:
Your tightass honor student is never going
to love someone as disgustingly hard as I can,
*******, and yes, I’m going to glorify it.
I’m the original unrequited. I’m flavourless.
Dante got in a fight with Warhol and then I was born,
violently mass-producing poems about the hell
made up of your fingers. Take that, I can rhyme the life
out of the soup cans I found in your face.

I’m gonna need a pretty big truck to fit all of this.

Yeah, you’re gonna need a gap in your chest
like an eighteen-wheel semi, just to hold me.

i.* It’s supposed to be poetic that our matter comes from stardust, but once upon a time we were shining holes in the sky and now I cannot ask how anybody is anymore without getting an answer like “everything is slowly killing me.” I don’t know how I feel about this. I just know it’s huge. A supernova waiting in the saddest pockets of myself.

ii. I got tired of always going postal and bought some painkillers, recomposed my blood: half coffee and half antifreeze. Half NyQuil and half spite.

iii. I hammered my fear into an altar, splintering between the steel pews and jagged teeth of bread knives. I’m so sorry. I burned us both up trying to be the light in your eyes. Let me audition again, I’ll crawl into your bed and rest my cheek on the collar of your shirt. I’d **** for the Heimlich of your arms, looping over my ribs. At least then I can write another poem about the way my heart seizes up like a clenched fist thinking of us like this. They’ll find me fossilized with my thumbs in your belt loops, fingers curling around the loose change and ticket stubs in your jeans.

iv.  I let my tongue swell up with relatable pop ballads, because anyone can write them when they feel so profoundly wounded that no one else will ever feel this way again. I never knew a heart could feel this cold. Don’t leave me here after all this, baby, no one hurts me like you do.

v. I never use the word “self-destructive”, but sometimes I still choke myself for decent poetry. I learn to be so numb I have to feel the gravel in my knees. Getting the words out is like when you force yourself to cough just to feel your eyes water, just to make yourself cry. I won you over with self-inflicted black lung. I’m so sorry. I thought maybe if I hacked up how beautiful I found your fingerprints, I’d end up covered in them.

vi. Here are seven knots. Here are seven sins. Here are seven ways to bruise.

vii. I keep having dreams I can waltz with God and all of his ******-up creations. That I can peel away whatever buried its claws in me and leeched away all the electricity. I keep having dreams you teach me how to dance. That your fingers brush mine and we light up like sparkplugs that learned how to kiss. My throat like a bottle rocket from the cannon of your hips. Plug yourself in, tell me the stars in you are remembering how to burn again.