there are a hundred things that i could say --
tell me that love is real.
we are alone. it is dark. it will always be dark.
the sun lifts the shadows for a moment
and then the light falls away.

my heart, lungs, hands
have served me well for thirty two years.
and i will not watch my empire crumble
all because you were sad.

my body is a temple. --
but not for god or for you.
the hair it grows,
the winters it has spent shaking
the lies it tells me. --
all of this is mine.
your hands may touch my hands,
but they are not yours.
my body is a war. --
filled with roads for which i have no map,
and rivers that drown me again and again.

you are the blood of everyone i have ever loved. my eyes cut you open until it all spills out and covers me. my teeth on my hands and i can taste everything. the first day we met and the first time you kissed me.  you talk until my face doesn't exist. you talk until i mean nothing. i forget. i forgive. i become so small that you cannot hear my voice. i speak but the words are softened, covered by broken things. my bones break through my throat and every part of me fall out across the floor--
pieces that have no place
that have no home
i crawl across the floor and reach for you
but you are gone.

the best and worst days--
the cold air that steals october away
the leaves on the ground
getting swallowed up by the earth.
spring's first song. that old bluebird
that never left for winter.
the mountains we have crossed
and built.
my mind, filled with dark things,
things that spill out and cover my words.
years before you.
when love was a war that you don't come back from--
i still carry the stones that were placed on my eyes.
washed up on the riverbed,
i pushed the water from my lungs,
and pulled myself up onto brittle bones.

a warrior,
right as rain, the sun rising on the first day of summer.
my eyes formed of light, what no one can steal.
the world has worn against me,
some days i forget the sharp edges, and
so i love.
i cry, and i speak, and i show you
every part. until it hurts.
i search for bricks and stones and
anything
to keep me safe. locked away,
where light cannot even reach me--
where the black night grows so big,
so heavy,
that your eyes, the sun, are nowhere to be seen.

i am tired
in ways that i cannot explain
the words in my head mean nothing.
the blue in my sky has been scratched out,
painted over. replaced by the need to be better
than her, or her, or her.

this face, everything i hate
hidden beneath painted lips and eyelashes
every piece of skin
every fold, every wrinkle
there is no one who can erase time.
it has never been
about her-
the only war i fight is with myself.

i can never be
what i could be
when i can't look at me
without wanting to tear my skin off.