When people accuse me of
being emotional or
oversensitive,
of playing the victim,
it invalidates me,
and then I feel small
and then furious tears brim my
emotional,
oversensitive,
victimized eyes

But as I'm trying to explain this
to you over cold chicken wings,
I go glassy and red with shame
because your words just put a cap
on my emotional allowance
and suddenly I see you
as just another dead end,
a road that leads
to an unlived life.

Are you a man or a prop, and am I
a fly from a web--
detaching, leaving weak limbs behind
in its grasp?
or am I the lone spider--
she who disorients
then releases
just before
venom hits
vein?

I see the back of his head waiting for me
at the entrance,
his hair spread thick with gel
a scar trickling down his left eyebrow,
and I stand silent.

Two roads down, you sit by yourself,
blanketed in burnt-orange light,
dagger hair freshly trimmed.

I am south,
climbing into his car, which gasps,
suffocating in empty bottles,
loose papers, the rags of existence.

Meanwhile, you watch bodies wordlessly
flash across white screens,
surrounded by your
amber-glass army,
waiting for no one.

He breathes out words
with closed ears;
a tender staleness invades the space
between our seats.

I know he is searching for me,
but he reeks of
danger and indecision
and so
I choose.
I choose to run.

the stones were loud
bright and brilliant
greens blues purples clears and whites
affixed with personalities
each reminiscent of a singular identity
smoothed by boundless currents
once warring above them and
gentrified by silent
woozy sand

i sealed the stones
in small white envelopes
each bearing a name
in inky looped letters
i taped them beneath your desks
told you they were magic and
you believed me
so they were

Thank you for being nocturnal with me;
for kissing me on the cheek
with your grizzly jaw,
for letting the silence between us speak
for itself.

Thank you for dreaming
of Greece
and music festivals
and road trips,
and for carrying my friends across the busy streets
and for laughing about it;
for holding me in that perfect way
that makes me feel safe
and loved.

Thank you for letting me bounce around enlivened with energy
and never asking me to slow down;
for never complaining when I wander away;
for staying;
for treading softly and living free.

Thank you for astronautical mornings, sweltering afternoons spread out in rainbow grass,
and for smoky nights;
thank you for being the last one on the dance floor with me.

Thank you for horses grazing on the beach,
and for log cabin jacuzzi hazes,
and for unfalteringly
hoping;
for huddling in a tent in soft white sand;
for believing in me.

Dear friend, you feel like home to me,
so let's keep chasing
dogs through the streets and trekking through sewage tunnels and
watching hours fly away from us like a swarm of gulls on a Mediterranean beach.

You know me:
a fickle girl, afraid
to commit or admit or abstain,
yet all the same,
thank you
for being my
friend.

It’s not just pain,
it’s hotter,
brighter,
more compelling.
It's heartbreak-love,
the kind that tears you apart inside
and yet awakens you
to the silenced realities to which
most are blind.

It is a pull, a lock that
hooks inside of another
person drawing
them to you
indefinitely.
You feel like a magnet
at all times,
crushed when he looks at you
with those sad, terrified eyes
which beg for hope.
You are crushed for him,
crushed for his pain.
Always wanting
to keep him
close to you, to give him
the warmth you
somehow know
he needs.

No one will hurt you here,
you want him to know.
You’re safe with me, I will protect you.
You want him to be happy,
more than you care
about your own happiness:
that’s heartbreak love.

And it's always the loners,
the lost souls,
the obscured escapees,
the ones with the shaded expressions and watering, orb-like eyes,
the ones with the smiles that don’t quite touch light into the face,
the kind that drains life out of you,
yet leaves you needing more.

He’s my boy,
that’s how you see it,
how you experience it.
He’s yours,
and you would do anything
to protect your child.

A single digital phrase
makes me throb, makes me warm,
raw-
hungry,
inarticulable:
the hunger, the thirst, the clawing through
his hair push him against
the door
with
force.
There was a glistening in the room,
a hard glaze
puncturing every moment
like a swift knife, brute
yet gentle the way
the stinging sharp
cold blade feels
against the seal
of
skin.

I feel it like a twist in my spine: momentary paralysis, a choke on the truth
I declare I'm better than this! your lies, your blatant deceit.

But she exists: giant lips and hair and pale eyes against ravishing olive skin;
A vision of exoticism.
Yes she exists: undeniably, in photographs and in the world and probably in your hands and in your mouth and in your bed
and she probably breathes in the same spices and sweat I too succumbed to,
She exists.
And you lied.
And you owed me nothing, as people never really owe each other anything.

And these pangs
Feel all too sickeningly familiar;
this time I promise myself
not to turn the other cheek,
not to ignore hard evidence, which condemns and reveals the harshest morning-after light
but my eyelids betray me; my mind is set to rewind, it can't get past
your soft mouth or your smooth chest or your voice saying "if you steal my heart, you can tell his father...." or your piercing eyes that felt like danger and freedom and wanderlust intertwined and
I know
putting you on paper is just further validation and permanence
both of which
I seek to avoid.

But I need to speak this pain because it's still moving
inside of me;
How can you, perhaps one step beyond a total stranger, gut and roast me like this? Ripping open wounds from years past,
as if all that scar tissue never
formed in the first place?