so i get this idea sometimes
that you enjoy being coy
when it comes to me
to conjure momentary spectacle
& make me wonder
if you paint catharsis
on the doors of a home
you've never lived in
as a memory of our first night together
because i do, i remember you
beaming white on blue
speaking softer than any storm
i ever knew, i often think that maybe
you live that night in your mind
when your pillow is cold
& you can't sleep, it makes me wonder
if you do as i do, and rewrite three years fictionally beginning with a kiss somewhere
maybe a balcony or a quiet car
on the sand or in a sunlit grove close to your home but always a familiar scar on the maps we know we know by heart
i wonder if sometimes
the idea of me loving you is too real
and if it teems under your tongue
to stay observant but distantly intrigued
if by this distance you think it safe
to get a dog and pass time
on the couch with a journal & some wine
what i really wanna know is if your fingernails ever wish to have my skin under them
or if they would boast
about winning a war with my headboard
i wonder if you can imagine me
meeting your parents in your apartment & shaking your fathers hand
as a first of many calloused palm readings
and if you know that i trembled before them
how insignificant i had felt
to not know their daughter
in the way i had envisioned
how i picture such poignant moments
so tangibly sharp that sometimes
i replace  my memories with little stories
i tell myself that i can't count on two hands
the number of times i've seen you
& that i don't feel like a crater
when i recollect our collisions
i want to know if you still find madness
in the words that have always been about you
i wanna know if your imagination of me
looks more like an anniversary or an obituary

you’ve lost weight-*
i am not skin and bone but my clothes hang
an elliptical waist that slips to my thighs
a second skin that wrinkles and lies
and says i’m well
by the cut of my body, bone crests emerging
like white flags-
i’m the shape of a woman,
a well woman-
a woman cut down to size

With a sharp snick, the flame opens against his thumb;
The cold stone of the pipe, a judge’s mallet
Waits between his lips,
And I imagine sparks
Flying like hot pepper to his throat, and down,
Down to where he speaks, to where he sighs.
His mouth is paper lace on mine.
I breathe in the bittersweet ashes
Like a promise to obey,
And the weight of these wings on the blades of my shoulders
Disappears

Ask me what it feels like to be dead inside. Go ahead. Ask.
I know you're curious.

It's like swimming in circles.

You can't see the shore and you can't see past the surface of the water. You're moving but you're not making any progress and it's frustrating. Your muscles are on fire and you're hungry but you keep going because what else is there to do? You could stop and just wade but you know that if you do that you'll give up that much quicker. You wonder what it would be like to surrender and let the water wrap you in it's unknowable depths for the rest of time. You wonder how deep it is and what it's like down there but you figure you'll end up there inevitably someday anyway so you keep going for the time being.

You can change the way you move through the water and how fast you go but you never stop swimming. There's a variety of weather and waves you experience. Sometimes it's nice and the water is calm and you can forget about the emptiness you feel inside and do the backstroke to feel the sunlight on your cheeks but other times it's cold and the choppy waves smash into your face and sting your eyes and all you can focus on is your breathing over the burning in your joints. Nevertheless, you swim and swim and swim without any destination, waiting for the next change to come.

You do a lot of thinking. You wonder what it must be like to feel anything other than longing and discontentment and exasperation. You ponder the big questions and answer the little ones and you try to fill the void inside you with complicated concepts and pretty words. You thoroughly analyze yourself, coming to terms with everything that makes you what you are. You're not happy but not sad either. You're not even somewhere in between. You gave up crying a long time ago because it never helped anything but you still laugh when you get the chance. You're very practical and proud of your cognitive abilities but you also suspect that they are the reason why you don't experience emotions the way other people seem to. You once read "Those who are sensible about love are incapable of it" somewhere and you think just maybe that applies to all the feelings you don't feel. This almost makes you feel distraught, or maybe you just want it to. Regardless, you contemplate anything and everything to distract yourself from the never-ending circles.

You swim and swim and swim and swim because that's all you can do and all you want
all you've ever wanted
is to feel alive
but you don't know how.

And that, my friends, is what it feels like to not feel anything at all.
Swimming in circles.

Kiss me hard before you go
Let me feel your electric aura
Touch the chaos that encompasses your mind
Give me one last glimpse of the fire in your eyes
One last chance to learn to feel alive

Overwhelming nostalgia blazes through my veins
And I fumble amongst the echoes of white noise

Trembling flashes of our summer together
Light up the inside of my head
The way thunderstorms lit up every night sky last June

I reach out, trying to touch one before it sizzles away
Trying to grasp any single intangible moment

Anything to feel your electricity again

But my fingertips are bruised from the static
And my efforts are in vain

Like trying to catch lightning in a bottle

The same lightning that flickers behind your smiling eyes
The same lightning I see every time I close mine

They say home is where the heart is
But what if you don't have a heart?
What if you don't have roots or walls or a spine?
What if you have nothing holding you together
And nothing tearing you apart?
What if you're a mere echo of a stray soul stuck in limbo?
A lump of atoms,
A burnt match,
A drifting vagabond,
Naked, lost, and numb in this cosmic paradox
Where satisfaction is but a distant memory

A constant stream of justifiable lies. Contorts what I want from my life.
What used to seem impossible is now my reality
but I'm not so sure I want it anymore
because it is different
so different than what I thought it would be

Is it worth the games I'm forced to play in order to dream?

Today is hard but tomorrow will be worse because I will wake up to hate
reflected back at myself

There are so many things I should do. There are so many things I should want.
Do we not define our own success? Each to their own version of happiness?

But all I keep thinking is
I shouldn't be eating