my body shatters upon impact with any
innocent glance belonging to someone
i feel is capable of the damage
i have become so fragile under
sometimes i feel like the dishes
you smashed against your walls
and other times i feel like the
dripdripdrip coming from your
bathroom sink faucet, it's there
but you don't notice it.
the point is, all i am are fractions
of you while the real me is
trapped in every empty sigh
you released every time i said
"i love you" in hopes you'd repeat
but knowing you wouldn't

your teeth are still dug into my
shoulder, your nails have made
a graveyard of my back
i am going to pull every single
one of them out and i hope
i hope you feel it

last night, i slept in your
blue plaid pajama pants
and woke up with them,
and myself, soaked in
period blood.
i cleaned myself off,
cleaned my bedroom up,
and found an old towel
under my bed that we
used to use to wipe off
whatever mess we made
on top of it.
i melted in a bathtub full
of too-hot water and
scented bubbles while
the song my grandfather
used to sing to me as a
lullaby overpowered
any thought i had about
impurity and sin.

"hollow"
would be an
understatement
if i were trying to
describe how i felt
lately.

i have no words left.

it's been  t w o  years
so i  don't  remember
any  specific  things  i
used  to  note when  i
would lie   next to you
and  find  the   perfect
metaphors   for   your
perfect  features.   the
only  stories i  have to
tell now are  the  ones
about how  i  think  of
you every  single  day
s       t       i       l       l
but  after  t w o  years
i have   finally   started
to  address   the   pain
of being    second best
and   lately,   not  even
the thought of    y  o  u
r      h  i  p  s   pressed
onto hers hurt me more
than how i feel on days
i eat,    or the  sight  of
myself      in the mirror.

some days i'm depressed because i don't understand myself.
i don't get why i wake up angry most mornings, or why the world around me feels so loud when i don't even get out of bed.
some days i wonder why your absence makes me want to *****, when i'm not sure i even miss you.
i'm trying to find the connection between the two.

there's this moment, every morning at about 8:30 when i'm smoking my first cigarette of the day, when i feel every cell in my body collapse and rearrange in strange ways i don't understand just at the sight of a patio chair that you could be sitting in.
there's this single sigh of desperation when i almost wish you were out of jail so you'd call me over to make love with such incredible intimacy and passion, then forget to follow through again.
you haven't done that in a while, i think you meant it the last time you said you didn't want me and you never have.
i still think you'd like me better if i were still in your bed.
i think i'd like me better, too.

i've never been to
a confessional but i
told you i loved  you
while you held me in a
dark bedroom and i
think that's close
enough.

i notice these moments
more than anything else
you can call me "beautiful"
we can make love to my
favorite songs, but even
though i take that home
with me, it stays in the
bag i brought instead of
the pores in my body.
there's a silent movie in
my head that replays
e  v  e  r  y  s  i  n  g  l  e
gas station, back road
beaten up motel moment
that makes me certain that
you are a front cover to
my back one, & in between
the two of us, we'll create
a story that'll put the bible
in the drawer next to the
motel bed to shame.

a million poems later and
i have not written anything
that could convince you
to love me back.