i remember that
game of dominoes
we played at your
grandma’s house
and your grandad
made us tea and
we ate your favourite
biscuits and all i
can recall is the way
you whispered
“i’m so glad you’re here”
over the table and
we were supposed to
be that couple who
were eighty playing
dominoes with our
grandson and his
new girlfriend he’d
brought home and
they’d drink tea and
she’d eat his favourite
biscuits and their
love would be like
déjà vu and his
whispers would bounce
to her over the table

is there a secret
to making a love
as strong as i believed
ours was, last?

maybe i should have
asked your grandparents

and here i am again
at the intersection
of pedestrian language
& old wives tales
swallowing gum
like 7 year memories
opening umbrellas inside
cause i can't seem get away
from all of this rain
i ******* with my left hand
cause i was told
back in highschool that
"it feels like someone else is doing it"
it gets me wondering
about the difference between
losing you and finding out
that some one else found you
or my sleep
or lack thereof
its starting to tear me apart
i keep having this dream
where you are in
an unfamiliar body of water
trying to wash my poetry
off of your hands
or the one where
something happens in my chest
every time you sit
on someone else's bed
i'm tired of feeling like something you've misplaced
but don't have the heart
to look for anymore
tired of you saying my name
like you're trying to bury it
i'm tired of wondering
if you can tell the difference
between the absence
of my voice & silence
the other day
i almost started sobbing
at work when a woman
asked me about
our equipment
i was explaining how
things come apart
and almost mentioned your name
it made me think
of how you used to say
things like "what would you do
if i showed up on your doorstep
one day?" now, i haunt
the windows in my house
i don't leave for weeks at a time
i sit on the porch like the dog
you didn't shoot behind the shed
the one that refuses to die
until you come home again
i told somebody once, that
you didn't even know
what my voicemail sounded like
i wonder if they thought
it was because you
are so important that i never
let it ring that many times
before picking up
or if you dont know
what it sounds like
because you've never called
you can't be the ****** weapon
and the search party
i'm tired of all the seats
to the ferris wheel in my chest
being empty
tired of your voice
being the one i look for
in abandoned places
that one sound i beg
to bounce back
down vacant hallways
i just seem to stand there
in all of that quiet
like someone looking for a mistake
on an eviction notice
so i guess the hardest part
isn't letting go
it's forgetting
you ever had a grip
in the first place
and since you've been gone
i wonder if when
you pushed yourself away from me
you used your left hand
so it felt like someone else did it

it doesn't hurt to be in love with you anymore; i am merely numb
i've hidden fragments of you in separate stores in my mind
and they jump out like grasshoppers
sometimes one at a time
sometimes all at once
and i receive this unbearable desire to smoke the traces of you into every other ***** so they can experience what it's like to constantly want to jump out of my skin to get rid of you

i've been drinking a lot these days to try and flush out the part of you that's left inside of me

it's not that i don't want you there

it's just that having you there is making my heart itch and no matter how much i try to scratch it, it doesn't go away

i guess i'm hoping that drinking will numb the burning sensation but when it's 3:01am and all i can think of is you, nothing could comfort me quite like your presence

love is as indescribable as your beauty and misery is deep-rooted in your system and like the essence of you pumping through my veins, it just doesn't go away

and i guess i get you because love is hard and if only i could spark and ignite a fire inside your lungs and smoke would convulse out of your mouth in the shape of a heart and you'd never have to say "i love you" because it'd have said it all

if only i could show you that there's no one on this earth who deserves to experience love more than you; i'd paint it in tiny brushstrokes in your eyes so you could see the rawness and fragility

it's a bit like a flower; it grows stronger the more you nurture it but you have to plant it and give it a chance to bud

death is the only thing that lasts, it's the only constant and when time is gone i want you to be my only constant

take everything from me and envelope me with an insanity that feasts off the warmth of your fingertips and the proximity of your lips to mine

you're a leech and you've ****** everything out of me and i feel myself thriving off the thoughts of you floating like sailboats in my mind

i wish there was a tsunami to get rid of you

i wish there was a cure for this sea sickness i feel at the mention of your name

if there was i'm convinced i'd take it but i've never heard a more mellifluous sound

you're a spiral and i'm a circle and we were never meant to fit together but for two shapes so opposite, we've never worked so well

and now i'm drowning again (drinking and drowning)

leave soon,
i can't get used to this itch