“That’s so high school,” they say.
“What are you, fifteen?” they ask.
But why?
I call them battle wounds,
And you’ve always hated that.
But why?
What we do in bed is who we are
Let me carve valleys into your back
With my sharpened fingers.
Puncture my legs with your jagged nails
Until I stain the ocean dark, dark black.
Claw, bite, rip, tear, gnaw
Your way to my heart.
Take it in your mouth and crunch down,
Until we mix into one. Until we are.
What were we?
Friends, acquaintances, lovers, enemies, strangers,
It doesn’t matter anymore. Now we’re one.
I will leave whatever marks on you I can,
Be they out of love and passion.
I will colonize your skin, make my home in
Every pore and crevice.
I will mark what is mine in that moment,
Out of fear that you will be gone tomorrow.
Do the same to me. Make me yours.
Strip my identity from my bones,
Replace my flesh with you, with us, with this.
Your friends’ lovers don’t leave marks like that?
Your friends don’t know how to love like I do.
We are what we do in bed,
and I leave marks.

A flurry of wings, fierce and fast,
A torrent of feathers, razor sharp
Two bronze talons, enormous and tight,
And I am gone. Gone
From the Dardanian shore of my father.

Did I not crave a throne like my brothers?
Why be born into a family of kings, only to toil
Away as a bearer of cups for others?
Their robes trail with ambrosia, and nectar
Fills my nostrils constantly.
I avoid their gaze, but find myself stealing
Glances as my mortal side crumbles.

True, he gave me a deathless life,
And chose me for his couch among all others.
Yet I have heard the tales: countless
Faceless women.
Swooping in under another’s form,
He leaves a child after taking what he seeks.
But what has he left me? A task and a fate.

I’ll feel no tender embrace of dying flesh,
No silk kiss from lips cracked with age,
Never will I be filled with anything less than a god.

There is something to be said for loving
In spite of death, not around it.

We shall remain here for eternity, neither
Progressing nor drawing back. My emotions
Stalled while my pleasure rages nightly.
What does it cost to love a mortal, you ask,
One running endlessly out of time?

I cannot say. But to be loved by a god, well,
The shadow never moves, neither from the marker
Nor from my heart.

You think you’re just killing time,
Passing through the day as the wind
Does the trees. Life goes on without your effort
And then you meet.

You think nothing will come of it,
Just as nothing has in the past. But
You cannot free your mind from their hands.
And then you catch them staring.

Your breath freezes in your throat
As your heart ignites like a frenzied comet.
The walls come down just enough for you to leap over.
And then you’re together.

You try not to lose your head like
You’ve done every time before. But even
The slightest touch pushes the boundaries of your existence.
And then you feel understood.

You, for who you really are, the swirling mass of
Contradictions and puzzles everyone else didn’t want to unravel.
They embrace the broken pieces, ignoring the jagged edges.
And then you fall.

You fall harder than the books and movies show,
Until the core of your soul aches that one day
You had to spend apart. Love closes its fist tightly around you.
And then you hope.

You imagine the world with them at your side,
Cheap wine, dinners on the floor, dancing in the park,
Where all you have to do is be who you are.
And then you breathe.

You accept that the cosmos strives for you
And your happiness. That this is real, and that
It is all within your grasp. It’s all right there.
And then they leave.

You’ve never felt such a blow, turned over
On your side, collapsed in a heap of rubble that used to be
Your heart, your life, now a scuttled boat on the rocks.
And then you break.

You shatter worse than the first time, than the previous time,
Worse than all of the other heartbreaks combined because
You felt that this one was different, and it was gone too soon.
And then you struggle.

You fight to understand how you could give yourself
To another person, just like that, and then have the
Walls cave in. You worked so, so ******* those walls.
And then you morn.

You lament the great love that you had, and
Remember how true it was, how strong. You try to
Digest it all, and to keep the flame alive long enough to heal.
And then, my friend, then is when you write.

So much of me is him.
I tell people that endlessly,
Until the words lose meaning,
Until I lose myself.
So much of me is her.
I tell that to anyone who will listen
To my sad, sad story.
But when does that end?
When do I stop being with someone
Without morphing into them?
Without giving them the freedom
To dig up what is there, and to replant
The garden that I have grown for twenty years?
Before I met you, I was me. I walked, and I talked,
And I thought. I thought, and I felt, and I loved.
I loved before you. And now I hurt. I hurt beyond
The usual sting of disappointment because
So much of me is you.
I see you in me daily, like a drop of red wine
In a glass of crystal water.  Spiraling, spinning,
Twisting until it contaminates the whole thing.
You color my habits, my actions,
My words, my thoughts, my emotions.
I tug at the thread, and it unravels into you.
You think you’ve cut the tie?
You will never severe this bond
Which I labored so hard to build up.
I am not a loose string to pluck, and
You were never that for me.
I cannot shake you; I cannot free myself.
How could you wind around me so tightly,
Cut into my bones and leave your mark
Like the aftermath of some beast’s jaws?
I cannot separate me from you. This is
What you’ve done to me. This is
Whom you’ve made me.
This is me.

I laughed as the gift receipt fell to the floor,
The one for the gift I bought before you ended us.
You no longer deserve the chance
To return this last piece of me,
Not after how you tore at my heart.
You cannot trade this in for something more fitting,
As you did with me,
As you did with us.
I want you to see this everyday
And to know what you’ve given up.
I tear it up and throw it out,
Hating and sympathizing with those shred of paper.
They’ve done far less than I to destroy us,
But I far less than you.
Or was it me all along?

Does it count to write like this?

Commas and spaces, hitting enter

Whenever I like.

Does that make this poetry?

Am I now a writer?

Can’t anyone just type like this,

Spilling out their thoughts,

No editing, no revising, just typing?

What does it matter, none of this

Will bring you back to me.

I could fill pages and pages,

Replacing gleaming white with

Black dripping ink,

And you still won’t come back to me.

Imagine more, pretend more,

Plan for a future that might not happen:

All things you told me, time and time again.

So I made up stories of things we’d never do,

Places we’ll no longer go, beaches our feet

Would never cover with tracks,

And feelings.

Feelings that we’d never feel, but we tired.

I did what you asked, I opened myself

To the risk of fate,

And then you left.

Drinking reminds me of you.

Not the alcohol type,

Bar stools and dim lights,

Busy rooms, empty minds, overly full hearts,

Using ***** to expel you from my veins.

But the everyday kind, the small sips

Of water to refresh me, you

Coursing through my system,

Giving me new life.

The way your tongue quenched my thirst,

And awakened something else in me,

Something no natural liquid could put out.

I would reach for you as I would a glass,

Your skin ablaze, the glass slick and cool,

my skin tingles as i latch onto both,

But it’s you I cannot put down.

Drinking reminds me of you.

But also the alcohol type.