you cling to me like I'm the answer to all of your questions
can you let go?
I'm less than a gravel road
no more than another ****.
I understand where you are, I understand who you aren't
break it, buy it, sell it back.
I wish you hadn't choked.

I am switching places with the stones in your bones. My arms are heavy because and I can no longer hold you up. The blood in my veins runs laps and I double take every time a strike doesn’t run through smoothly. It’s rough to think of things this way. I guess everything fell apart a day ago when nothing came out right.

Can you recall how dim the lighting was in the basement that night? I ran my fingers up and down my thighs in anxious habit. I was wearing the summer heat on my flesh. Though the ghosts kept me locked in my body, you kept me screaming to get out. Why have you made me feel that my frame is a prison? It’s not fair to place blame.

Last fall I broke my finger in your car door. You shut the door in anger, you opened it in spite. I sat down on your passenger seat and it sighed a caution warning. You were steaming; I listened to the leather exhale. Calling me stupid, you looked to me for confirmation. As I reached for the door, you slammed it. It was official then, the way you broke me had made its way to the surface.

I used to count down the seconds until you got here. I also used to count down the seconds until you left. One night you never got here, so I never had to count at all.

I don't know how to type without a backspace key
because I need to hit it
hit it
it it it
and remember why I'm so aggressive
and forget how to type without a
backspace key
and become less obsessive
what about now?

it it it
ends me

what about now?

I’ve spent hours realizing the reality of our motions. Your hands against my lower back felt so electrifying I could hardly breathe you in. The next night you stole my heart away from my heavy grasp and you became my lover. Though our actions and words seem progressive and dedicated, I still see us in a happy dance of love and ease. Remembering your face, I want nothing less than to graze it with the upper side of my palm and place my broken lips to your quivering counterpart. I can be every bullet point in your list of needs or wants; I can be everything you don’t know that you wish to understand. Tonight I wish for nothing less than your voice to linger through my ears, I wish to have you here. Please know that in this space we are granting to each other, you are forever on my mind. Constantly yours, Briana

Speaking from an easily cracked lead, my ink bleeds for you. My heart feels for you, my tone breathes for you. When will you be more than just my imagined point of view?

I think of times in elapsed homes and wonder if binding my hands with yours would have treated that isolation. I remember how cold my skin would become and I felt as if my veins would ice over like a great glacier beneath my frame. Not a single thing made sense while I was seven years old, not a single moment of reassurance was granted. Another afternoon I spent in a large wooden canvas that was my home, I felt as broken as a victim. Sit next to me while my limbs shake mercilessly; remind me why I’m here.
I have woken up to one more morning where my façade is raw and my heart feels constricted. I knew this was serious when your name was spoken for the first time and I lost my mind. I have lost my mind.

1.
You feel her as you walk into the room
you hesitate with every foot forward
turn around turn back now
you don't

2.
You decide you are fully comfortable
with your broken bones
and fragile hands
so you acknowledge this
and she doesn't

3.
You brush it off, but you run
and you look to yourself
and you think
am I ready
you're ready

4.
You need time, so you indulge
and you weep a blood bank
and you're not ready
you won't let her go
and you don't