tell me about
                     you

not that
hum drum shell like
fake western tourist traps

let me in

you kept to yourself

and that makes everyone wonder, now
that you're gone

and I tried to explain that sometimes there's
nothing you can do to change
someone's mind, no sense
wondering whether a
simple good morning
would have kept
you around

hindsight is 20/20, but
nobody saw that coming

I'm slightly out of
practice, a bit bent
out of shape like a
paper clip faced with
Rhode Island's taxes

at first glance, it might
seem as though I have
forgotten all I
once knew

first glances are rarely
accurate

what I do know is the
things that make you
you in your own
words, things like
cooking or
poetry or
smiles

these things don't die, they
hibernate until you're
smart enough to
wake them up

Expecting summer, I
choke down terror that
walks alongside convention

"oh, I'm just here for a
little while, saving
a bit of money so
I can do what
makes me feel
alive"

everyone stuttering,
gilded cages pieced
out of garbage

the irony settles like a cloud

to escape this world, I
need to save a bit more
money

"Oh, your gaze is dangerous"

i do not know how to love
softly,
i walk across this ocean like
i am from heaven
but my feet keep slipping through
the surface,
roughly
i try to hold my bones inside my body
but i have gotten used to the way
they look on the outside,
quietly
i hold my own heart with my hands
because i cannot trust anyone else but,
tightly
too too tight.
but do not tell anyone, megan
do not tell anyone.
i wish i could have loved you,
softly.

but what do you do when you're
a shell
a shell
a shell
of the being you used to be
i swear i thought i was the world
now i look at my hands and i
don't know them
don't know these freckles or those lines
i remember i used to tell my reflection
that she was strong and deserved
something good
but i don't know those eyes anymore
so how can i tell that to a stranger
tell them they're loved
how can i when she and i are all we have
and i don't love her