you know that way that cars are cold
and the bite of 18 degrees gets under your skin
the way your chest dimples in, and the pores
around your ******* forget to breathe, your body
shrinks in the morning breeze

the way the fog turns red above Florence's lights
and the next town over looks like it's on fire, the
mountains hide in a thick of snow and you can
feel their chill in your very bones?

I will always sleep with my windows open, in the
heart of winter and the palms of summer. I like
the way I feel small in the winter, i like the way
I feel small in the winter.

you didn't deserve my mother's
kindness, much less a grain of
salt, were she to bother with
you ever again.

I used to like when he hugged me outside my car for
four minutes, how he wouldn't let me leave even if it
was cold outside and i was only wearing flip-flips, always
after our lips were red and chafed and my hair was a god-awful
mess on my head,

I used to like it when he listened to odd future, when he complained
about how ugly he was when I knew he was beautiful, how he was
worried that I would care that his skin was rough, that his skin was rough
that his skin was rough, but I loved his textures, his angles, his curves, never
smooth, never flat skin.

I used to like his baby cheeks and defined jawlines, how nothing ever mixed
with him, but he was milk and paint and oil. Baked potatoes with broccoli and
thyme, rosemary cloves.

I can't point out where all these things ended.

When I started to complain when he held me for too long in front of the door because
I told him he couldn't hold me in front of the car anymore. It was too cold.
When did my lips starting staying pink instead of red, when did
my hair start staying perfect, when was the last time I had held his hand
without being afraid of some boring, ridiculous reason, when was the last
time I laid in bed with him when was the last time I thought that he was the
best thing to ever happen to me, where do these thoughts go?

Overthinked, thanked, thunked? Did I wear beyond use, does my love have
an expiration date?

I use to hope that you'd keep that
photo of me tacked by your bedside
but you took it down, (vengefully)
I know this because you tore out the portraits
of me from your sketchbook the first time around

so I hope you find bobby pins still within your clothes
catch whiffs of my old perfume on the streets and feel your
spine cinch softly, I hope a single earring rolls forward in the
desk drawer, but I really cannot hope these things anymore.

so i hope the earring stays lodged in the crack, that all stray bobby
pins find their way back and that my perfume is never worn, never worn
never worn. I hope that my perfume is never worn
around
you.

he once blurred out a photo
of a diary entry, but I have
read through many things
and beneath the gaussian
he had wrote

*I'd rather be alone

no respecter of persons
and neither should I be
no respecter of persons
and neither should I be

I bet you just want
to see your feet framed
against the mountains

but i'd be too worried
about ticks or where
I'm going to go ***--
I worry where my lack
of an adventurous
spirit will ever lead
me


(to)

Did this happen last time?
I'm not really sure, our last
encounters seem entirely
imagined, as if I wrote them
in a book and fabricated them
elsewhere. Those memories of
you don't feel real, not even
that one last love note, where
I called you at the Rihanna
concert and held up my
phone when she sang



Stay.

there are
recent revelations
so secret, I am scared
to share them as if they
were birthday wishes and
you never tell someone
your wishes.