Even the oxygen
thrived off of breathing
her
*in

you didn’t want me

not when your fingers dug into

my hips or when they trailed 
their way up my thigh

and i don’t think 
i really wanted you, either

we wanted skin and we wanted flesh

touch without connection

we pressed our lips together

once or

twice but i think it was habit

more than anything

we were doing this

so we had to do this

touch me and i’ll touch 
you but really

i was touching him

and you were touching her

Doors slam like Satan himself is
in a fit of rage below us, even if he is
in the deepest level of Hell, I feel the floor
shaking like a 6.0 has just swept us but it
is only a consequence of wood slamming
against wood and fists fighting doorknobs.

Voices rise like the temperature in Arizona
in the summer, abruptly, hot and heavy, so
quickly stifling any chance of relief—
anger is an emotion I am far too familiar with.

Some people live quiet family lives, are never
interrupted in their sleep by screams from a
father who dreams of death and a mother who
carries a scythe of shame as if she is the Reaper,
some people wake up in the morning knowing
there is breakfast waiting on the table, fresh eggs
hot off the stove and orange juice with pulp, but
others wake up and make coffee for themselves,
knowing parents sleep past noon and
we are the ones who are doomed to repeat the
history of abuse and psychological suffering but:
we are the ones who will help to stifle the shouts,
to put a stop to slamming doors and shrill screams,
dysfunctional daily routines and waiting for hope
that never arrives, we have had lives consisting
of always having to act stronger than we feel
when the floorboards seem to be breaking just
beneath the force of our feet, because our
bodies are not just our bodies, we are carrying
burdens that weigh more than our bones and
blood cells combined, so when we step on the
scale the number we're reading is really how
much hurt we have been holding, not how
much food we've been hoarding inside of us.

We are the children of complex family situations,
we are spend-more-time-in-psychologist-offices-than
we-do-in-our-own-roo­ms, we are no-parent-to-tuck
us-in-at-night-read-yourself-a-story-it-builds-­ability.
We are daydreams of escaping like Rapunzel,
we are how do I save myself from a nightmare when
I am already awake? We are years of reading self-help
books in Barnes and Noble until we finally understood
that the only thing to do is to help the world help us:
we are strong. And we understand that family exists,
but for us it is different. We are the children who find
comfort in books and coffee and anything outside
of a house so filled with tension and hatred, and we
have been waiting to fix ourselves for too long.

I drank two glasses of a cheap wine and it left a sour taste on my mouth. It was bitter like your tongue and the mindless remarks that escaped from your daydreams. I felt like it was quite appropriate.
Yesterday I read on the news it rained for three days in California. Isn’t it thoughtful of you that you took your rainy mood to fill the blue with clouds and the sun with thunder? Then I mentally cursed myself for hoping that you had taken your gray umbrella with you simply because it would match the gray from your tired eyes.
I drank two glasses of wine and, well, the alcohol didn’t work. The fridge was empty and so was the your side of the bed. I sat on the couch with a half bottle of wine as my company and it rained inside my apartment too. It didn’t leave marks, it didn’t water my plants or wet the books. It just rained and rained.
(I was with you in California.)
Until my eyes dried.
The bottle got warm.
My legs fell asleep and I tripped and fell on my way to the kitchen; I bruised my right knee. I bit my tongue and didn’t make a sound.
The rain didn’t leave any marks, the wine did. A blood red stain in my living room mat to match the dark red sleepless nights you left with your apology filled goodbye written on a wrinkled napkin. These sleepless nights you left me with to match with the city that never sleeps.
Oh, so very thoughtful of you.
(You should’ve left me with the whiskey I kept under the kitchen cabinet, your The Smiths album and some painkillers for my metaphorically shattered bones.)
(I never really liked red wine.)

In the space between my lips
and your face
unwritten words wait
to be spoken in
tokens of
love.