i'd like to delete everything i've ever written
exchange it for something more poetic,
like a code he'll never figure out, but keeps trying to
like a picture of a lighter being held close to my wrist
but we all know i can't bring myself to let flame touch skin
like a wish
that i'd never learned to write or think or feel
in the first place

I was going to end it at one poem,
that one sentence (i swear)
but something about your hands tonight were magical
i've never wanted someones contact so constantly
just skin on skin, eyes on ******* eyes
just let me see you
and feel you
be around you
know you exist
you ******* know i exist.
-
human connection is more important than tornadoes
than earthquakes
than tsunamis and mudslides
human connection makes dying worth a wait

let's fall tragically in love
drink too much
and then fall tragically in lust
because I would like to stop and take a break
from destiny- I would like to pause and stop
who I must be, for just a moment,
let it go, forget it all, make this night
like it never happened, no rewinds
marked from the record,
just kiss me, for now;
I'm tired of being dependable
***** filling expectations and following the path
moral obligations and saying the right thing at the right time
I'm tired of being looked up to
'oh, maddie, with the good morals'
**** being respectable
**** being responsible
**** having a reputation
**** it all- just **** me.

There was an army of ants in the plastic plants
So I poured light through a magnifying glass
And I created a fire on the artificial grass

They scurried and hurried
with flames on their backs
Like soldiers on a hopeless plain,
searching for invisible barracks

And I sighed as they died,
because we are all the same:
Scurrying and hurrying from invisible pain

Hey,
I don't know your address.
I hope you never read this.
My therapist says that this is the way to get it all out of my head.
I was under the impression
that writing to someone
ended in burning the evidence.
That it was a kind of healing ritual.
Cleansed by the flames.
But no,
electronic almost-correspondence
appears to be the answer.
Here goes:


I got drunk today.
It seemed like the thing to do.

There was a couch,
it was grey.
Yeah, that one. The red wine stain
is still on the underside
of the cushion cover.

I prefer white.

I sat on the couch.
That's what they're for, couches,
so not much of a surprise, I guess.
But I don't know what to say,
I'm filling the void with
obvious facts.

I didn't even use a wine glass.
I filled a pink mug
full to the top.
Had to sip off the rim of it
so it didn't overflow as I carried it into the sitting room.
With the bottle of wine,
of course.

And I drank.

So I'm drunk now.
I keep laughing.
Of course, I'm not a happy drunk,
but everything is
wrong
anyway.
There's no one around to
tell me to shut up,
for one thing.

Not that I would mind
if there was.
It would fill the silence.

A silence punctuated with
pathetic little
giggles,
as I mentioned before.

I'm not sure what I'm laughing at.
Could be the man outside yelling at his car,
the alarm has been on for an hour now.
Maybe it's the fact
that you took the kettle with you,
and I haven't bought a new one.

I make tea in the microwave now.
Ridiculous.

I don't like you.
Not at all. I don't like the way
that you can't seem to
say anything of importance
and I don't like the way
that your absence
is like

it's like

being stabbed, but that's not enough I feel like I don't have the right to claim that kind of physical pain, I don't feel like I have the right to cry or even walk out my own front door for some reason, and for some reason I was not good enough for you even though neither of us tried our best because we thought we were enough but we weren't and I don't have the words to describe what you are to me, or what you were to me, only that grocery-store sushi used to be that pathetic thing you bought at past-eleven-pm-sometime and now I hate it so much that it's the only thing I can eat and I

I don't need you.

I don't. It's impossible for me to need you,
in the scientific, explainable
rational sense.

But explain it for me,
please.