i met you when i was nineteen,
you like to tell different versions of this story:
we were in a parking lot, i found you at the subway, no, no it was during the last performance at a festival, we locked eyes and-
all i remembered were your shoelaces
how you laced the string through all the wrong holes
and the funny way how
we never look for
our vices till we're in
too deep.


"out there," i once said over the phone "must be a god for all the sad and willing *******-"


i was your favourite passenger when
you were drunk
at the steering wheel.
it was worth it for how
you always sped a little too fast
talked a little too loud
finally opened up that stubborn, lonely
heart.
the lane we're on doesn't have a name
look- how the lamplights
lurch forward;
up the alleyway, down the steps-
where are we going darling?
where are we going?



neither of us are doing okay.
you're running hard and fast and with those
loose laces,
i'm nineteen again and can't let go of
a bad thing, ****-
Hold my hand.
so it's sunlight. so it's suicide.
till the very end,
don't let go. don't let go.

Call a ***** a *****.
We're ******* in the double mattress with a city view of the skyline.
I'm sleeping with a man that only kisses me
when he's sorry.
Being okay doesn't necessarily mean you're fine,
but who's asking anyway?
Movies always make you think there's an end goal to everything
I'm just a breakfast in an eternal pilot episode.
There's a question he whispers to me
in the early hours, in Paris, in bed when he thinks I'm still fast asleep-
But you don't know what you're
asking for.

My heart clambered out of my chest years ago,
sick of all the ways
I beat it into the shapes I wanted.
I couldn't give it to you if I tried.

He doesn't say I love you, but i hear it all the same
between smudged weekends and the insufferable "what if's"
The reason we dress eachother up in pretty adjectives;
Love, we call her. Utilitarian goddess, I have no desire to be subdivided.
Halves. Quarters. Call me in the dark by someone else's name.


He kisses me on a friday evening at 6pm in an uptown restaurant, the way they do it in the movies. I wipe off the residue when he skims the menu. The speech is very long. The ring is very pretty. When I tell him no, you can see his world shatter. But there's always a ******* casualty isn't there? Him or you. Him or you.

You love me baby, I know
But that wasn't what I asked for.

In anatomy class our last experiment on motor neurons had two hearts joined in saline solution. They showed us how
if you shocked the vagus nerve of one with an electric probe,
                                                               the other heart beats too.
When I tell him this over the phone, he laughs,
Christ, that's morbid-
                                   I don't tell him I secretly find it romantic:
two hearts linked by physics, by nature, by law;
                                                      pumpin­g side by side
           when they're not even
                    in bodies anymore.

June's so gorgeous but you're all
summer lines,
Waking up
Intolerably happy.
The sidewalks keep closing in on us but
pay them no mind darling.
Waffle mornings, the honey gets mixed in with
the butter
how the birds outside sound like
staircases to somewhere else.
The pebble in my heart won't stop
making that clicking noise
The doilies on the dining table. The picket fence.
I love you darling, you know I do.
Just don't look outside.

So we're doing this scene again.
You're doing that voice, the one where it sounds like
                               you're about to cry, right before you do-
telling me
just this once, you must feel so bad, I don't want to hurt you.
That glassy gaze you get when you're
trying to let me down gently
looks so fucken stupid baby.
The director's got his megaphone, he's screaming out the lines I'm
     meant to say
It's fine, the blood looks worse than it is. I don't mind it at all.
                                                         But I'm just a bit tired of it all now.
You've got a new girl everytime,
                            with torsos like
                                                       coat hangers
               I bet she feels like one too.
Don't I spread my legs enough for you? My heart is just a brothel, isn't it?
I take it down my throat.
I take it on my knees.
                Baby, I don't **** with your promises anymore.

People walk into contracts all the time
                                                            ­hands tied,
                         blindfolded,
      you wouldn't treat anyone but your lovers like this.

        Burn the script, gas the car-
                              **** the Manhattan sky and every bleeding heart
                                                                ­                   under it.
the camera man is screaming and the whole world is holding
it's breath.
           Let's do this show some justice shall we?
                                     Fear is a better look on you than pity ever was.
              I'm sick of taking, it's my turn now, baby-
To dish it out and watch you
Swallow.

On the park swings, He told me:
I would never hit you, not like the others. Trust me.
Trust me.
I only smiled and tipped my head back
But I could tell you where it hurts.
The things we don't say.