It's not our faults we were happy
Maniacally, brilliantly happy,
Midnights in hot water and cold air, breathing into eachother's necks,
"But what will happen when summer ends?"
We scrabbled at each passing moment with stubby fingernails
Teary eyes on champagne nights
We always knew we were no more than fleeting chaos,
Beautiful ******* chaos,
We may have fit together in all the wrong ways but we were such a pretty sight.
I could not crack open your weary mind,
I could not crawl inside with a wrench and Phillips screwdriver and right all the wrongs,
But I could whip your brain cells into a frenzy.
I was everything that you did not need,
But we were everything that we wanted to be.
We tumbled our way down the domino track to the very last peice,
And when our inevitable tragedy came like a cyclone, we threw up our hands in surrender on the last loop of that rollercoaster.
And love has many meanings,
So don't doubt that I meant what I said, love.

“Just don’t leave marks,” we said,
Profiles illuminated by the hazy Manhattan skyline.
Wine trickled down our sides
As I learned I’m just a number in your phone
So maybe I’m just someone for you to ****
But *******, does it feel thick and rooted.
I’ll press your words back onto your skin
So you’ll know I’m not just a myth,
I’ve been here all along in the echo of everything you do.
I filtered life through a colander
And you’re all that was left.
I’m open and star-shaped for you.
If you’ll hold my hand in a diner,
Will you hold it in central park?
Let our lips realign,
Let me wrap you up again
Let me fold into you like origami spoons.

We nestle into chaos like an old friend’s embrace,
Spitting fire-encrusted words sharp as the smack of my palm on freckled skin,
Under skyline bespeckled night like ebony, hearts like stone,
We became a self-consuming ever-implosive volcano.
***** slithered through our veins igniting synapses into eruption,
Your fingernails dug into my palm, your name hoarse on my throat,
We crave these embittered words, these scorched nights.
Mad as hatters, we beat on, drunkenly gulping down saltwater tears.
In the morning I’ll kiss your temple, love.
We forget our sins.

Bile in my throat
at the thought of you with another set of hands,
another pair of lips,
Deserved acid rising.
Face like tar baby, maybelline smeared
a black film to each eye.

Scald my case of a body with shower spray,
I remember when your torso pressed against mine
as water spilled down our misshapen noses.
I forget what your lower lip feels like
to be pressed between mine.
Forget what sound stumbled out when teeth left marks
when crescent moons kissed your clavicle
and freckles became a map of my sky.

We never kissed behind any vending machines,
but every moment felt preciously stolen nonetheless.
Too perfect to be ours for long,
we desperately traded in bits of our adolescent hearts
in the lottery of fools.
Doled out vulnerability
in the hopes that
maybe the happiness
would stay
just
a bit
longer.

I listen to synthetic music now
because my heart’s a little less raw,
a little more metallic,
and Conor Oberst cannot
coax open pandora’s box.
Because your ****** eyes
are no longer my 10:30
goodbye.

When the clench of your hands was the only thing that grounded me,
The veins of your palms were my rivers.
Your breaths traveled down my spine,
And every tremor was an earthquake.

Shrouded by rain in a little car,
You were so huge
And I was infinitesimal
In your all encompassing everything, everything.
And all I could inhale was your stardust.

You sit daintily on her lap
And everything’s a frenzy
Not a sunset fiesta
But an angry cataclysm of molecules
Ricocheting into hysterical radioactivity
And I sit quietly
Warily
I watch mine become hers
During brief moments
Of searing mania and the pit
Of my core is unraveling
And my heart is two patters too quick
In the most sedated of ways
On days when the wrinkles of your hands
Match another’s
And when you are no longer my own.