I guess I need to remember that we are young
And most young love ends like that.
Sometimes I forget that love's supposed to end.

It's funny how your needs wane when my needs wax
Or at least stay the same. In stasis.
I still prefer just us two.
I understand that you're the opposite. Your needs wane.

And I still want you twice a day. I guess those needs wane for you too.

This isn't a poem. This is just a break-up letter, before it happens.
You seem to like preparation.

I wonder if you'll still read these.
I wonder if you'll still talk to me.
I wonder if I'll still want you to.

Since I was young I assumed I'd be alone. It wasn't something I thought about. It just always seemed the way of the world. I was always fine with it.

I'd rather be with you
But you say young love ends like this.
I say-
It doesn't have to.

Your lips may be my barbiturate
But your words are my poison.

I need you to dissolve me
Liquidate my mind
So I no longer must suffer from the toxins.
You cannot hurt a liquid.

Quick, put your lips to mine!
Crash them together to calm me, sedate me.
Your kiss will melt my thoughts
Allowing me to pick out the solids.
To pick out your crystallized contamination.

I need to build up a tolerance
An amount of your fatalism that I can take.
But I cannot do that right now-
Your poison has sent me to a coma.
Your poison is coursing through my bloodstream.

I am not the night.

Mine are not the stars and moon
Or the black holes or the planets.

But I can't hold the dew drops and morning glories either
Or the sun or the blue or the twilight.

I am not the day.

If I could choose, I'd be the night.
The poetry of the night calls to me
Saying-
Christine, I am made for you!
Christine, I am all there is!
But I cannot be the night.

However, I see both in you.

I've taken to piercing my body, when I'm at my worst.
What, you've never felt like losing a little flesh?
It's a little bit of loss
A tiny death.
le petit mort
The death of skin cells is the sweetest.
Just ask the vultures-
Why else would they feast on it so?

They are not war badges or battle scars.
They are circles attaching myself to my soul
A minute weight and reminder
To forget, to remember, to be.
To be as a vulture
To relish in what is found
Not beg for what is not needed.

They are not true predators, vultures.
They rarely ****
Rarely cause harm to the universe.
They are performing a service to you, sir.
Would you prefer to eat your dead yourself?

They never come for me.
They do not care for my skin
They do not care for my tiny death.

Pierce is the perfect word, for the action.
Pierce, meaning stab cleanly.
Pierce, meaning penetrate.
Pierce, meaning sharply, shrilly, briskly.
That's what it feels like.
All-encompassing, for a few sweet seconds.
That's probably the true reason.

Flesh is overrated.
Overabundant.
Perhaps the vultures will come
And take a little from me.
Someday.

It feels strange when I don't write
But stranger when I have nothing to write about.

I could write about new starts
And how I'm feeling near-adult these days
Or about how nothing's the same as it was two months ago.
But writing about events always feels wrong to me.
Forced.
Artificial.
Desperate.

What if writing was just a summer's phase?
A passing fancy
Disempowered with the start of fall
Disempowered by my attempts at improvement.

Maybe I only had enough poet in me for these three hundred.
Maybe I've used myself up.

Maybe I'm just not letting myself be inspired.

I wonder if they were ever in love.

I've seen one picture of them, together
Before me.
It's their wedding.
Yes, they look happy.
Did they know what they were getting into?

I bet she did.
I wouldn't be surprised if she had planned it all.
I don't blame her, judge her, admonish her.
She needed a way out; away from meaner men
A home for her children.
I think most of it was for them.

But he didn't know.
I'm sure he didn't know.
He wanted to be in love, I think.
He still wants to be.
I hope she didn't trick him.
I hope she did it honestly.

I hope they were in love, once.
I hope they thought this was forever.
I want to believe that they believed
Because there's nothing shameful about that.
I just don't know if I can.

Eight years ago my grandparents had their 50th anniversary.
All curled hair and black velvet
I danced on my uncle's toes.
He's been married more times than I know.

I know they were happy, sometimes.
I'm sure of it.
But I don't know if they were ever as they wanted.
I don't know if they were ever in it for real.

I don't know what kind of flower you are
But I like how you landed in my hair.

Dry, and therefore you must be lifeless
But saturated, vibrant, brilliant.
How can you be both?

I like your contrast
And I like how smooth the limbs you grow on are.
I like how you got trapped in me
And didn't really mind.
I didn't mind.

They say a flower in the hair makes a girl prettier
But you made me feel like more than a girl.
Natural
As in, part of nature.

Maybe your limbs were once a woman, too.