You are an unrelenting hurricane,
vaporizing everything in your path.
You are as fluent and necessary as water,
and as viscous as honey at room temperature,
always taking the path of most resistance.
But once you are warm you flow as freely as the sea,
and just as violent too.
And that is why you require a broadened cliff
for your unbridled waves to beat against,
a sturdy bomb shelter for your B-52 flybys;
an eye at the center of your storm,
perfectly peaceful and okay with all that you are.
Because you are the current within veins,
sending action potentials down axons and dendrites,
flooding presynaptic terminals with pieces of yourself.
And you will be someone else’s,
because you deserve all of this and more,
and these are all the things
I could never be for you.

I am empty.
You have taken every last word,
every phrase,
every letter,
every whisper.
They all belong to you now,
locked behind your weary eyes.
I can only hope that you keep them safe.
Because they are the last parts
of me that are still alive.
They are all that I have left.
And now they keep you alive too.
They are the warm mug of tea
on the mornings you feel weak,
and they’re the words that leave your mouth
when you feel too scared to speak.
You’ve ruined me.
Every last bit.
And this cavernous heart refuses
to drink deeply, for it knows the blood that
filters through it no longer has your touch.
You’ve ruined me, and I am empty.
But you are filled.
I am empty,
but I will be okay.

These words are for your lips
because I know how much you hate them.
I will use my own to lay these letters on them,
and I promise I will be as soft as the words
you spoke to me before the sun woke up.
I will sink my teeth into every crack and gaping crater,
and I will fill them with everything I have left.
My fingers will trace each newly opened scar,
and I will mend each one with suture made from steel.
And as you slowly chip away, I will
keep all of your pieces together,
because you do not need to be whole to be complete.
You do not need to be whole to be complete.

I was once told,
“We write what we know best",
and they say I know you deepest.
But like the fail points of a bridge,
you know exactly where
I’m weakest.
And if the oceans still so vast,
your thoughts stretch further
than its shores;
while the outline of your ghost
still sleeps upon
my bedroom floor.

I’m letting go of all of it.
Or maybe it’s just seeping out.
Melting through my fingers,
dripping into letters,
pouring into words.
I’m losing parts of me,
but it’s the only way
to lose parts of you as well.
Because you still
live inside these hollow bones,
you still haunt these pulsing veins.
And when I think that you’re all gone,
I still feel you in the rain.