i am sitting on my back porch with you
more satisfied from your presence than
the nicotine between our fingers, and i'm
holding back laughter to hear yours first
because it's cold out and the sound of it
puts the warmth back into the air and
i can breathe again.

until your leg brushes against mine
then pulls back faster than i could notice
it was even there in the first place

the space between our bodies is a purgatory

i used to pace my room
in confusion of why i couldn't get over
the single month we spent together
sharing coffee, kisses, stories, bodies
i barely knew your middle name
but we talked again a few days ago
and i asked you, "do you think
if the people we are now were to
have met eachother before the
people we were then, we would've
had a chance?"

inthe moment it took
for you to reply
i finally figured it out
me and him, we are the
connection, as opposed
to the attraction i have
mistaken it for, he taught
me how to love softly, he
talks like he still knows me
and i still don't trust it but
i have never experienced
anything like this and
now i am pacing my room
again, caught on a simple
text message, sent 11:29am,
that reads "yes, i do."

tonight was a godsend

he plays the cello in parks after hours while i'm smoking cigarettes and trying to think of things to write down later
he sleeps in the back of his truck with a blue blanket when he doesn't want to wake up in his bedroom alone
he climbs on everything and doesn't sit still and ***** girls that i can only imagine wish that he would kiss them too
he went to school for massage therapy and he looks like chris from skins and he was manic tonight and said i made him happy and he's sorry that he used me
i told him to do it again

if you could see me right now,
you would ask me if i have slept in the 9 months that you have been away
you would tell me that i look like a store that won't close
you would tell me how different you are now and how much you've learned in your shaved head and caged windows
and when i reached to touch your face, you would say that you aren't there yet
you never belonged to me and you never will
but you still keep the guillotine in your bedroom
and the skeletons in your closet still have skin and hair and eyelashes that bat when you make a wish on one of your own
your laughter still doesn't travel like it used to and you don't smile unless you have to
and *******, i used to lay with all of the smiling parts of you
what a foreign memory

i sleep but not as well as i used to
i keep the lights on in hopes that they might catch your attention
and you're no different than you were
the last time you didn't belong to me

i remember the way love used to taste
it crept up my sternum, crawled up the back of my throat, strangled my tongue, and leaped out of my mouth with a trembling, shaking "i don't know how to feel like this anywhere else so please let me stay"
although there was an eviction notice stuck in between the door and the frame but i didn't open the door, to leave, to see it
and i used to look at people who could find something good and run from it and wonder how they could possibly do that when i ran to every doorstep, pleading for someone to let me in and planting my feet firmly into their ground as soon as they did
there are pieces of myself in every corner of these rooms, every crack in these walls, clumped in bathroom sink drains and i understand now
the more love you give that is unrequited, the less you have to give out again

and i'm only a few drunken, empty i-love-you's away from running dry