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 Feb 2016
Dana Kathleen
You can tell a lot about a person
by the way they leave you
so let me tell you about all
the ways in which he left me.

He left me in my room
he left me on Friday nights
he left me by the lake
he left me in April and again in December
he left me on the sidewalk
he left me in texts
he left me in a different time zone
he left me in thoughts unsaid
he left me for the summer and for his hometown
he left me for her, twice
he left me on the kitchen floor
he left me in ticking clocks and calendar dates

He collected leaving like it lead to a high horse
because if you’re doing the leaving
you can’t be the one that’s left and
it taught me how not to leave people
and not to let people back after they’ve
left because they will do it again.

I lived in waiting for him because it was better
than wondering when or
how he’d leave me again
Is this the last time?

He left me outside
of myself and forced
me to reach in and find
all that's left.
 Jan 2016
Dana Kathleen
You didn’t want to be the one who got away
so you reeled me back in.
You drug my heart all over town and
my feet followed because my mind
was so fixed on the picture of us and
you gave my hands a fix by filling them with hope
until we were on the brink of it only for you to play the hero and say
you’re setting me free when really all you did was leave
because you wanted to come out unharmed and
I had showed you all of my scars but you only lied about yours.

You couldn’t set me free because I was still there
the only difference was I was alone
so I have to let you go because I love myself
way more than I ever could have loved you and
all you do is bring ruin into my life and
I won’t live with bite marks on my tongue
from things I’ve never said or unable to breath
from the weight on my chest so here are the dates ruined with a stain of you:

    September 14th 2014: Our first coffee date

    January 10th 2015: When you told me you loved me

    February 18th 2015: When you too it back

    April 4th 2015: When you told me you didn’t know what to do

    April 17th 2015: When you broke us

    May 8th 2015: When you told me you lied and you needed time and told me to wait for you

    May 31st 2015: When I realized you deleted me on Facebook only to    
find that it was because your relationship status had changed after you told me to wait

    June 14th 2015: When you forced me to the kitchen floor

    June 29th 2015: I don’t remember but I’m sure it hurt

    August 25th 2015: When you asked me about the moon and said that you missed me and asked if we could start over

    October 21st: When you wrapped me in hope with street hugs covered in darkness and told me you’d kiss me if it wasn’t for her

    October 23rd: When you pulled away but still stayed

    November 4th: When you took me to dinner and finally addressed the elephant in the room

    November 15th: When you told me not now but maybe in the future

    November 20th: When you planted a pity kiss on my forehead

    December 1st: When we went to coffee again

    December 5th: When you needed me

    December 10th: When you told me you loved me again

    December 15th 2015: when you told me you needed to be single to focus on yourself and didn’t want to be in a long distance relationship while abroad and that there wasn’t even a chance for when you get back

    January 26th 2016: When I found out you were back with her and had lied to me again and hopefully for the last time.

You littered me with lies and made your mark
on too many calendar dates and my heart breaks
for you but I won’t let it be broken by you anymore
because I’ve heard the best revenge is to forget but I think
it’s even better to remember and not care at all and
after 503 days I remembered how much I love blue eyes,
like coming home to myself, and I’ve finally set myself free.
This is really personal but I really needed to get it out of my system
 Jan 2016
Dana Kathleen
I had woken
at a friends to them
discussing their glasses and
tears formed in my eyes,
tightness formed in my chest and
I had to focus and my breath
because I thought of you in your glasses
especially when you had scruff
on your face or when wearing a sweater
I always expressed how much
I loved your glasses but
you never wore them more
and now I don't have enough
images to last and it's going to be
a long forever without seeing you
in your glasses.
 Jan 2016
Dana Kathleen
A guide to being 5 feet tall,
100 pounds and taking
three tequila shots.

Take selfies with people you
know and people
you don’t.

Hug people who don’t
acknowledge you
when they’re sober.

Scream names over and over
until they give you
attention.

Facetime your best friend
but because of your location
you cannot hear a thing
they say so the conversation
consists of you screaming
at your phone.

And don’t forget to text your ex.
But tonight will be special because
when you ask for a ride home
he will say yes.

But it’s not that simple
before you go you must
stand outside and scream
and chase your friends,
trying to stop them from
calling their exes.
And yell at a guy for not
treating his girlfriend right.

Next you must make a stop
at the local sandwich place.
Where you will fall on your way
to the bathroom to throw up.
Your ex will have to
carry you out to his car.
And when he tries to
drop you off you refuse
to go anywhere unless it’s
home with him.

You lay in his bed and
when he tells you he is
going to sleep on the couch
you cry and beg him to stay.

He agrees but doesn’t stay
long enough for you to fall
and you feel the kiss he plants
on your forehead
before he goes.

You will wake up at 7am
and leave tears for him
on his pillow case.

You will decide to slip out
and walk home, but as you
put on your shoes you let
yourself drink him in
one last time because  
he is the most beautiful when
he sleeps, and unaware.
Then you leave.

You walk home on a November
morning after the first snowfall,
never tripping on your thoughts,
on a walk of dignity for being
the one to leave this time.

When you get home you will
hesitate to shower because you
know the potential this has to
be the last time waking up
with his smell and letting it stay
with you all day.

You will get a text from him asking
why you didn’t let him take you home,
but how do you tell him he already has?
And that it’s empty now?
 Dec 2015
Dana Kathleen
When you told me you loved me again
you were wearing the same shirt as
when you told me you just wanted to be friends and
I had to stare at the same buttons through the same tears
because I knew it couldn’t be true.

This was after we sat at the same table
where we celebrated a year of memories
after we threw them out only to recreate them now.
And I’m unaware if you had more or less to drink now
than the night you first told me you loved me.
All I know for sure is that you had the same tears in your eyes
as the time you called me wonderful as you call me amazing now.

Wonderful was only enough for the 39 days after you first said you loved me
and amazing was only enough for a suspended five days and I was right.

You asked me to stay knowing you were going to leave
and I should have known because you’re always the one to leave and I’m always the one to stay but as we both drive away from the place that birthed us I can’t be mad at it or
sad for what we lost because there is nothing to return to.
We over stayed our welcome, we wore out what we built by going in circles,
dancing with the same issues,
and orbiting around the same moon and me and you and her.

There’s the expression of beating a dead horse with a stick and we are the horse and the stick,
we were waves that kept hitting the same shore and
we’ve hung ourselves out to dry and
we are now an aftertaste in the back of my mouth.
Hopefully the end of a collection of you
 Dec 2015
Dana Kathleen
I will never forget the late November morning
when walking across campus it was cloaked with a ghost
but it dissolved due to a distant radiant gleaming
and I thought how beautiful this place is
and something within me sank when
I realized it won’t be as beautiful
without the potential of you.

And when I looked toward the horizon
you became more than just a thought
and I couldn’t help but laugh as
I watched us gravitate toward each other
because of the irony because
losing you has been the most poetic thing,
you even texted me while I was writing this poem.

But the thing is I don’t know if I’m losing you.
What people forget is when an hour glass runs out
it is started over by flipping it so maybe I’m finding you.
I still want to add more imagery for this poem, but this is what I have for now.
 Dec 2015
Dana Kathleen
Last November I said Time Is Dumb
and you said it sounded poetic and
remembering this made me sick to my stomach
because last November you didn’t wear a watch,
the tick of a clock didn’t sound like a dripping faucet
and each turn of a calendar wasn’t an alarm without a snooze.

We had all of us in front of us for the taking
but we threw ourselves into the wind
which took you to warm arms and me to cool kitchen and bathroom floors
and this started the clocks, which haven’t stopped.

I used to count back to everyday in our demise
and when you asked if I still count I said of course
but a second after I realized I don’t
because it doesn’t matter how many days are behind us
or how many are in front of us
because velocity measures distance over time,
it measures the rate at which an object changes it’s position
and as the seasons have  changed so have we.

We meet in spring and fell in fall,
went on wandering winter walks as snow lightly fell,
in spring we sprung our clocks ahead to meet our end
summer was sliced in separation and sadness,
fall was truth and clocks so fast they broke
winter will be wagering within ourselves
I don’t know what spring will bring besides swimming in distance
and in thoughts of what to do with our time.

There are all these clichés about love and timing
but what if you were not suppose to be
my first love, we both had lessons to learn
you needed to flesh out that surface love and
I needed to rebuild walls before inviting you in.

Times isn’t dumb, we are foolish for letting it control us
but we may have learned this a year too late
for we’ve had our distance and we’ve had our time
and they’ve canceled each other out to create now
and it may be all we have.
 Nov 2015
Dana Kathleen
After this November will be the most dreaded month
not because it was when I lost you
but when I knew it was coming,
looming, and this time lightening wasn’t dancing
in the distance it was creating it.

Collecting moments of you
like storing food in a bomb shelter
for when I’m at war with your new
hand watch for not letting us work.

Every time the hand ticks
it is moving me closer to a time without you
and everyday is watching the hourglass of us run out.

Despite this, if I could live with you
in a calendar filled with Novembers, I would.  

But I can’t so before you go,
will you watch 44 sunsets with me?
 Nov 2015
Dana Kathleen
After every time you say to me
It was good to see you
But you know it was more than that.

You’ve also said we have the same eyes
but we don’t see things the same.

If only my hand could craft words to be
the source of us instead of us being the
source for my words.

Using my hands to paint
the reality I want instead
of what I see. Giving life
to us instead of a life being
taken from us.

If you can’t read me
at least you can read
what I create after
you’ve touched me.
This poem was inspired by my British Literature class, after learning about emission theory and reading some of Edmund Spenser's Amoretti sonnet sequence
 Nov 2015
Dana Kathleen
Forever in Almost

I read a poem applauding your second love
for teaching you that love still exists
after being broken, but what if your second love
is the same as your first, but not the same at all?

The same arms hold me, but they feel new.
Like when the bus is pulling away but stops
to let you on or when the light turns yellow
with just enough time for you to slip through
or when you catch the door before it closes
or when you drop something  
and catch it in time.

We lost each other like missed exits that keep driving
but found ourselves and now we know all
we have to lose. Dancing with the words we
only danced around before like a spinning top,
one wrong breath could end it.
How can something so fragile not be beautiful?

To have the person who broke you be the person
to reintroduce you to 3am’s,
drives with no destination,
street hugs covered in darkness,
and brown eyes being beautiful.

But he didn’t break me. I broke
by telling myself I loved him when really,
he was the first person I wanted
to love and be loved back by
but I’ve learned that’s not always how it works.
Sometimes you miss each other
like points plotted on the same grid
but not the same spot or parallel lines
that just run side-by-side.

Because, sometimes the bus leaves,
the light turns red,
the door closes,
and you can’t
catch it in time.
Almost there,
but never doing
what it takes
to be there.

So we’ll live together forever
in what we have built and left,
in what could have been,
in what almost was,
and what a beautiful
thing that is.
Not sure how I feel about this poem yet, still thinking of images to add.
 Nov 2015
Dana Kathleen
We spent months building
together but by the time
I realized it was your pantry shelf
I was already sitting on it
as a bag of sugar but
I gradually turned into salt
so you stopped wanting me
and I forgot I was living on your pantry shelf.
Until one day you cleaned out
your pantry shelf and I thought
I was lumpy old brown sugar
to be thrown out but months later
when you wanted to use me I realized
I never left your pantry shelf.
I was just baking soda in the back corner
and I’m still living there and don’t know
how to take myself off your pantry shelf
without your help so I guess
it’s my turn to use you.
 Nov 2015
Dana Kathleen
You broke the ice
the way you broke us,
with the moon.

Rarely full and
partly hidden only
seeing one side, yours.

Sometimes still,
solely silent
in distance.

Bright but barren
and bleak.

Never illuminating
but reflecting what
it dies to let shine,
disappearing to reappear
and take breath.

Always moving but
always there,
pushing and pulling,
highs and lows,
redefining its lines
and everything it touches,
even us.
 Nov 2015
Dana Kathleen
Subject

Shortly after our
first date I joked
Don’t make me write a poem about you.

It’s been a year and I laugh
because my poems
have become your home.

It’s been a year and
you’re kissing
someone else and
I’m just kissing people
who aren’t you.

Waking up next to you
for the last time
we knew it was and
we had to tell each other
not to cry so we could
kiss for the last time

When we broke
you said to me
I don’t want to be the subject of one of your poems.

But I warned you.
9/18/14 – 4/4/15 – 9/14/15
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