******* isn’t the same;
My collarbone doesn’t peek up through my skin how it used to when I removed my shirt.
I can’t see my ribcage protrude over my flesh under each breast like it used to.
My hourglass figure has too much sand; it’s spilling over.
The mirror seems to hide its eyes and turn away and the scale screams for me to scram.
The numbers glare up at me as I look down over the overfilling sand to where I wonder what it’d feel like if the ocean washed up over my toes in a skimpy bikini,
My hair blowing in the wind as I let the sun kiss my cheeks.
How it feels to be kissed by the glass watching me strip into the dim bathroom light,
Instead of slapped by the picture I see in the mirror.
When I bend over to finish removing the clothing,
I have to look away from the extra bulge of sand that sits directly above my waist
And haunts me by the rolls that hang on to my fattened skeleton.
I wonder how it feels to be loved by the reflection staring back at me.

Paint for me a dream
Colored in hues of emotion
Steeped in love
And dusted in music

There are few things I love in life

And you are one of few.

If I could write you into the walls of my home,
I wonder if it’d still be standing.
Would the candlelight dancing on the wall
Remember the way your lips danced with mine?
The kitchen where we watched the birds
Dance through the trees, chasing one another
Similar to how we played tag through the hallways
And bedrooms of our house.
The bathroom where the tub fills with water like
How my anatomy filled at dusk and dawn with your love.
The living room where we fell asleep so many times
Watching our favorite movies in nothing but our skin
And the light illuminating from the TV screen.
I leave the screen on, the images flashing against
The wall where our pictures still hang.
I blanket myself in make-shift flesh and tell myself
The threads of the cover are your hands and arms.
The sheets over our bed hold your absence
Like an infant child cradled in his mother’s embrace.
Your pillow, covered in cologne and aftershave that lingers
Rests in my arms as I hug the object and pretend it’s your body.
The shower head rains water that blends my tears
Down the drain with the heartbreak I’m left with.  
But your voice still sings from inside the painted walls,
Behind the picture frames, blowing in the curtains that
Cover the windows. Most importantly, you linger in the
Floorboards and inside the beams that hold my house together.

Restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows.
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.
What did I know about drowning or being drowned?
Sorrow is my own yard,
And in short, I was afraid.
My life will shut very beautifully, suddenly
When everything broken is broken, and everything dead is dead, and the hero has looked into the mirror with complete contempt and the heroine has studied her face and it’s defects
Who created great suicidal dramas on the apartment cliff-banks,
Who cut their wrists three times successively unsuccessively,
Who jumped off the Brooklyn bridge this actually happened and walked away unknown and forgotten.

I used to pray to recover you
Who wandered around and around at midnight in the railroad yard, wondering where to go, and went, leaving no broken hearts
Who fell on their knees in hopeless cathedrals praying for each other’s salvation.

Your most frail gesture are things which enclose me.

At twenty I tried to die.
This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper.
Watching the others go about their days, likes and dislikes, reasons, habits, fears that self-love is the one weedy stalk of every human blossoming.
How do they do it, the ones who make love without love

he searches though i am not lost
he worries when i am not close
he fears what keeps me away

though i am with him always
though he is my calm sea
though my heart lays within him

After you ignored her legs that she held clamped together so tight that magnets would be jealous of the strength she possessed to try and keep you out,
Did you confuse her groans of pain as moans of pleasure?
Did you not see the tears of shame glistening on her face?
Why didn’t you listen to her when she yelled for you to stop because of the pain you were causing her?
Is having *** with someone as she lays anything but still on the floor comfortable?
When she dug her nails into your flesh and bit with teeth into your arms, releasing the pain you forced on her, returning it into the monster who destroyed her,
Did you think that was permission for you to start again, when she had yet to finish fighting you off for the first time?
How did you confuse her silence when she finally laid still because she knew she could not push you out from inside of her as enjoyment?