The one thing I want the most
is to un-love you
yet the one thing I'm terrified of
is that gingerly, in degrees
then all of a sudden

all of a sudden

everything will evanesce
like the slanting rain
the hearts i draw
on fogged-up glass
faint pencil lines
on whitewashed stairs
crushed paper stars
i used to fold, alone,
with you

and i will be left
with the frightful emptiness
and i will be left
to fight my dependency on you
and i will be left

(we're locking eyes today and I have something to tell you)

*Don't Leave Me

I have your (our) CD on my walkman
It's playing
all our fears and regrets
all our promises and dreams
It's playing the past
before people left
before we left
before everything
started to change.

I fell in love with a dancer
all angled jawline and pure ***
He took my body and turned it into
a puppet for his dance in the spotlight

I fell in love with a musician
all slender fingers and carefree spirit
He took my heart and plucked at my
heartstrings so intense they twanged and snapped

I fell in love with an artist
all paint smears and wild imagination
He took my soul and painted pretty pictures
that stayed black and white because he forgot my colours

I fell in love with you
(you were all of those things
yet you were none of those)
and I had nothing left to give
but maybe that's how you like me
broken, scribbled-on, empty shell of me

He was the Weekender Boy
with lips that tasted like salty sea caramel
on lovely Saturday mornings
and caresses that felt like soft warm sunbeams
on lazy Sunday afternoons

Mondays she sat behind him in lecture halls
watching the back of his black-haired head
as he flirted in the front row seats

Tuesdays were him walking past her bench
pinning her in place with those glacier blue eyes
that always turned away to porcelain redheaded dates

Wednesdays it was his calls that came at 3:05AM without fail
and she'd listen patiently to his drunken rants and giggles
that sometimes ended in tears and incoherent apologies

Thursdays he exhaled alcohol breaths one-two-three-four
while laying her down across his green vintage car hood
gentle as she moved lithe and languorous beneath him

Fridays they broke dorm rules and shared a room at night
they stayed up over beer and banana milk
and at sunrise she'd wake up in his arms to his smiling eyes

He was the Weekender Boy,
and she was the only girl who ever owned him on weekends.

You always talked about
how it wasn't fair
I burst into your life
and made you fall for me
without a safety suspension

The way I crashed your defences
simply with my mocha eyes
and disarming smile when you
never let anyone else in
wasn't very fair too

And the unfairest of them all
was when I lodged myself
in your heart without meaning to
and gave myself the power to
right your world, or destroy you

So now I suppose you'd say it's fair
because you trapped me the same way
and cut off my exit routes but
left yourself with one
which you took, eventually.