we can’t say we like each other
so we drink ***** cranberry out of the same cup,
a pale substitute
for kissing.
we can’t say we like each other,
so you picked a leaf to put it in my hair
and kept a piece in your shirt pocket.
we can’t say we like each other
so i listen to your favorite band
and you take too long to say goodnight to me at the top of the stairs.

i can’t say i like you,
so i will say that
ireland will be lucky to have you.
and after that, ohio.
and after that, wisconsin.
and i will think about the night we sat outside talking at 3 am
and not about the literal ocean
that is about to come between us.
not about the way
you’ll hold the hand of a pretty irish girl
and forget all about me.

if i could rewind time
i would meet you ten weeks ago.
i would tell you i never want to spend time with anyone else.
i would bring you out to the soccer field
and we will look up at the stadium lights
as if something inevitable wasn’t about to happen.

we can’t say we like each other,
so we’ll say goodbye tomorrow
and stuff the things we wish we could say
under our tongue.
i will thank you for lending me that book.
i will wish you a safe trip.
i will not mention the piece of your guitar string
in my back pocket.
i will not say
anything.

i’m sick of the way you look me dead in the eye
and say you do not want me.
if there was a way i could curl up in the space behind your eyes
just to figure out what, exactly, your brain is going on about,
catch me hiking up the expanse of your cheekbones.
i wouldn’t miss it for the world.

thank you for making me laugh til my stomach hurts.
i’ve been thinking about the way you touched my back
for two weeks.
i don’t know how to make you understand
the way my heart opened all the doors
to make room for you
despite doing all i could
to keep you out

and the truth is,
i'm past the point of being able to deny you anything.
so build me up and break me down,
take my hope and let it shatter,
a vase on the kitchen tile.
tell me you love me
when we both know
it's not in the way i want.
tell me you'll stay
when we both know
you cannot do anything but leave.
put your hand on my back again.

but let me sing and kiss the broken pieces.
let me try to forget
that you ever even touched me.
let me make myself
believe
i am better off.

restless twenty year old nights call to mind
warm sixteen year old ones,
running barefoot in the driveway,
sitting silent on the porch,
resting my head
so
carefully
on the shoulder of a boy
i thought i could predict.
at sixteen, i thought the best thing about the world
was that i did not have to participate in it –
i thought to shut my mouth and close my ribs
was a certain kind of honor.
i am reaching, reaching, reaching back to that girl,
wondering why she chose to throw all her joy away,
wondering if she knows
how much she must
remember,
how important it is
to learn how to care again.

if i could say one thing to danielle circa 2012
i would tell her to
buckle her seatbelt,
i would tell her to
remember the boy in the hospital bed.
i would tell her that
learning to open her chest again is
entirely worth the night she will spend
sobbing on the highway at 1 am.
i would tell her
to stop putting people in boxes,
i would say
to write more poems
that aren’t about dying.

maybe someday
twenty four year old danielle
will write a poem to me,
and maybe she will say
there’s a big storm
coming; maybe
she’ll sing sonnets to
the love and loss
that will one day buckle my knees
and send me running
into doorframes.
and maybe it’s okay
that i don’t have a raincoat.
maybe that’s just
how it goes.

men see me as a white canvas,
pure and holy, but best of all
empty

two eyes like projection screens.
a mouth - it doesn’t say much
but it laughs at their jokes.
thin wrists to wrap
whole hands around.

sometimes they peel back my skin
wedge hands between the muscle and bone
scrape out my tissue with
fingernails,
looking to fit a fist
around my heart.
they expect the same thing:
one empty ventricle,
ready and wanting

so instead of giving them my heart,
i take a box
and paint it red.
the keepers are
the ones who
know the difference

sometimes i really believe that all that i am
is a girl who was once loved -- but
i’m done pretending that's
the beginning and end of me.
maybe the best moments of my life
happened in your passenger seat
and maybe they didn’t,
who’s to say?
i’m done pretending i have any certain ideas
about what’s coming

i haven’t driven by the hospital in months
because i still get the same sinking feeling in my stomach
when i walked out for the last time and
left you behind, hooked up to a million machines.
this town is dotted with little heartbreaks, places
where you left a mark on me,
and sometimes it’s just easier
to leave,

so i left. a summer in new jersey
was never quite what i planned,
which is fitting, since none of this was.
i'd be lying if i never said
that with every step i take
away from you
my head gets a little clearer,
my smile gets a little more
natural,
and maybe this is just how
healing is supposed to work.
maybe this is just how
deserts are crossed
and mountains are climbed;
step by step.

mornings are for the beach:
whispered self-conversations
and singing in the underpass,
the clearest i can hear myself

peeking out under baseball caps
and sneaking around town
as if i don’t live here anymore,
which i guess i don’t

staring too hard at the sky
and sometimes-nighttime escapes
driving in cars that aren’t mine;
going around, going nowhere,

and everywhere: choked by
memories in every place we ever went,
making this place feel like less of a home
and more like a crime scene

i do not know how to stop feeling haunted

there are suitcases at the end of the bed
and none of them are mine,
the ghost of you is teaching me
how to run.
and – what, you thought i would stay
just to watch you be in love with her?
just to live in the knowledge
that you no longer want me?
you thought i would stay for that?

maybe i am that masochistic,
maybe i really did love you.
but maybe some people can love
boundlessly,
without drawing lines,
putting up walls.
and maybe i
can't.

i used to write poems about our reunion
in some brooklyn cafe
before i knew what distance between us
actually was.
no matter how many times it happens,
i am amazed at the capacity of human beings
to grow together
and grow apart.
what i’m trying to say is,
i miss you.

i used to connect the dots of your freckles
while you spent hours
coaxing food into my stubborn
mouth
i was restless and cynical and
i would never tell you when anything was wrong
you had more patience with me
than i deserved

i’ve been convincing myself for years
that you’re nothing more
than an old wound,
but the truth is
there’s a part of me that won’t ever make sense
unless someday, somehow
i see you again.
there is a small place in my heart
that has never stopped
waiting
(and i can’t quite convince it
that you are irretrievably gone)

so maybe it isn’t wrong,
maybe one day
we’ll find our way together
again
and you’ll have grown our your beard
and i’ll have cut off my hair
and i swear
maybe you’ll be wearing
those old jeans
and we’ll talk about the way
i used to untie your shoelaces
under the lunch table

(as if i wouldn’t still
drop everything and marry you
if you would
only
ask)