And when I fell, I fell for every inch of you.
The miniscule details that the naked eye would miss.
I fell in love with the way you sipped your tea
And the way your lips looked pressed around a cigarette filter.
I fell for the way your fingertips caused electricity to run through my veins.
I loved every follicle of hair, every fingernail and freckle
These things consumed and wrapped me in their arms
They infected my brain until it was all I knew.
My heart filled and exploded from these things I felt.
I was scared
And I ran
And I’m sorry.
These details still swim in my skull and I try to get them to disperse.
But there’s no escaping something that’s become a part of me.
So I'll yank at my limbs and dismember my ribcage and pick apart every last aching memory of what I've done to you.
And I'll lie there in pieces feeling more whole than before.

I'd like to place a cigarette between your lips, cup my small hands around it
and proclaim that you are a writer living in a small apartment in the city.
You wear trench coats and I follow on your tails, doing my best to appear pretty.
But your words are soggy like the suede of your clearance shoes
that have stepped in the puddles between blocks striving
to get you through to the next privately owned book store
where you leave half-written poetry on notecards
and slip them into J.D. Salingar's fingertips
without having had read a single book he has written. (Neither have I.)

My ex almost lover slides down the page of my messages.
I've got a whole book of faces, and his is the only one I'm looking for.
I have to click the 'see all' button to even catch a glimpse of him,
And even then, it is only his back in the mirror as he walks away.

I count days, hours, moments.
I memorize lines, words, syllables.
Soon, I will make the decision to try to forget him.
The lovely ex almost lover does not know this.
He thinks (at least I imagine he does) that I've already forgotten.

But he beats a staccato song inside my chest, like a hard rain on packed, dry earth.
He wakes me every night with his silence,
Like summer coming to an end, the cicadas ceasing their chorus.  
You don't know how accustomed your ears have become,
How much you need that sound, until it vanishes,
Becoming nothing more than an echo of memory.

A week goes by before you ever realize what it is that has been intruding on your sleep.
There is an absence of the familiar,
and to keep yourself from falling off the edge into the abyss,  
'dear God, will I spend the rest of my life alone?'
(Breathe!)
That habit of loving shadows reinvents itself.


*Once, I believed in fairy tales.
Maybe, I always will.

Praise the spells and bless the charms,
I found April in my arms.
April golden, April cloudy,
Gracious, cruel, tender, rowdy;
April soft in flowered languor,
April cold with sudden anger,
Ever changing, ever true --
I love April, I love you.

They smell of must,
Burnt paper.
Something charred,
The burning end of a cigarette.

A blackened snow,
They crumble to the touch.
Fluttering down,
Gently falling, a pile.

Some light,
Some dark.
Some miniscule,
Some huge.

Different meanings;
Memories,
Bad habits,
Even secrets.

Some represent the dead,
They speak stories.
They make the deceased,
Come alive.

I am pounding on the walls,
Clawing at my skin.
Make it stop,
Oh god, please.
I can't take it,
It's tearing me apart.

It's silent,
They're in my head.
Telling me what to think,
What to do.
Not myself.
I've ripped apart my flesh,
To please them.
Oh god,
It's happening again.
Help me,
Please.