i wonder if the doors in the house you grew up in
started slamming themselves to save your father the trouble.
i wonder if you can remember the last time you prayed,
and if you had trouble unfolding your hands.
i wonder if your mother knows
about the collection of hearts you hide in your closet,
i wonder if she could tell mine apart from the rest.
i wonder if your shoes know the reason why
you keep them by the back door and not your bedside.
and sometimes, i wonder
if you ever think about that night when i told you,
you wouldn't need to drink so much if you had me.
but it seems like we only speak when you've got body on your brain,
whiskey in your glass,
your judgement is overcast,
and you know i'm too weak to ignore you.
i learned how to translate your texts
from drunken mess back into english.
i am fluent in apology, but i don't ask you for them anymore.
this is just how it is.
it's not enough for either of us
but ******* it we are not above settling.
so i will ignore her name on your breath,
and you will ignore the fact that this means something to me.
i always thought the first time i kissed you,
it would be on your mouth.
i just wanted to be something warm for you to sink into,
something that could convince you to stay a second night.
but i sneak you out in the early morning,
and you take a piece of my pride with you when you go.
i am left to nurse the hangover from a wine i've never tasted,
wondering how this is possible.
waiting for the next drunk call,
for the next time i get to pretend we are lovers,
the next time i get to live out the fantasy i am most ashamed of.
it is the one in my head where you want me when you're sober too.

- m.f.

do not date a girl
who writes.
she will internalize
everything,
carve poems
into your eyelashes
instead of
kissing them,

she will analyze you,
calculate age
from the rings
your coffee cup
leaves
instead of refilling it.

she will memorize
the way your
lips curl around steam,
but not that you
take it
two sugars,
no cream.

she will read your
palm instead of
holding it
against her chest.

she will not
blink
when you leave,
because she is
already
romanticizing it.

A poem—
is just one more
scrap of paper
that has sailed off the table
in a bottle
with a cry for help.

I've been staring at this blank page for months
Knowing I should be able to write
The beautiful things that happened to us
The twists and wonders
Alive and palpable possibilities
Which now seem dead to me
Because we were never in love
But oh god we could have been

fishing the river is for old men,
solitary figures who saw their original sin
and now see darkness closing in
fishing is for old men, who can stand to watch
the leaves pass them by on the soft singing waters
and not wonder where they go, for they know,
it matters not if they make it to the black sea,
tarry a while on a quiet bank, or sink into the silt
fishing is for old men, who dream while awake
whose eyes no longer flutter but squint
in the sun’s naked white journey from shore to shore
when their line becomes taut, they know
now a slow dance, a chat will ensue, not a battle
they once felt compelled to fight, part of the larger war,
raging, raging against the night, for the fish…or
the fisherman, knows when the conversation ends
his line will again be loose, drifting on the currents
bound for the certainty of uncertainty
fishing is for old men
I am haunted by waters