I always come back
Regardless of what I do
I return to you

I took you to all of the places I remembered as ours, with patience, moving slowly to keep the past of us alive / We kept going, I spoke without saying words, but you understood just as much without me needing to explain / The city was asleep and the night quiet / I saw the glow of your eyes reflecting off the blackened sky / Above the buildings were lights kept from holiday seasons, still lit, like they were begging to be noticed / It was a kind of reminder, symbol for a Christmas we spent together but separate / I wondered how we got here from where we used to be / The heart that once held yours is mine to call it, but I don’t want to / To claim the space of it is useless, the empty, is of no use to a hollow being and this showing you around is nothing more than a dream that never happened, one that never will.

Palm of hand touching hair touching cheek touching
you for the first time
Lend me your hips like
a sweet favor
I will teach this body rhythm and
the music of us will echo into
the bricked walls, syncing together melodies of
contact, electrical wire sparking in this blood, your
heart beating its way out of chest,
the softness, a catalyst for fire, I almost
swear I can hear the air particles kissing,
speaking, they are singing,
closer, closer

"gravity, is working against me"

the dark means nothing without
a glow under covers and
wrinkled sheets holding us eager, silent learning,
don't let go just yet,
we are falling,
falling
further into each other,

"just keep me where the light is."

I wonder if I'm on your mind tonight more than I probably am
My eyes move between phone and computer screen seeking your name
My ears are perched to their highest capability
My mouth tastes of blood from the lip I've bitten in your honor and
all I can do is wonder where you are tonight and if you're wondering about me too

In my dreams there is resolution
An abundance of apology, words strewn together from the many mistakes made,
Genuine meaning,
Sincerity,
And forgiveness
There is no awkward confrontation or apathy
There are no half-assed hellos, there is no avoiding
In my dreams you are holding my face like you once held me
Our eyes meet the way they used to,
And you move your lips quietly to say
"I'm sorry."

I imagine your sorry explaining what you never did
Like
"I'm sorry I stopped caring,
I'm sorry I pretended to"
You'd say,
"I'm sorry
For treating your body better than I treated you"
Or maybe even
"I'm sorry
That I can't face you, it is cowardice and weak but I really don't know how to"

I know that this admission is not one that would ever exit your mouth
It is one that is unlikely to even form in your thoughts but
I like to think that it is possible
I like to hope that you have some sense of remorse for the carelessness
Or it could be that you are only sorry for leaving what is now blooming
I was a flower twisting when we met and I have become an open rose
I'm sorry that you couldn't see the beauty up close
I hope you like admiration from a distance

your mouth, contagious memory of sweetness on the tongue

whispering voices through our sacred ears during the night

meadow of sunflowers, I want to lie in quietly

holding wrist against a wet rag heaving apology

forty-seven, return of sickness for the second time

photograph evidence and words but mostly in flashbacks

summer heat pressed against glass or a phone or a parked car

ants crawling their hungry way through holy skin, decaying

cracked open window for breathing without suffocation

claw your path through blue veins on pale skin and I will watch the

parade of history unwanted as it leaves the throat.

Muscle I thought I had, now softly disintegrating

Just when I thought I've
written you out completely,
scratched your memory off the edges of my bones,
wrung the imprint of your lips from mine,
wretched out every word you ever poured into me,
tore your image from the hippocampus of my brain,
Just when I thought I had said
all there is to say about you,
about us,
about this,
Just when I think I have
finally left it all behind,
You come back to me.

In my dreams
in my late nights
in the bottle of wine I force myself to finish
in the pack of cigarettes I don't even like smoking
in my wandering mind
in the short seconds between each day
in all of my writing,
Your name is always the first thing to be marked down.

Lover, I can't forget
I am still spilling your tongue
from my mouth
You seep through my pores on hot days,
the freckles on my face remind me
of how you once found constellations in them,
you built galaxies in my eyelids,
lover,
the cleansing is only just beginning.

I am too full on our history
There is no empty when it comes to us
I will be forever ridding
myself of your contents
I thought the tidal wave of
still missing had passed
but here I am
drowning again.

Doggy paddling to stay afloat,
I have never been very good
at swimming. I am still
hanging on to the deflated
life raft that is your hand,
you let go of mine a long time ago,
it's about time I do the same.