THE LAST TIME I TRIED TO WRITE ABOUT YOU I HAD AN ON AND OFF HEADACHE FOR A MONTH AND THAT WAS OVER A MONTH AGO TELL ME WHY I'M WRITING ABOUT YOU AGAIN AS IF I DIDN'T LEARN MY LESSON AS IF MY HANDS AREN'T STILL NUMB FROM THE DAY YOU LEFT. I'VE STARTED DRINKING COFFEE IN THE MORNINGS I KEEP THINKING IF I FILL MYSELF UP WITH THINGS YOU HATE MAYBE I'LL BEGIN TO HATE YOU TOO BUT INSTEAD I HAVE THIS ACHING FEELING IN MY CHEST I SWEAR THERE'S A BLACK HOLE ******* UP ALL THE HAPPINESS THAT'S LEFT AND I NEVER HAD MUCH TO BEGIN WITH BUT NOW THAT IT'S GONE I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DO WITH ALL THIS SADNESS. MY LUNGS ARE FILLED WITH SMOKE I THINK I'M DROWNING I CAN NOT BREATHE AND I DON'T NECESSARILY WANT TO BECAUSE I DON'T KNOW HOW TO LIVE WITHOUT YOU. I DON'T WANT TO SAY MY HEART SHATTERED THE DAY YOU LEFT BUT YOU MUST HAVE THROWN ALL THE TINY LITTLE PIECES INTO THE DEEPEST PARTS OF THE OCEAN JUST SO THAT I COULDN'T FIND THEM. SO THAT I WOULD BE MISERABLE WITHOUT YOU. I'M JUST TRYING TO FIND MY WAY BACK HOME ALTHOUGH I'M NOT SURE I HAVE ONE ANYMORE, BECAUSE I GOT SO USED TO LIVING INSIDE OF YOU AND YOU LEFT. THE ONLY HOME I EVER KNEW ABANDONED ME AND I DON'T THINK I HAVE THE STRENGTH TO BUILD MYSELF A NEW ONE.

He won't tell you he loves you. He will not look at you like you're the universe or the sun or even the smallest star in the sky. He will not show up at your doorstep at two a.m. and he won't give up his seat for you and he won't make you mix tapes. But he will stay up talking to you, making you laugh and sigh when you're almost falling asleep. He will be thousands of miles away, but whenever you feel like your lungs are filling up with smoke and you forget how to breathe and your hands get sweaty, you'll think of him and feel okay again. You'll write poems about him that he will never read and he'll listen to your favorite band and tell you how much he hates their music. He'll show you new songs to listen to and you'll love all of them. A baby bird will die in your hands and you'll never stop thinking about it. This is how he will leave you. Two years later you'll still love him even when you're no longer lonely. You'll dream about his eyes and you'll find it hard to understand how he left before he was ever really yours to hold. You'll be okay without him but you won't be happy, and that little bird won't ever leave your mind. He'll never leave your mind. He probably won't think of you because he has someone new he can hold. Someone with brighter eyes and a wider smile and whenever she asks about you, he'll smile but he will only say, "all I remember is how much she loved this really ****** band."

do you ever wonder
about the difference between
looking at something
and the hallucination created
when looking past it?
if you look at your hand
it's all you can see
but if you look past your hand
there are now two of them
sometimes it's hard for me
to remember which is real
it gets me thinking
about how my father
used to wake me up
in the morning by rubbing
his stubble across my face
i spent my 11th birthday
under the assumption
that he might come back
if i drank his aftershave
like maybe if i could turn blue
if i could be his favorite color
on our bathroom floor
he would forget why he left
the paramedics were all sobing
as they pumped memories
out of my stomach
i coughed up the day the post-it note with your new address on it
burned a hole in our refrigerator
coughed up the day
the divorce papers came
and my mother
took a baseball bat to the mailbox
i've been choking on the splinters
for 17 years
it's been 17 years
since the last dinner plate
exploded on our dining room wall
17 years since my mother
started accidentally setting your place at the dinner table
17 years since italian night
at the restaurant on the corner
where the juke box
spat tired music
and like so many other things
it stopped working when you left
i guess it's no coincidence
since the juke box went quiet
that the cds in my car
only skip on "i miss you"
i've been hemorrhaging memories
for so long
and now that i'm looking back
i can no longer tell
the mirage from the truth
sometimes i swear
you showed up to my graduation
and last time
i was at your apartment
i can't remember
if the imprints of my hands
are in clay hanging on your wall
or if they were left in the mud
the day god had the audacity
to let it rain
or maybe it's like the time
i saw someone crying on a bridge
now that i think about it
i can't remember if it was me

I want to outline your body in red paint and turn it from a crime scene to a cathedral
If looks could ****,
I'd be a villain