they tell her to let her imagination fly
but they don't know how much her hands shake
when she thinks of his smile.
the sun always sets
but the sound of his laughter
ringing inside her mind won't.
she wants to make a home in the stars
that twinkle in the galaxy of his irises,
but she knows better than to find comfort
in someone else's body,
especially a body that she has never
had the chance to hold.
they tell her to let her imagination fly
so she keeps thinking that she will someday
make a bed inside his collarbones
and that she will spend her mornings
watching him trace the outlines of her hips
with his fingertips like she used to do
with the strings of the violin
she used to play as a child,
but no one ever told her
that you can't make homes out of human beings.
she tries to imagine a world
where the distance between them is shortened,
where she doesn't have to look at the moon
and pretend that he is looking at the same one
even though he's probably asleep
and dreaming about someone else's eyes.
they tell her to let her imagination fly
and she wants to let it skyrocket
past the ozone and land next to where he is,
on the other side of the solar system.
they tell her to let her imagination fly
and she does, but not because she wants to.
she has to make up all the words herself,
the way he smells and the way he tastes
and the way he sounds in the air.
she knows that everyone needs a place
and that it shouldn't be inside of someone else,
but imagining a world with him
is better than imagining a world where there is no love
and where everything goes wrong.
which is to say, imagining a world with him
is better than imagining a world without him.

the cool of the winter
does nothing to keep us from panting
and sweating,
our bodies tangled in heated kisses.
the chill of his hands
and the warmth of my hips do not divide,
they multiply and i'm sure that if the sun
and the moon could come together
to make one noise,
it would sound like his voice.
you'd think the stars in the sky
would be brighter than his smile
but even sirius can't outshine him.
his eyes are filled
with planets
that have not yet been discovered
and stars that shine
ten times brighter than the sun;
his body is a galaxy
that i'm not scared to get lost in.

the only time you dream about her anymore is when you’ve drank so much you swear you can see her name at the bottom of the bottle and suddenly you’re punching your fist through the dry wall and calling out for her like maybe she’ll answer like maybe that’ll bring her back. it kind of makes you think that dreams aren’t random because you wake up thinking you can still smell her on your sheets and your chest caves in and you think maybe the part where she comes back isn’t the dream, maybe the dream is the part where she ever left in the first place. you keep looking at your hands and you can’t remember how to keep them from shaking because she always did it for you and now they aren’t shaking because you’re nervous but because her smile won’t leave your mind and every time that song comes on you have to turn it down otherwise you’ll hear her laughter again and this time you don’t think you’ll be able to survive the pain. you walk down the street and you think you can see her curly hair and her pale skin but you remember she’s gone she’s gone she’s gone but she’s never really gone because you can still taste her on your tongue every time you drink whiskey or red wine or anything, really it’s like you can’t remember anything but her. you can taste her on your lips like she’s still here with you but your fantasies are always ruined by the memory of her leaving and your arms feel empty even though she was gone before she was ever really yours to hold and you ask yourself why you can’t read books anymore you tell yourself it’s not because your eyes only see her name it’s not because every word on the page reminds you of her tell yourself the reason you don’t write anymore isn’t because all you can ever write anymore is her name stop remembering the way she held onto your hips so tightly like she was scared you were going to fly away and maybe you were but you always wanted to fly away with her but she was too fragile and the wind took her away you tried so hard to hold onto her you tried you did you did you did

I've been waiting for him to come back for an entire year, holding onto the hope that maybe he's looking at the same stars as me and maybe he's listening to that song that reminds him of me but nothing numbs the pain of him leaving. He's falling in love with a new girl every night and even though it will always be him for me he's going to keep moving on until eventually I'll be just another spot in his memory, a blur hidden in his past and I've tried my hardest to move on. I keep wishing someone else would break my heart but I guess I forgot that he took my heart with him when he left. I speak to any man with the same accent as him like maybe it'll keep the memory of him here...I don't want him to disappear. maybe he's forgotten all about me but I'll never forget the first time he said he loved me like it was something he was unsure of like he was scared of it and I was scared too, because there was nothing more beautiful than the way his eyes lit up every time he smiled or the way he walked like he was taking up too much space while at the same time taking up no space. every time I come close to loving anyone else I am reminded of the day he told me to wait for him and the truth is I forgot my own name when I learned his and I think I would wait until the universe collapsed in on itself if it meant I could hear his voice once again.

I can't help it that sometimes I smile at car crashes.
It reminds me of how he'll leave.
When he looks at me, my hands feel like burning matches.

His smile looks like lightning flashes,
I keep thinking the electric shock might help my heart start to beat.
I can't help it that sometimes I smile at car crashes

Our story will soon be only ashes,
I guess I need to stop wearing my heart on my sleeve.
When he looks at me, my hands feel like burning matches.

Tell me why my hands keep shaking like avalanches,
he can't see that he only makes me bleed.
I can't help it that sometimes I smile at car crashes.

I keep thinking he only took my heart to cache it,
this isn't something that I can grieve.
When he looks at me, my hands feel like burning matches.

His shirt is stiff with blood splashes,
he's looking at his hands like this is something he can't believe.
I can't help it that sometimes I smile at car crashes.
When he looks at me, my hands feel like burning matches.

i can't stop thinking of your hands. everything is spilling through the cracks of my fingers like hourglass sand. i can't take control of anything, it's no wonder i've always hated driving. the words on the page are starting to blur and i can't seem to get my eyes to focus because all they can see is your name. this year in psychology i learned that we choose what we want to listen to, that we shut out everything that doesn't seem important to us and it makes sense now that i don't hear anything unless it rhymes with your name.

The other day,
a man driving on the wrong side of the road
crashed into a pick up truck, killing himself instantly.
It reminds me of how you'll leave.
Lately, I've found myself drifting onto the left lane
and it makes me wonder about all of the people
that have died this way,
if they just couldn't tell their left from their right
or if they, too, were trying to go back to the past.