get drunk. get really drunk. forget your name. forget where you are. forget how you got there. get so drunk that you forget her name too.
2. end up on the bathroom floor. end up in an empty bed. end up in an ambulance.
3. make sure to find pieces of her in everything. make sure it kills you inside. make sure every part of you aches when you hear her favorite song.
4. read old journal entries. read about how much you loved her. read about when she said she loved you for the very first time. read about how she left.
5. call her. hang up after hearing the first dial tone. call her again. wait for her to say, "hello?" then hang up.
6. realize that her "hello" sounded a lot like "i can't do this anymore."
7. think about how your bare bodies touched for the first time. think about how it felt like an electric shock. think about how electrocution sounds like a good idea to you now.
8. contemplate leaving. it can't be that hard since that's what she did to you.
9. write her letters. tell her how no matter how many times you wash your sheets, her smell still lingers. tell her how your new neighbor's smile looks just like hers. tell her how your heart stops beating when you hear her name. don't send them.
10. start to move on. start to forget which side of the bed was hers. start to forget the rhythm of her heart beat. see her with someone else. see her touching them the same way she touched you. collapse. repeat step 1.

I want you to put me on your tongue and let me dissolve into you like the tiny white squares that turn those glossy hazel marbles into black holes and intense stares. I want you to kiss me and see negative colored rulers in the corner of your vision and I want you to have trouble making a decision between kissing me and observing me while I'm sitting on your chest and I want you to laugh like you did with your cherry colored lip curled over your childish grin over and over and over again and I want you to forget the conversation topic every time you close your eyes because the world inside of your mind is filled with blinking images that you can't quite explain aloud so you settle for little talks about Rosa Parks and Indian style kisses and how the ocean is the Earth's thing or the complexity of butterfly brains and whether or not they remember their caterpillar memories (they do). Describe to me the first time you saw your favorite color and what developed the affinity for it: yours, a glacier blue toy that resembled the ocean and mine, a lavender Easter dress that twirled when I spun. Tell me about your school crushes when you were four and what you got your clothespin moved to the sad face for and I'll write it all in ink on my knee caps because "God, we're such writers" and you'll check the clock in the gaps and search for tunes or lighters and I'll want time to slow down because the nights spent with you usually seem as though minutes are just a few seconds shy of sixty, which turns the little hand pretty quickly.
I want hours, weeks, decades, to analyze the freckles on your face or the pace at which you move your tongue and precisely how it tastes.
I want you to tell me that your brother would like me and about the mountains in Tennessee and maybe next time I'll try to stay awake, unless you want to listen to the way I breathe so fully when I dream.

When I close my eyes, I want to be able to see what you see.
I want you to keep burying the numb parts of you into the warm parts of me.

I do not love like this
I don't love like this
but I am learning

I burn between kissing you
what I can't have wholly
& somehow I am full
too aware of what I'm doing to be foolish
I rule out sound
birds
birds
you've taken both turns
I am laying
I am left
but am not without

I must front torture to embrace love -
without fire, I cannot burn
I cannot live without that heat
char instead of ink just to write it down

we are singing a song now
quiet
you are asleep & I am dancing in the heaviness of your breathing

this bed is not a nightclub
your knees hurt
& I have never seen anything so beautiful