boys with lanky limbs
and ****** up feelings

boys who whisper dandilion wishes
and then rip out your capilliaries:
one after the other

boys who outline the roadmap
of your body with their fingertips
boys who demolish your soul
with their lips

boys who say i love you
and mean it

have you ever believed
in something so blindly
so genuinely
that the moment you realize
it isn't true, something inside you
changes forever?
i wanna tell you a story, see
seldom do i ever
go swimming in drinks
deep enough to drown in
but when i do
i speak in tongues
about things that none
of my memories
are allowed to talk about
like that christmas
at the isthmus
where my girlfriend
plucked a conch shell
whiter than gods teeth
out of the sand
held it to her ear
and stopped time
that day she was a shade of blue
the could've made the ocean sick
see, she loved to play jokes
when she held
the sea shell to her ear
she gasped, called my name
and said "i want you to hear this"
i said "yeah, right, everybody knows it's just the same old sea"
she replied "no. not this one. this one is special. listen. theres music in this one"
she handed me the shell
like a promise she couldn't keep
and i held it to my ear
with all the potential
of seeing shore
after being stranded
at sea for years
only to hear
a tired dirge of silence
spill from its emptiness
i guess she didn't know
how desperately
i wanted to hear it too
because ever since
something inside me snapped
now sand pours out
of every post card i open
i hear seagulls
in telephone static
sometimes i have dreams
where i bury my hands
in every beach
i've ever been on
and exhume this graveyard of noise
every time i try to sleep
i spit up fishhooks
and i guess i'm obsessed
but maybe
if i hold my ear
to enough vacant things
then i could have back
the time stolen from me
since it happened
maybe they would get it
if they knew what i wanted
when i blow out birthday candles
maybe they'll find me
face down in a wishing well
i watch eternal sunshine
of the spotless mind every day
pretending i can forget too
because this sea sickness
has followed me for years
because yesterday
i walked into a music shop
and all the pianos broke
but the only thing
i can think to say is
*do you know how bad
a memory has to be
that you fantasize
about forgetting it?

i used to pace my room
in confusion of why i couldn't get over
the single month we spent together
sharing coffee, kisses, stories, bodies
i barely knew your middle name
but we talked again a few days ago
and i asked you, "do you think
if the people we are now were to
have met eachother before the
people we were then, we would've
had a chance?"

inthe moment it took
for you to reply
i finally figured it out
me and him, we are the
connection, as opposed
to the attraction i have
mistaken it for, he taught
me how to love softly, he
talks like he still knows me
and i still don't trust it but
i have never experienced
anything like this and
now i am pacing my room
again, caught on a simple
text message, sent 11:29am,
that reads "yes, i do."

i remember the way love used to taste
it crept up my sternum, crawled up the back of my throat, strangled my tongue, and leaped out of my mouth with a trembling, shaking "i don't know how to feel like this anywhere else so please let me stay"
although there was an eviction notice stuck in between the door and the frame but i didn't open the door, to leave, to see it
and i used to look at people who could find something good and run from it and wonder how they could possibly do that when i ran to every doorstep, pleading for someone to let me in and planting my feet firmly into their ground as soon as they did
there are pieces of myself in every corner of these rooms, every crack in these walls, clumped in bathroom sink drains and i understand now
the more love you give that is unrequited, the less you have to give out again

and i'm only a few drunken, empty i-love-you's away from running dry

i love you this morning
it's a come home safe morning
fog on the road
& no seatbelt kind of morning
the sun is over easy
& nothing's on fire
there's punctuation
where i don't want it
and extra love
in the glovebox of my car
been thinking about being honest
how these poems are all me
but they tell the story
how someone else
might believe it happened
within reasonable doubt
no copy & pasted love letters
no 'who ever says hello first gets my attention for the day'
try a little tenderness
in my ears and today
there are instruments
in the back of my head
i think you love me
because i'm sunburned
felt it in a 'come hell or high water' kinda way, that 'touched from far away' kinda way that 'if i touch this piano one more time one of us is going to break' kinda way
and i drove over 17 bridges yesterday and today i'll do it again
and i think nobody gets
what that means except maybe you
i just tell them i love the scenery
that somebody must've made
these trees blush just for me
you know how i love
to change the subject
i bet they'd love the view
i bet you would too
and all these metaphors
for other things are beside the point
this is a metaphor
for why i don't wear my seatbelt
a metaphor for why whiskey
knows me better than you
could ever try to
all the buildings seemed to sag yesterday and all the stars
are doing that cliche thing
where they talk
quiet jet noise
& some lumbering giant
made everything shake
not those hand metaphors
not another one of those
& keep the sea to yourself
i think it was a train
it's sound hugged the embankment
for a moment
and then trailed off into nowhere
and that's kind of like me
how there's a town called 'rescue'
close to my home &
it's no coincidence
that i've never been there