I just wanted to say
that I forgot what I wanted to say
because you look so cute bending over
to scoop the cereal out of the bottom container,
and your smile slants just like a three-day crescent moon
when you spill some Fruity Pebbles on the ground,
or how you cradle your cup of milk
like sometimes you cradle me when we’re half asleep
and our dreams start to play tag with one another,
dressing themselves in the fog we’ve created
from the steam our kisses drag out. And I guess I get
how ******* you get when you’re sneakers are unlaced
but your mind is tripping between hours spent here
smoking this and banging yourself up with that. I guess I get
how you can loose focus, but I’ve caught you at your lowest
and I’ve straightened you out just by kissing the pressure points
until you’ve been strained like elastic and your heart has thickened.
I just wanted to say
that I forgot what I wanted to say
because you pull at my thighs like I’m made of clay
when we’re messing around in the shower,
letting the water fall around us like our own little storm—
you’re the perfect sound of thunder. But you’ve left me
in puddles on my carpet, pulsing to the beat of my fluid heart
as I try to remember exactly what it is about your face that I love so much.
I bet you’re getting tired of hearing me ask if you’re up,
of if your’re busy, or if you could just knock on my door two times
instead of once so maybe I could feel it through the thick skin
I’ve grown over the years of stopping and locking and shutting down.  
And I guess I get that. But I also, just. . . you—
I forgot what I wanted to say.

To his Best Friend

You can tell him how incredibly annoying
it is that he makes love with his socks on,
and you can tell him that no matter
how many country songs he plays
the jeep will still be broken and the sun
will still go down at five o’clock
despite the garage lights and the cans of Miller.

Tell him I really didn’t notice him when he walked in,
and tell him that maybe I’ll be over to the party Saturday,
or that he walks pigeon-toed and that’s why
he ***** at walking on the curbs.

You can tell him anything you want to, just
don’t tell him that I love the way he holds a spoon
like a shovel or how his hair sticks up in the front
outside his hood in the mornings, or that his pants
don’t fit his waist that dips in from his belly,
soft, skin warm from my body lying on top of his,
and don’t tell him

that the more backwards we bend the more forwards
I fall. Don’t tell him that sometimes I make the bed
just so I can stay longer, please,
don’t tell him that the way he looks in a towel
with water dripping from his bottom lip
makes me want to crawl back into bed, rattle
his bones, and **** the kisses with my teeth
as I dig myself deeper into this infrastructure,
this balance, between hating what I’ve done,
and loving someone
who’s never going to think you’re enough.

Don’t tell him that I’ve strung together our moments
like a necklace and that I wear that burden
on my chest, hoping, between prayers
that I find a way to breathe. Don’t tell him
that I’ve broken over him. Don’t tell him

that sometimes my double-takes are triple
and sometimes I cry in the bathroom
and sometimes—
just please (save me*) please don’t tell him.

Apparently, they met at some gas station
and she had a little oil on her cheek
so he had to tell her, whether out of humbleness
or kindness or the Tender, Love, I’ll always keep
wrapped around my promise ring. Apparently,
she’s ****** and told some half-bent story of her aura
being changed and how she convinced a homeless man
to take her extra two slices of pizza. I guess she possess
some sort of sleepy attitude that compliments the simple beauty
in the mole on her upper lip or the way her hair
tangles itself in pretty little coils with her blooming wild.
Apparently, it’s not that hard to find time to ****
cause I always believe
the “business meeting” pitch and she knows where
we keep the key. And I guess my sensible heart
never thought twice about how the bed never matched up
quite the way I made it the morning, or how we were always
just one coffee mug short at the end of the week. Apparently,
I’ve been wearing her clothes and I’ve been sleeping
in her skin, or at least the shadow of it, left on his arms
when he pulls me in like a dance at the end of the evening.
Not even a shower could rinse her off.
Apparently, he still loves me.
But I swear the way I swung that curtain shut
should have hit him hard enough to spit up
some sort of confession that wasn’t soaked in a good front,
or bruised with prudence. I watched his apology drip
like paint from a handmade brush. Apparently,
time is just destructive and even when you’ve smoothed
out all the bubbles before you fire it
things eventually still blow up.

I fall in love with every backwards hat, the way a boy holds
a Natural Light, his scarred knuckles stretching over the aluminum,
an *** in a great pair of khaki’s, how he bobs his head to the perfect
pre-game song. I fall in love with every you’re so gorgeous, or body scan,
or even when the drunken façade has faded and we are left
hanging onto window curtains and thin sheets, talking
about our dads or how he broke his arm in the 6th grade.
The way he balances his eyes on my shoulder blades, stares
at my lips like he just can’t wait until I stop talking so we can kiss.
I fall for every nightly temptation, every Tuesday morning regret,
every hug around my waist. I fall for every circle drawn with a thumb
around my hip bones, over and over again, until my skin is numb
and my expectation collides with this temporary high. And if you could collect
all the lover’s I left on slips of paper, I bet their sparks would glow purple,
neon confetti in the night air, just like stars. Because they fell,
whether momentarily or not, in love with me somewhere between
the ******* and the kissing and the tongue gracing the corner of my mouth
when he’s trying to pick me up at the party, or how I let my hand sit
in the loop of my jeans, how I take no ******* moonslide line
for bald truth. I just use it to get to people like you, because the fraction
of time in which I live begs for the short-term. It thrives on the idea
that one night and one small shatter is better than a committed sever
of someone you just got too ******* close to. Because I can’t want
to fall for your pride, your integrity, the way you picture your kids
using your old baseball glove. My generation needs fire just to feel a burn.
I can’t want to love you honestly, with dinner date plates, with a door
held open just a little longer, without the liquor. I’m just doll
living in the freelance design of a good time. My bedroom is your heart,
and I wear the lace high up on my thighs, just waiting for someone to play with me.

Sometimes when you’re sleeping, you smash
your nightmares into my pillow with your head,
which is why I think your hair sticks up sideways
when you roll over to me in our mornings
and kiss the back of my neck until the sound
of my own laughter wakes me up. I know you’re colorblind,
but you color me like a book, ignoring all the lines. I glow
in the contour your eyes make of me when you’re listening
to me frame the story I’m spitting at you before 2a.m.
You admire the shape it takes above my head, suspsendig
over the two of us like a mobile that rocks us, safely,
back to sleep. I love thinking about how you take your coffee,
how you put your sweatpants on in the morning, or the feel
of your lips nibbling at my palm as I trace your cheekbones
with my fingers like you’re a charcoal drawing
I never finish because I just don’t want
us to end. And I know that sometimes I like to skip some pages,
but come on, I just like to get to the good part. And I know
I’ve bottled up your sweetness for whatever reason
I had back at the time, and I know that I drive slow,
that I kiss you too long at the door, that I never
let you fall asleep before midnight, but I’ve always been your biggest fan.
I’ve always sort of loved you, even if it was in pieces.
I just got stuck. I just couldn’t find my way there again.
But I drew the curtain a tiny bit this morning so the sun
could highlight your sleepy face before I woke you,
and I covered your belly with the blanket so you wouldn’t be cold,
and I know our chemistry is a little old, but
you’re my favorite thing to hold,
or so I’ve been told.

I stopped pulling you towards me two pieces ago,
when you sliced my vision and ****** out the nectar,
tied the rope around my neck and dropped your anchor.
I tangled the nightmare of you in the wire of my mattress,
and punished your memory with a solid glass of wine
in my closet at two in the afternoon after I had to see you
push in the lock with her laughter on the other side of the door.
I’ve ignored you from the crowd, designed your ****** in my salad bowl,
had to kiss you through chocolate box comforts and a movie.
So, forgive me, if I don’t wrap myself around your infatuation (again)
all because you’ve taken an insomnia interest in me— excuse me,
my body. I don’t want to sound whiny in the form of a line,
but working you through my words and glazing
the misshapen mold I have of you with a poem or two
is the only solace I’ve found in these months of looking down when you pass
and cursing myself in the shower when I think my roommates are asleep.
This felt like falling in love until you had to blacken me
with your own corrupt expectations, until you took me
like a vile little shot and burned me all the way down.

But here I am, freshly rinsed and freshly pried open
from the loneliness, ready to accept your sins like a rotten Eucharist.
No matter the distance or the self-promising or the wasted
advice written on this paper every single night—

I’ll let you skip to the ending. I promise to wear my boots
back to my room and carry my jacket like the heart
you always give back when you’re finished.

I’ve got Nike shoe-boxes filled
with newspaper confetti basketball highlights,
a Lucky Charms cereal prize, a hair clip
from the Homecoming dance, picture after picture
of little month-long memories. I’ve got a dozen
temporary candy box boyfriends
who faded just as quickly as they sparked. I’ll reopen
them occasionally, remind myself why my middle school mind
found it so important to save stale Valentine’s Day lollipops
and balance that with the tender, childish idea
that baby love is the realest love and maybe one day
all those text message breakups would come back to me.
I sort
through each dent my heart has suffered that I stowed away
in compartments, but you,
who’ve seen me through the longest,
have no place under my bed. I’ve got nothing
visible to hold of you because truth be told
you’re only my friend if the lights are out and the door is shut.
I have no pop song sweatshirt that still smells like you,
no cliché letters I’ve soaked with tears, no movie tickets,
no dinner matches or menus or pictures that I could cut
if I hated you enough.
I’d have to collect your sweat in a vile and brew it
into a perfume just so the smell could give me something
disgusting enough to feel when I remember you.
If only I could capture my nightmares, remake the images,
mold your body out of actual clay and light you up
without having to kiss your pelvis. We’ve made a mess of this.
You’re just a flame I forgot to blow out.
You're just a name I left hanging on my mouth.

The amount of people that I’ve scoped
through my own lenses, mirrored with optimism
weighed against the reality of who people are
beneath their cotton t-shirts is immeasurable.
I want everyone in my picture frame,
and I’ll twist the moral ladder to get there,
because I’ve been taught, ever since I was a little girl
in ballet shoes with my hair coiled neatly at my neck,
that there is far more beneath the glitter. That the light
can be blinding and it takes more than a promising silhouette
to bring people back into the good. I’ve slept with molted men
who’ve slithered into my bed on a nice compliment
and an “original” idea, and I’ve kissed their sore parts
hoping that the sweetness would pour from the cracks
in my lips and be absorbed by their scales. I’ve taken
triple chances on people who said I’ll do better,
and that they’d be better if only I could blush their cheeks
with my own electricity. I’ve harvested the sliver of memories
from each relationship I’ve kindled and melted them
into a ***, letting people sip the potion for themselves
and find a special, solemn rebirth in the wake of my aftermath.
I don’t know how
to have a conversation without saying thank you, or really,
you’re being too kind, when really I’m the one who’s flicked kindness
from my fingers like leftover water. I’m the one
who’s branded her own version of band-aids, who's healed
those who I could fit in a tiny shoebox back to their own
self-proclaimed hugeness. I’ve beaten myself down to ***** clay,
and that’s why you

have found it so easy to mold me. It’s why I lay your socks out in the morning,
why I drive my mind back and forth in my sleep, why I’ve always been able to rock
your pretty little heart back to me. You captured the remaining ember
left drowning in the wax and made a model of who I used to be
before I let everyone else wear me down.

You think I rub my arms over and over again
because it’s a little chilly and I should have worn a sweater,
but really I need to distract myself from the reflection
of you playing cat’s cradle with her fingers and nuzzling
your kiss into her wild hair. It’s not me who’s there even though
when the moon’s face wears the night to it’s annual masquerade
you’re the one who’s reaching out to me. Maybe we don’t kiss
but we don’t have to, because our souls have been suspended
above our heads like mistletoe and you chose
a long, long time ago to hold her instead of me. And you think
I’ve found recovery in the time, found separation
between the summers, but I tuck my hair behind my ears
and crush my lips back into my teeth not out of habit
but so that I don’t scream, That was supposed to be me!
That was supposed to be me. You know, too, or else you wouldn’t
recall some stupid puddle memory just so I’ll cling
to that last ember in the bottom of my heart and light it on fire.
So I’ll be the one to remind you of the frame you cut from my soft cedar
to put her in. You can turn my light down. I’ve got nothing for you now.

Disconnected by the root, wasting
our time between sheets instead
of between conversations You kept
yourself in backwards hats and vague
excuses to the questions I was asking.
I lit myself on fire, extinguished the flame
in the shower after we finished, cursing
at the droplets sliding down the curtain.
***** this! and ***** that after you ******* me
into the enjambment that was your free space—
your convenience. I fit only if you push, I matter
only if it’s after midnight and the world
outside your door and bed frame
doesn’t have to know. In the daylight,
I’m a ghost that you always see. I’m the ruby
spotted from the corner of your eyes, the shine
that hurts to look at, but no one can know.
Of course. No one can know the way your mouth
rests between sighs or how your eyes lock
into mine when your bruising the inside of my thighs.

I’m the extra beer in your back pocket.
I’m the ***** in the towel who’s promising
her better self that she won’t go again,
that she won’t allow herself to try to patch
the promise from too long ago. The relationship,
shattered early, that mended itself crooked,
that became a book thrown at the wall
and a sweet, dissipated call. I’m the secret solemnly kept
at night when you’re drunk and ugly and begging
for some beauty to curl up next to. I’m the last line
in the best country song, the whisper
you scream for when I’m gone.