this is a feeling I thought I had almost forgotten

I haven’t felt this numb in months

this is why i stopped smoking so much

turned to a drug that at least made me feel something

I’m sick of biting my lip until it bleeds

I’m sick of having to remind myself that I am still real

the first six months after you was probably the worst time of my life
not just because i was trying to remember how to taste like anything besides you
that was the same time my mother died while i was busy pushing needles into veins and spitting blood from my lips
we ****** in your car anywhere that would make me feel alive
but your bed never felt like home to me
i lied when i said i don"t write about you anymore
but lying belt better than admitting i can feel the way you're missing from my bones
i'm hollow and that's not the same as empty
all my lining's made of your fingerprints
which means i'll always taste like you no matter how many times i rinse my chest out with *****
try to drown the bits of you left growing between my ribs

this last six months
i've seen you three times
twice was behind a double pane glass window
we talked about getting married and running away together
tonight i thought about calling you at least six times
when's the last time you saw me six months sober 180 pounds clean wrists and a smile
never
and how much of this do i owe to you
for leaving me and only coming to remind me what i'm missing
i can feel your fist in my throat begging me not to let small words escape

goodbye i love you and i love the way you taste like cherries
like trying to convince me there's anything sweet about you

i made love to you with the lights on and called it a poem

every line was just the way i touched you like you meant something to me
fingertips tracing patterns between your freckles raised by the tiny hills of your cheekbones

how many different ways can i relate you to a flower blooming?
your legs stretching open at the touch of my lips

you can't imagine the way brown eyes look in the light if you haven't seen them for yourself

I live in a house on a cliff
at the edge of the sea.
Every morning I wake
to the whisper of waves
telling me:

"We're taking it all away,
a little bit more every day.
Watch your step when you get
out of bed-- there may not be floor
left to tread
on your way to the place
where your living room
used to be."

I walked yesterday down a hall
where this morning there's nothing at all
in the place where I lived, wrote and sang
so happily.

I wish I could move away
but I know that it's here I must stay
until all I have is taken away by the sea.
the loss to me is great
more than mere real estate
For it isn't a house I'm losing, no--
it's me.

where it starts
1. your girlfriend will have a miscarriage
for the second time
and you, you'll start using needles
THERE WILL BE NO DIRECT CORRELATION BETWEEN THESE TWO THINGS
but you tell yourself
a daughter is what would make life worth living
and subsequently what it takes to get you sober

2. you lose your job
because you're always in the bathroom missing veins
loss of job will inevitably spiral into an
"intolerable depression"
or
"extended sadness"
or
"whatever version of this is easiest to swallow"

3. you get to spend every holiday from your birthday until The Day She Dies sitting next to your mother's hospital bed
(except for when you're always in the bathroom, missing veiins)

LATER
your sister reassures you that mom didn't know the way you also choked back guilt with all the bile and unpleasant things in your trips to the restroom
but for now you will hate yourself
hate the sticky needles
and hate the way your girlfriend leaves all her ghosts behind when she leaves you

4. you find that bathroom floors are your new home
splayed out after your 8th overdose
jail cells are just a normal tuesday
and you keep waking up to razor blades left neatly on your pillow

where it ends

5. giving up ****** is like pulling teeth
messy and painful but typically necessary
and so hard to do alone

Stumbling through the streets
I say, "yes, thank you and more, please,"
Until I'm home.
Don't want to be alone
With this pain I own
Yet here I am
And so it will be