Kind eyes, you are hollow.
My chest caves in with every word.
"I love you" weighted on each end.
The inhale sharp with longing,
forming words I hardly know.
And every exhale brings you back to me,
every ending circles you around.
I don't recognize the words.
"I love you" hinders on safety,
while we border urgency.
Our arms grabbing what we have left.
Desperately pulling ourselves back up.
Drawing us together again with every
"I love you,"
paired with every
*"I'm sorry."

Amethyst and evaporating
Counting down the seven days before
I disappear again;
Dissolve into a shooting star
And lose myself along the fractured horizon
Bleeding white tea
Drowning in debt and memory
Elegant, apathetic, re-shattered
Remembering.

I pull the summer back up over my face
Like white sheets so quietly in the morning
Sunlight streams in
The beams crosshatch our scavenged posters and prints
The home we built ourselves
Slowly etherized, erased
Reduced to amethyst and onward.

Stretch out the time and I will spend it gladly
Budgeted and rationed beautifully
One year boils down to seven days
And here is how I count them out:
Sitting on couches wrapped up in rainbow blankets,
Throw pillows
I chart these days on a map;
Meticulous.
One by one they follow each other in perfect order
Like stupid wandering sheep
Progressive
Blinded and bleating ****** ******
Numbered, they lull me to sleep
Sweet seven of them

These days I count in wine glasses
I count them in hours and smiles and tears
Every second of my battered year
Counted like clouds on the spring lilac sky-scape
Days counted down in popcorn kernels and ice cream cones
In laughlines and scars, in lavender scones
And showers and trips to the gym and dishes in the sink
I count my days in vanilla candles and scratched records
And papers and poems and midterms and paintings
Polaroid photos and the deep breaths we take between moments
I counted every moment
But now it’s amethyst and over.

Purple like the city skyline in the spring sunset light
Jasmine, indigo, magenta
And you and I
Our apartment
White walls we plastered in memory
All the homes I never had blurred together
Filtered through this glass prism
And projected in progression
Here is violet
Here is vanishing rapidly
With what velocity the end races towards us
Another melting mauve goodbye to add to my resume of heartbreaks
Strong scent of hot magnolias
We lay maudlin in burgundy wine
And purple rain.
I sit hurting how I always do
Mourning like death’s an opportunity
Mourning like I’ve already moved on
How it cuts me to go
How it’d break me to stay
This amethyst year so sharp and sparkling
It scraped and stained me
Left me shades of purple like our night sky shining
With constellations overlapping
Loved and loathed in suffocating lavender limelight
The winds whisper only of how I adore you all
I so adore you.
This is who I am for seven days
And just only seven
Here we are gemstones,
Dissipating salty starmatter
Fleeting amethyst crystals
Evaporating into oblivion.

You are Monday mornings,
breathless; exhausting.
And I,
I am hues of blue,
shades of red;
deep and sunken in.
You are the stream of light
peeking through my curtains
beckoning to me:
*"Wake up tenderly.
The sun will not wait
for you."

It's a character flaw,
or perhaps a strength - correction;
it's a contradiction
with little satisfaction
because I am lacking
the will to be more.
Fretfully forgetting who
I'm giving for.
Losing myself in the equation
because your tongue
is poisoned with persuasion.
And I am without worth,
without cause,
I can no longer feel the earth
beneath my feet.
You've taken that in your reach.
Your grasp all too familiar:
I am sacrificial,
little will to live.
It's an immeasurable amount;
the amount of self I am willing to give.

strung out on
drunk stung-drumming under this skin
isn't mine when you touch it
fight the belting, beg again
memorized muscle and music
trying and failing
melting and falling
repeat the crawling song;
confused teeth, knees
leaving feet, forgetful hand-smothered-feelings \ religious breathing, heart-beat bleeding, gentle breeze please lift my ribs with your pleases after my name leaves your gut after my nails peel you off, an ode to pretending, for stopping;
a better use of force
a better Wednesday waiting
sistering indifference and swelling on sheets never made for pigments preferring the latter again, and I
I haven't felt this way since my leaves fell
since the water settled under my belt
before & after lonely
refer me to laughter when I cannot breathe  & cry about how it'll never work

I'll wash you away from my hands.
Scrub you off like a disease
just to replant the seed
you planted so kindly in me.

Bloodied, battered and bruised
I'll fall in love with you again,
because I am not broken,
I can easily bend.
And bend to you I will;
over and over, again and again.

And it's a loop of loss,
a loop of ever needing.
So I'll pick myself up
and let you leave me pleading,
crying and kicking and screaming.
I am not broken, I can easily bend.

And I'm not one to ever say goodbye,
compared to the countless hellos
I've given to you in the night.
We wear our mistakes on forearms;
reminders of why
we are not broken, we can easily bend.