If you asked me to tell
where the ceiling ends and
the walls begin,
I wouldn’t be able to tell you.
When I think about you
everything blurs into black
like an unkindness of ravens.
And I—
You are
the only thing that ever
crosses my mind as soon as
dusk turns into night,
and I could never tell you why.
I like to think that
just as birds know when to fly
and time knows when to die,
I was meant to love you.

apathy is hard for
easy hearts ;
we gravitate around
each other's orbits,
avoiding collision &
deleting memories &
moving forward with
peripheral vision

we know how to ignite
tightropes like nooses
only more hollow ;
our eyes shift invisibly
from the ingrained warmth
of our carefree touch
to the scissors of fate and future—
the best thoughts mingle with
desire, and so we suffer
from the fires and fires
we burn with the million heartbeats
spilling like shadows behind us

i’ve given up on days that begin in late afternoon,
skipped breakfast and lunch,
days that fade slowly and end with
****** cut-out holes in eyelids because
the second i close them and it all goes black,
every moment with you comes back
played on fast-forward, the memories moving so quickly
that both our faces are blurred
and it feels like everything i’ve ever felt for you
is overflowing the tub, filling the washroom with
suds that take forever to melt

i’ve given up on those days.

i’ve traded them for ones that begin with
sunrises instead of sunsets,
days that are spent falling forward
instead of trying to chase the past, and i don’t
look back and see something broken, or
something that was better off left unopened

i look back and see our bodies so close together
that you can’t tell where yours begins and mine ends,
i see my heart that grew twenty-three times its size,
i see you and me wrapped up in something that
i didn’t know existed outside of blurry 35 mm
and overdue and falling-apart library books
that sit on the nightstands of middle-aged women
who are bored with their lives

and i’m just so happy i got to love you at all.

but i’ve folded up all the days spent with you
and taped them in the messy pages of my journal
and now i’m running into the sun,
running away from every lie that’s trying to
wedge its way in between my ribs,
running in the opposite direction of words like "regret"
and any feeling that insists that none of it was worth it

because all of it was worth it.

every moment we were together pumps
through my veins, and it will always be there;
it will be there when we’ve both graduated,
when you move out west,
when you kiss your family goodnight,
when you sit in your backyard with tears
in your eyes because you’ve lived a life
you are proud of

it will be there when i finally make it to new york city,
when i kiss someone who isn’t you,
when i find the answers you inspired me to search for,
when i sit on my rooftop with tears on my cheeks
because i’ve lived a life fuller than i could’ve ever imagined

and you and i will live these lives apart,
we’ll move on and forget what it felt like
to wake up beside one another;
we’ll find what we’re looking for elsewhere
and we’ll understand why this all had to happen the way that it did

but what we had will always exist somewhere,
in rotting apples and old mail and unplayed mix CDs,
in mosaics that line the city streets, in sirens and
red and white flashing lights that shine through
your window while you are asleep

you and i were magic,
we always will be.

I am slowly learning to disregard the insatiable desire to be special. I think it began, the soft piano ballad of epiphanic freedom that danced in my head, when you mentioned that “Van Gogh was her thing” while I stood there in my overall dress, admiring his sunflowers at the art museum. And then again on South Street, while we thumbed through old records and I picked up Morrissey and you mentioned her name like it was stuck in your teeth. Each time, I felt a paintbrush on my cheeks, covering my skin in grey and fading me into a quiet, concealed background that hummed “everything you’ve ever loved has been loved before, and everything you are has already been,” on an endless loop. It echoed in your wrists that I stared at, walking (home) in the middle of the street, and I felt like a ghost moving forward in an eternal line, waiting to haunt anyone who thought I was worth it. But no one keeps my name folded in their wallet. Only girls who are able to carve their names into paintings and vinyl live in pockets and dust bunnies and bathroom mirrors. And so be it, that I am grey and humming in the background. I am forgotten Sundays and chipped fingernail polish and borrowed sheets. I’m the song you’ll get stuck in your head, but it will remind you of someone else. I am 2 in the afternoon, I am the last day of winter, I am a face on the sidewalk that won’t show up in your dreams. And I am everywhere, and I am nothing at all.

Every time I look you in the eye, I see thunderclouds. Yes, your laugh is silver bells on a spring day and your smile could have caused Mona Lisa to grin all the way in, but they’re right. Your eyes are the behind the scenes and your body is a movie. I don’t enjoy watching movies.

2. I can’t keep up with the storyline. Chapters fifteen and sixteen were about homecomings, and now the main character’s digging his own grave again. You never explained to me how he went from dancing in the moonlight to rubbing ash on his head, just when I thought we were getting already to the ******.

3. The wounds are reopening. I thought you knew better than to pick at the stitches.

4. Your heart must be handcuffed to mine. I feel it every time you hurt, every time you pull, every time you cry out and ask God, “Why?” The only difference is that every inch you move away is a sucker punch in my gut. I’ve never had a high tolerance for pain.

5. Do you know how many poems I’ve written about you? Try walking outside at night and count every street lamp from here to the opposite side of the sea. My words burn too, but they never seem to be bright enough for you to see. You’re still tripping in broad daylight.

6. I’m tired of standing behind you.

7. Hope is an anchor, but I’m starting to drown.

8. Sometimes I scream in frustration because the seeds are taking too long to grow. It’s so easy to forget that they will. It’s even easier to forget that I’m not the savior. But I try to be, so I’m putting down this yoke, little by little.

9. Seeds do grow and their trees make enough rings to tell stories to last generations.

10. I heard in a song that love alone is worth the fight. Maybe I’ll continue this battle long enough for you to see that we’ve already won this war, so that the next time I look at you in the eye, I’ll see the northern lights.