there’s a reason for the way my heart quivers
when you speak, when you are silent,
you are here, you are not here.  but your name stills my lips,
courses through my ebbing veins, i feel you
igniting my bones all the same.

i love with the whole of my being: give my all,
give you my everything, with the knowledge
that it might never be enough.
you may realize
i am not worth the work.  i will give you
the potential to ruin me & if you do,
every second will be precious
because this means you will have meant
to me.

what matters is this: you make me feel
like a person.  your smile never ceases
to scrub my soul soft & clean
with light & i want
all of you, your every insignificant
thought, your slightest
expressions, your seething
hurt.  give me
your goriest depths &
i will believe them beautiful.

& if you leave, when
you leave, there will be nothing to
forgive.  i will watch
your lovely, retreating form with
a smile smoldering my lips because
you happened to me,
you mattered,
& this will sometimes be difficult
to recall to memory, but i will not
forget.

you have taught me to be brave,
brazen, unabashed, unafraid.
the wanting you is worth the probability
of losing & failing.  you are worth it.  
i give you myself, i give you
my love.

the future is your fingers threading my hair.
my manic hands clutching at your t-shirt
to desperately hold you closer. your breath
becoming my breath. the deathless
entanglement
of our more-than-selves.

[i dive within the catacombs of my heart
for an answer & emerge with
youyouyou]

i’m not supposed to try and write to you or contact you or even think of you as often as i do, but i miss you.  i ******* miss you like winter & nighttime smoke fixes & pure unadulterated bliss.  it hurts to care for you as much as i do because we are an impossibility, the insolvable equation with no easy compromise.  you aren’t supposed to think about me either, but i must cross your mind sometimes, if you meant half the things you said.  i just want you to worry about me, to care for me, to wonder about me.  i need to matter, because i’m worthless without someone to pull me from disaster time after time.  i’m  bleeding again & this time it’s deep.  caring for my body has been pushed to the sidelines in favor of oblivion & self-destruction.  the weeks after graduation, i spent them in a ****** blur of mindlessness & self-hatred in the lucid moments that were few & far between.  i wish i told you why i wrote all that poetry, that it was all personal, that i lied when i said i was okay.  i need a friend, a body beside me, anyone to talk to at three in the morning when i’m crying & don’t know why.  this hurts like everything else, but you are a strand of something wishful, because maybe you care more than you said & you want to save me as much as i want to be saved.

you are quiet sometimes,
the stillness lingering in the
pauses between words, the breaths
of reflection.  i like
the way your heart is sweet.  i like
the residue of pain residing in your
forehead, a permanent flesh memory
of the suffering we were both
ignited with,
engulfed in,
lost to.

you too have thrown yourself
down the rabbit hole, begging for
an ending, but
i will not be another
sad story.  we are not
tragedies today & i will breathe
with reason & for
you.

i am sinking to the seabed
with the weight of the world; tell me
i am not alone, wallowing down in
these depths.  tell me
one thing i’ll believe is
true.

i can swear a million promises & wish on
dandelion seeds that this is forever,

but then again,
someday, the earth will fall in love
with my body & you will forget
my name.

i will give to you a piece of myself that will attach itself to your heart.  no matter how meticulously you carve with a scalpel, no amount of time spent playing self-surgeon will remove this part of me from your organs & flesh.  it will evade your every attempt to erase me.  you will never erase me.
2. when i said i loved you too, it wasn’t a reflexive gesture said only to complement your whispered ‘i love you.’  i said the words because i couldn’t bear not to.
3. the coffee i bring to you every morning & the goodnight-kisses stamped ceaselessly to your forehead will tell you all the things i cannot say.
4. by some fated or perhaps coincidental quirk of the universe, we became us.  i will clap a hand across your mouth any time you question how or why because it is irrelevant.  
5. i will bend until i break for you.  i will bleed rivers & hurt until i gasp with pain because you are allowed to see me at my ugliest (no pain like this body).
6. there will be bad days & good days.  you will wonder if i am worth the work & i will try desperately to prove you wrong.  i will push & shove & scream, but beneath it all, i will wish i could be selfish enough to ask you not to leave.
7. never will i ever learn how not to love you.

& tell me you picture me naked before falling to sleep at night because you like me vulnerable.  i like me raw & wanting beneath your steady frame, the stars flee into the night when I cry out against your collarbones, a sweet, shivering finale. broken into a million parts, we puzzle piece each other back together stroke by stroke.  the trees in your backyard shudder with the lost weight of autumn while i lay you down & love you.  kiss my fragile limbs with your everything, adhering some flesh to these bird bones with your cathartic touch until I am better.  until I am whole.  turn off the lights & we’ll do our ghost thing in the dark.  dans la nuit, nous dansons, either way.

we exist together
on some alternate continuum of
the physical world, a secret
corner of consciousness,
chances reality & the universe
would never grant us.

(somewhere in this mad world, i am
yours)

forget age & years & impossibility.
i knew
from the moment i memorized you.  you & your
brittle ribs &
soft lips &
geisha feet.  you
infinities of beautiful & eyes
Lake Michigan, sparkling waters hold
indefinite light.

(i love you, but
your bones show through)

you pretty lost girl,
the raddest human i’ve ever seen.
be my porcelain dolltoy &
i’ll kiss your every waking limb.

you were the only one
who thought to ask & i could have
cried, because you knew.  you knew, & it was
all right.  because you were
the first,
you were
the only
& forgive me for my
bright eyes
feverish
on you.

I fell out of love with myself as others fell in, stumbling
Through the winter of my life in search of a body bag
Or the percussive clatter of bones beneath the façade of a porcelain doll,
Pretty & perfect with empty eyes to cast upon the world.
my body was made to be carved into something beautiful.
the dizziness threads in & out, veering in & out of consciousness,
my eyes are brimming with psychedelic stars.  
I am alone, cold & wanting, awash in
the terrible potential for human connection.