You tainted this site with your fingertips
Your presence, your words
I came here as an escape--
Or a justification?
But you held me confined
And gave me no answers
Now I am back, but every megabyte screams your name
I hover over the search bar even though you have disintegrated
Yet I still expect your poems to make an appearance
To either kiss me like I would have wanted you to
Or stab me like I know too well you did
But nothing
Your existence has been wiped out
I have no reason to return to computerized data
Other than hoping you’d come around too

this is an alphabet of all the people
who have dug holes in me,
and of all the people
who are still digging.

this is a gardening guide
for would-be lovers and pretty faces
who do not even realize
that they are carrying shovels.

this is a weather forecast written
from past experience,
a reminder that winter
is not kind on crops,
no matter how firmly you pack the dirt.

this is me,
reflecting on seeds planted.

this is me,
reflecting on seeds left to die.

A,
i suppose it is fitting that the first letter
is also the first person to show me what it is like
to have seedlings sprouting up from inside you,
the first person to show me just how deep you really have to dig
to make the sting last.
you never came back to water what you planted.

H,
i’d like to say to that i ripped out your roots with my own two hands;
i’d like to give myself some credit in all this.
you don’t look as lovely as you used to.
you say i’ve grown distant.
i’m sorry.

J,
you always feel like being on the verge of something big.
you feel like summer, like a deep purple,
a bath of darkness.
you are everywhere that plants do not grow well.
and i have always felt — and still do feel — 
that that is such a grave injustice.
still, though you cannot speak the word “devotion,”
i beckon for more seeds.

P,
my greatest heartbreak.
heartbreak, though, is but a flesh wound when seen from afar.
and so i thank god for the miles between us.
i can feign forgetfulness when you are far away.
after all, what is a shovel in your hands if those hands cannot reach me?

S,
you are but a bud waiting to bloom.
and yet again i find myself so very afraid of growth.

(a.m.)

step one:
do not look at their mouth,
for you will expect to see rivers flowing from it,
poetry slipping through the space between their lips
in the same way that the wind slips through the space underneath a door,
but instead you will only see spit and saliva
and a tongue too big for its home.

step two:
do not look at their hands,
for you will expect them to craft cities from marble right before your very eyes,
but instead it will be just the thumbs,
the twiddling of thumbs,
the aimlessness, the senselessness,
the lack of experience with building empires.

step three:
do not look at their eyes,
for they say that the eyes are the windows to the soul,
and when you see that the curtains have been drawn,
you will feel so very alone.

step four:
i did not love you.
you have to repeat it.
i did not love you.
i did not love you.
i did not love you;
i loved what i thought you would be.
i thought you would be eden,
but you were only the apple.

step five:
i suppose i am to blame here
for digging holes too big to fill,
for crafting shoes too big to fit in.
and for that i am sorry.
i am sorry that i expected more from you
than i even expect from myself.

step six:
human.
human.
let the word roll off and around your tongue,
let it cover every inch of the inside of your mouth.
say it. over and over again.
say it. like it is foreign and you need to know what it means.
say it.
and when you have said it enough times and it feels
dull, old,
disappointing,
you will know that we are nothing more than flesh and bone,
and that as much as we wish there were gods among us,
flesh always rots in the end.
this is the beast of truth that we cannot outrun.
hands cannot craft cities from marble
if only given clay.

step seven:**
do not let this frighten you.
clay, after all,
was meant for molding.

(a.m.)

i find it hard now to make excuses for why i haven't let you go.
mere words are tripwires.
(how can i call you a piece of my past when you are still so very present?).
i am no longer as eloquent as i used to be.

i find it hard now to make excuses for why i still stand at your door.
it has been four months, and just as soon, twelve.
(each morning i wake with hopes that your grip will have loosened).
i am no longer as strong as i used to be.

but perhaps it does take a strange type of strength to be so hopeful,
to think that someday,
even after all this,
you might see in me even a fraction of what i see in you.

truthfully, that is all i ever wanted.

but often, the things we want require change we cannot bring.

i have spent so long trying to make my valleys into mountains,
but sometimes the earth does not want to be moved.

//

i have given up on excuses;
i will drag you along and wait.
someday i will tire of holding your hand so tightly.

(a.m.)

sometimes,
often times,
i am cold.
there is snow within me and wild winds outside my door,
and i watch from the window while my crops wither.

i silence the sun.

he stands at my gate with nimble fingers and begs to be let in,
but i have always been a grove of shadows,
and he knows there is no space for him.

sometimes,
often times,
i am cold.

but other times,
spring finds me.
it lifts me up into its gentle arms and suddenly i am a field of clovers,
lucky,
rising up.
suddenly i am baby’s breath, i am pure,
i am a blooming hyacinth.

i am warm.

i know what a change in season feels like.

and i try to be loving.
but on the days when i have gotten up
and planted my seeds,
you are still tangled in thick black weeds and roots.
on the days when i am a rose,
you are the thorns,
and on the days when i grant the sun a chance to speak,
you take his tongue.

i know your pain; i have lived it.
but i will not give up my songbirds just because you are only left with crows.

i know what a change in season feels like,
but you are always winter.
and sometimes, i am spring.

so i will flourish.
and i am sorry.

(a.m.)

for a moment i couldn’t remember your last name.
for a moment it started with a different letter,
was spoken in a different tongue.
for a moment i had forgotten it — that is, if i ever knew it at all.

you used to be so clear to me.
you were, at a time, tangible —
so much more than a memory.
i loved you then and i could say that i love you now but
you cannot love a memory.
not in the same way, no.
you cannot talk to a memory,
nor laugh with a memory,
nor live with a memory.

and so i keep you
frozen in time,
a fragment of the past.

like ashes in an urn i put you on the shelf,
never to be disturbed,
only to be put on display.
i thought you’d be safe there.
i thought that the ashes in an urn don’t disappear because
what more can ash crumble down to?

but today,
for just a moment,
i couldn’t remember your last name.
today,
for just a moment,
you slipped away.

and now i wonder if i ever had you at all.

(a.m.)