my father has gone deaf
because i always told him
"you never listen"

i loathe every day i don't fit
between the notches in your spine
in the dip of your collarbones
or underneath your fingernails

white sheets
the hum of the
ceiling fan

and you are absent

loving someone will ruin your life

go to sleep

love has never
been about the
flowers

i pick at you
the way i rip
my scabs from me,

bleed like i do
so i have reason
to go on like this

i know i will suffer
but i also know you will be there

i want to ride across states with you
and watch your eyes
light up when you see the bright lights
of the city, your home

it's easy to forget the sunny days in the park and the hazy drunken afternoons.
swimming in sunlight and rosy cheeks,
i want to remember.

i know you hate your name
it is what your father gave you
and you will never be him.

but that is all that runs through my mind
when i drink alone
without someone to laugh
at my jokes

wake up and wipe my nose,
check for blood
in a room without you

head explodes
fragments of ideas and bone left
hanging from threads of muscle

i loved you,
that's not fair

drowning in my glass
no apologies yet

it is the difference between staying and leaving
it is almost four years of experience and arguments and resolutions and
it is knowing when it is acceptable not to speak

it is getting drunk and being unable to think of anything but you

there is a perfect time to die
has it already passed

the way your face creases
when you smile

i would rather watch you
than any sunset

i reject what i have not
earned
but you are my
college education
my stable household
and my steady income

days melt into weeks
and it is laughable
to kneel and kiss your feet
more than a lover,
you are my breakfast
my lunch
and my dinner

i. a diet of
strawberries
and
whiskey
will satisfy me
while i wait for you

ii. the soaps from my bathwater
cannot soak in deep enough
to wash my sins from me
to wash you from me

lay me beside the daffodils,
they do not bother any one

nothing is refreshing

doomed to wake up
with the afternoon sun,
feeling
all the same things

how you tear at my flesh how
you push your short
fingernails into my fragile stature how
you manage only
slight fragments unfathomable shards of me
of my mistakes how
i fit entirely down your throat how
swallowing my flaws is no
issue

you do not fit
perfectly into my arms
love is not convenient it is
walking on gravel barefoot it is
biting your tongue chewing it is
a headache in a movie theater it is
drinking until you're blind it is
making room for you