have you ever felt a home in your bones?
safety in the way it cushions the weight of your moaning head
upon falling at it's thresholds
you want to know what tender feelings
you hold in safe places
but they
never question the way your severed vessel
still toes the shoreline,
roaming the foam licking at the crests
of crescent moons left in the remnants of crab shells
pressed into particle upon particle of scruples
unspoken in the weeks that forgot you

they rush ahead

and you stand stock stuck, still mustering
the guts of every animal they left on the beach
in the road, and you too leave them
for fear of that lethal touch
mistaking broken shards of beer bottles
for sea glass, some days you tried to remember
and forgot

they are savages
the agile hunger pains
gnaw at the bandages

but you still love, in nausea,
ad naseam, you study them, reverential
try to reference their satiation with fondness
still sunken in repugnance for your own likeness

you collect them like passengers
pieces of you and worlds unto their own kind
he says you are two of a kind
you think not, because he is one

each thrown to the riverbed below
becoming rocks filling up the moat
cranking down the drawbridge
over a river filled with sea glass
the true form of whom you have settled with
knowing you may never know

and in forgiveness you live with
the sickness of knowing nothing
and the sentience of understanding everything
and when you stand by the water
they tell you that your eyes have a brilliant glow
and you let them find you stunning
in a memory upon a time ago
you conceal yourself in the
minds of many

while the solecism in his praise
still rings heavy in your throat
two thousand
nine hundred
and sixty eight
miles away
from home

no,

i don't feel beautiful
but i feel dangerously effective

i beg for drunk texts like they're diamonds
knowing drunk words
are more valuable than sober
and that later
i'll be high enough to pretend
you sent me them spontaneously
and believe that i'm the one who's truly
on your mind
when it can't even function.

you have a reputation
for being a bad boy
for tearing girls down
and baby, i thought
i'd be different
that i might be the good girl
that can sway you over
and baby, you were
just that much stronger
i drink now
and i lie now
i foolishly trust now
and i even curse now

i wasn't like this
before you

how can i still love someone
who treated me like chewing
gum- wadded me up in his
mouth and blew the world's
biggest bubble, sent himself
up into space with my offset
reciprocation, soared past
the stars he was so obsessed
with, used saturn's rings to
burst all that i was. and when
he fell back into earth's orbit
he was safe, but i was scattered
somewhere around neptune.
i cannot find my way back.

I might be ******* if you ever find all of my poetry about you.

i've broken other peoples' hearts
in a vain attempt to understand
how you broke mine
how you could love me
then leave me
with nothing but a cold shoulder
as a consolation prize

and i still don't understand
because i mourn for those
whose hearts i've broken
and i want to love them
even though i can't

but i'm not a mindreader, so tell me:
did you want to love me or
was leaving really so easy?

You know, I almost called the other night.
Almost.
I’d like to think that
you would’ve almost picked up,
and I would’ve almost said something.
It’s a good thing I’ve almost lost your number;
I could get lonely someday
and forget that you almost wanted to stay.
I forget a lot nowadays.
I almost called the other night, you know.
But I’ve learned that “almost”
only counts in “I love you’s”
and “goodbye’s”.
Maybe I’ll almost sleep tonight.
It’s strange that I keep dreaming
about the night we walked around the city.
I always end up on the park bench
by your house,
waiting.
I’ve almost stopped wishing you’d show up.