Come interrupt me

And fill my soul

With your own words

As I am not able

To find

My own

Teach me

Your language

Soft and slowly

So there will be

More of you

More of me

More of us

Be my poetry

I’ll be your poem.

he rolls in
mint leaves
and cigarette
smoke,

standing up
to waltz out
the back
door

and out to
the moonlit
streets of
our urban
nightmare

before i have
a chance to
whisper, i miss
you -
          don't leave.





**(c) 2014 jude rigor

so i get this idea sometimes
that you enjoy being coy
when it comes to me
to conjure momentary spectacle
& make me wonder
if you paint catharsis
on the doors of a home
you've never lived in
as a memory of our first night together
because i do, i remember you
beaming white on blue
speaking softer than any storm
i ever knew, i often think that maybe
you live that night in your mind
when your pillow is cold
& you can't sleep, it makes me wonder
if you do as i do, and rewrite three years fictionally beginning with a kiss somewhere
maybe a balcony or a quiet car
on the sand or in a sunlit grove close to your home but always a familiar scar on the maps we know we know by heart
i wonder if sometimes
the idea of me loving you is too real
and if it teems under your tongue
to stay observant but distantly intrigued
if by this distance you think it safe
to get a dog and pass time
on the couch with a journal & some wine
what i really wanna know is if your fingernails ever wish to have my skin under them
or if they would boast
about winning a war with my headboard
i wonder if you can imagine me
meeting your parents in your apartment & shaking your fathers hand
as a first of many calloused palm readings
and if you know that i trembled before them
how insignificant i had felt
to not know their daughter
in the way i had envisioned
how i picture such poignant moments
so tangibly sharp that sometimes
i replace  my memories with little stories
i tell myself that i can't count on two hands
the number of times i've seen you
& that i don't feel like a crater
when i recollect our collisions
i want to know if you still find madness
in the words that have always been about you
i wanna know if your imagination of me
looks more like an anniversary or an obituary

It was 3 PM on a Tuesday
in the summer, just before
my first semester of college.
I went out on a whim and
bought a cheetah print lava
lamp for forty six dollars
at some stand in the mall,
despite you persistently
advising me not to
waste money on
"insignificant ****"

The next day it rained
from 7 AM until 5 PM
and I forced you to lie
in bed with me all day,
with the curtains drawn
& the lights out.
I wanted us to observe
the weird, red
shapes forming
inside my new cheetah
print lava lamp...
Something about it
captivated me.
I never had one as a kid,
And you just sat there
holding my hand for
fifty eight minutes before
I whispered, "did you see
how pretty that one was?"

You laughed gently
and shifted your eyes
toward my dresser,
at which point
I realized
that was the very first time
you looked away from me
since we had laid down
And
with that thought,
the butterflies
woke so chaotically,
I thought I'd never
catch my breath

im sad again

for the first time in a long time, my eyes are spilling, and my hands are shaking

and the pain in my chest won’t seem to budge

and it’s back to me wanting to run into your arms

to feel the only home and safety i ever knew, back to comfort me once more

but i never felt that home in the flesh, only through the encasing of softly spoken phone calls, and carefully chosen words

i need to feel my head nuzzled into the chest that feels so familiar

yet so heartbreakingly unreal

i need to feel the softly spoken words against my cracking lips

i need to know that you still love me

despite everything, and all the time apart

you still love me