Life is horrifying
and death is horrifying
but escaping one
means running into
the arms of the other.

did I ever really love him? its been almost three months
since I’ve seen him and he feels like a ghost.
my memories are washed out, and they all feel like
they happened years ago
or didn’t happen at all.
I read everything
I’d ever written to him or about him
and I do not remember even picking up the pen.
did I ever really love him?
or did I let him grow inside of me
like a virus and then flush him out of my system,
never to be seen again?
maybe he was a sickness, and maybe he crawled
inside of me to use me as his home
until he got bored
or I got wiser.
did I ever really love him?

the loose tooth of youth
is hanging low by its root now;
our mother birds cry at night
knowing that soon we’ll be
leaving the nests we called home
for so many years and
her wings will no longer wipe away
the tears of her baby birds
as they plummet down from the foliage
above.
we’ll fly high above states
and admire the way in which,
as we look down,
the terrain far below mimics the lines
of the maps which
held our undying attention
by the throat
for the entirety of our adolescence.

I want to kiss you so hard that our lips crack and disintegrate
2. I used to hate the color brown but then I saw your eyes and now whenever I see it I think of the way that you look at me
3. I will tell you that I love you until my tongue shrivels up and falls out
4. When I think of you flowers bloom inside of me
5. My affection for you grows even faster than your hair does
6. Remember the night we cried into each other’s mouths and dried each other’s tears with our lips?
7. You have been the backbone of all of my poetry for 350 days and counting
8. I will never forget when we laid in the grass at night and our love for each other made us cry
9. You wrote me a poem and used the word “euphoric”. I have never loved anyone more.
10. I think the reason why I often press my ear against your chest to listen to your heartbeat is the same reason why I roll your collarbones between my fingers; I want to solidify the fact that you are human and you have a beating heart and veins doused with warm red love for me
11. I have tied a string around your heart and attached it to my own