you insisted that i write my number down on the blank part of a mix tape...you used to slam down a beer like some kind of super hero...saw myself in your eyes and made sounds only you could hear...you'd press your lips into my forehead so fiercely it hurt; leading us deep into your distortions...

witnessed you spilling your soul into empty barrooms where last call came well before midnight...there wasn't any room in there for me...I made forfeit everything to stand in your arms; and how it lost me all I wanted...

I spread my palms wide across your ribs...curled my fingers tightly toward your spine and believed that you loved me...you turned on me and my wit...so you left me...I wanted to clumsily strew myself on your pillows and press my hand on your thigh, kiss your neck and giggle at your sarcasm...you convinced me that the flood of my insecurities drove you away, that i was the author of our demise...

we collide rarely...your eyes are always tired...you've built the Berlin wall around your heart...you have become a testament to the passage of time because I know I will not remember being the same...

you inappropriately love me but will never trust me...

you stand me in your arms, and it is like coming home after so many years abroad; we never will hold each other this way again...
our Rome became graffiti on my bedroom wall...
this undertow of wordshed always reminding me that I am not lost but I am not home...

she holds her breath as vacancy glitters around her.
violent silence forms this canyon of conversation...
rumpled and uncertain
their morning fog was heavier than expected
and she faked a smile.

the logic and the lover,
the patience and the urgency,
the misunderstanding a doorway...
the cold and uncertain streets of dawn,
the smell of the highway when she was seventeen.

she hears the dust talking of last night's storm.
voices float into the bedroom...
lunar and fragmented
as if the sky had let them go
long before her birth.

No. I cannot say that it's okay...i wanted to be the one to say that, but i let you in...let those scary unrehearsed parts of me dissolve into the dark of your three a.m. bedroom...allowing you to be close to me...believed in an us...trusted and had faith you wanted this, me...

No. i cannot say that i am okay...i came in looking for you to reject me... gave you every chance to take it back...constantly checking your temperature to see how much ground i stood upon, unsure if tomorrow was too uncertain for plans...your lips stamped reassurance on my forehead and hands tugged at my waist reeling me into your bed...

No. I cannot say that i understand...with you i felt joy and peace...you sliced through the silence with your early morning exhortations grieving for the pain you already knew you would deliver...raw passionate vulnerability...you ****** me so tenderly and moaned my name...smiled and met my gaze telling me your stories...i fell in love with who i am when i am with you and you cannot tell me why i won't feel that again...

No. you cannot tell me why you made a fool of me...connecting so completely disarming my heart with false pretenses...betrayed my self preservation and doubts to feel you closer to me...you watched me glow and giggle, sigh and shiver, kissed me long as if i belonged...as if to say "here's what you can't have,
lovely isn't it?"

No. I cannot be angry with you...i am aching with the salty sting of your tears as i held you to my breast...i do not want to hurt you or be painful for you...this is not who i am...i want to be the girl who lashes out with six hands and no hope to contain herself exploding into sobs when you say in cliche that you just want to be my friend...you told me when i just couldn't fall apart...

No. i cannot say that i will be the strong one...you will maybe talk to me a while out of guilt or self-esteem garnering reproach...and then disappear into the ether of somebodies i used to know...from whence you came...

No. you cannot tell me that i do not have a hole in my heart...dejected, replaceable, unlovable me...i doubt i'll ever know why, how you could do this to me...thought that i was coming home via chicago...traveled eight hundred and twenty three miles...you broke my everything down...

You are all those words left behind...the haunting almosts that were caught by my heart on their way to my mouth...
I am everytime you hold your breath... exercising patience and terror simultaneously...