I drank like my father
and was
blackout drunk in my apartment alone,
calling you on the phone
asking for cheap love,
secretly begging you to do me a favor and
make me feel wanted.

So you complied
and you came here,
because I was too drunk to leave
and we watched recordings
of other people having *** on the TV.
I guess it turned us on just enough
to **** each other until sleep.

I woke the next morning before you
and I looked down at my body,
naked and exposed above the same sheets
that we ****** on the night before
and maybe even into the next day.

I stared at you while you slept under the same sheets
that we ****** on the night before
and maybe even into the next day.
I wondered if your mother knew about me.
(I was sure she didn't.)
I thought about how if I ever had a son
I would hope he would be something like you.
and
I thought about how if I ever had a daughter
I would hope she would be nothing like me,
and have to face the fate of guilt and self-hate
that society had set in place.

You told stories of the UV index when it resembled the color blue,
of animal anatomies, the size of Earth, forgetting your manners.

I told you a story of maggots swarming at the flesh of swine.
I told you a story of a violent child finding maturity, maybe.
I told you a story of the post-apocalyptic world while walking through a pond.
They all seemed appropriate at the time.

Then I hated you for the ***** that was on the rug you left me to
clean, from too much red and too many tears that you left me to appease.  

We wrote and we compromised.
Looking back we never knew why.
I could hear you whisper when you thought I couldn’t.

We had wins and losses in the reds and whites.
You spoke like you knew the ins and outs of the alpha and the omega.

Your lucky number was nowhere near that number four
but both implied perfection. I was an unfortunate first.
I studied too hard for things that wouldn’t be graded,

like which strings pulled at what, and grassy trails promising return.

You complained about the snow,
so I removed myself quickly.
Everything you left me with would just have to suffice.

you are my dreams and in-betweens,
a stitch in my side.

you are the worm on my sleeve that squirms restlessly.
you itch at my skin. you cause me to crumble.

hungry as I am, (I cannot eat),
you fill my gut with both lust and disgust.

I tried to make art but it was ugly and left me burnt.
charcoal pencils drew lucidly over charred skin.

my eyes try to comprehend the complexity of your freckles' design
(fashioned by Helios with apollo in mind.)

Sunday mornings became less and less important.
my coffee was always bitter. my milk, always sour.

weak for your words,
at first.

then we did.
then we were.
before we weren't anymore.

broken, temporarily.

i saw
me without you, and you without me.

i saw the sun.

i was your favorite candy.
consumed quickly,
regretfully unappreciated
upon your final bite.

fish are not cursed
the same way humans are.

fish are not so restricted
in their movements
(they do not have to
jump to get the cereal off the top shelf
in the pantry).

fish do not drown,
nor cremate,
in their natural environment.
(a hurricane blows and they can swim below,
maybe ride the waves out overhead.)

fish do not poison
their gills with the words that they speak
the way that humans breathe
from the same sin-tainted orifice
they eat, smoke, lie, and choke.