I think I have successfully found a way to avoid it all
Slamming my fist into the dashboard

The plastic cracks under my knuckles

I see your white lighter that fell

Years ago

rolling out from under the passenger’s seat

initials scratched in sharpie

I said when the tan line on my ring finger disappeared

I’d be over that stage of us

So I kept wearing rings on that finger







I see it in his eyes

The same loss that I felt

Creeping through me

As I claw for the delicate throws of normality

Fantasizing escaping

I wanted to break even

To orchestrate the great

Explain to the world

That I can hold fast

That I can find a sense of sanity that would last

All the while,
tying myself to the train tracks





I used to have this grip

I held it so tightly

promising myself that this mania

of prep meals

and daily runs

would sooth me

I said that the schedule is what will keep me

off the edge of the bridge

but it slipped under my head like a knife

followed me to bed nightly

singing the same trope of dependency



how they led me

I drank them in like their skin

was wine,

I sipped heavy gulps

and called them mine

leading down the same path

of sitting in the passengers seat of the car,

parked outside of our house

holding onto an old lovers lighter