meet me by the sunset tree
meet me at the lonely sea

meet me now and meet me then
meet me soon and yet again

meet me while the music plays
meet me through the brightest days

meet me with a broken rose
meet me where the water flows

meet me neath a weeping moon
meet me past a tarnished noon

meet me on my lowest tide
meet me even if I lied

meet me when the tale is told
meet me as the wind grows cold

meet me in the sullen chill
meet me if you love me still

So dear the art
I never had to finish

So spellbinding the love
That never got the chance to turn grim.

Frozen hour
Hazy season.

I sent it to him one day, as I always did. I always had to remind him once a day that I was thinking of him. We lived in houses with no space for me. I was an intruder in our love.

In my life, I love you more.

It was true. I had forgotten how to laugh by this point. I had forgotten that I used to see my friends much more than this. I forgot that I existed in a world of my own. I forgot that now was a time and place, as well. I only knew that one day, we would be married, we would have children, he would work and I would stay at home until he wanted me to go back to work. We would buy houses and cars, because he wanted to. We would attend the events he wanted to. I would be quiet when he wanted me to, have *** when he wanted to. He would have *** when he wanted to. I would forgive him when he needed me to, I would excuse his affair because he was a byproduct of something much greater than us. There was only enough space for one of us to be wrong. I would forget that my mother raised me on her own. I would forget that having a family wasn't always better than no family at all, when he needed me to. I would stay in a loveless marriage because I needed to remember that there was no one better than him. I wouldn’t ask questions about where he had been, because he needed to be here and there. I would raise our kids the way I didn’t want to. I would not get tattoos I’d always wanted to get.

I already know this song.

He already knew this song, maybe one day before me he had heard it and thought of someone else. Maybe after me he had heard it and thought of someone else.

Listen, it made me think of you.

I had to love you more. I loved you so porous, boneless, skinless, brainless. You already knew this song. You always knew so much, I know you wanted to think that. You, too, knew that one day, I would stop loathing myself for long enough to leave you.

Oh.

I just wanted you to let me sing the song, too.

I finish your sentences by
Pulling the words out of your mouth
Lending language to indecision
Lending tongue to unperfected precision
When the others talked about the bad guy in the book
I never used my ears.
Horse blinders on my head on the fissured sidewalk
I finally saw the unfantastical you I was falling into.

I wanted to comb out the phone wires myself
To tell them it was all true
But with my fingers on your sleeping head
I could not bring myself to split time in half
And offer a moment where my digits didn't graze your face.
I could feel you confining me to the margins of a book
You were ready to return
But you bent me over too many times.

The first time we talked about reading
We laughed about how we couldn’t make sense of paperback
Unless we had a pencil.
We were more similar than you thought, no?

I still think about the highlights,
I still remember your lines.

and in that deafening silence,
i’ve never wished more to be heard,
wracked with endless demurs of regret and remorse –
impure, impure, impure.

ii.
but it’s my choice, isn’t it?
to bear the knot of pearls come undone,
to feel it shift from skin to soul,
to speak of loving, and then let go.
(i see this now as a luxury i could not afford.) iii.
if i don’t rise come blooming spring,
ring the church bells for those left unheard,
wash the red from the bed sheets,
please unhinge my strife from the earth;

and know this:

a man is no longer a man,
after his unbidden pillage,
has left an innocent soul shaken;
unholy.

holy, holy, holy.

I fell in love with the boy before you slowly,
With the kind words dripping from his mouth like molasses,
Sugar coated compliments that melt on the tongue
To reveal sticky lies and deception,
Sweet remarks surrounding insults.

He would trot out his trustworthiness
And give me the names of other girls he loved in the same second.
He would tell me I was beautiful
And a list of ways to change on the same day.
He would swear our relationship was built on anything but ***
And describe his idealization of **** as revenge in the same month.

He told me the worst thing I ever did to him
Was not say I love you even if I meant it more than enough.
The worst thing he ever did to me
Was say it too much and never mean it once.

I am still learning how to not love a ghost,
How to stop painting in rose streaks
Over his terrible actuality.
I am still learning to hate the reality.

I do not want you to become another poem.
For your sake I wonder,
Is it harder to be the girl stuck on someone cruel
Or to be the boy in love with that girl?