i studied your body like i would the sky,
tracing constellations into your skin as you hummed
what sounded like the clouds would when they move.

andromeda on your throat, aquarius along your collarbones,
canis major covered your chest, gemini on your right shoulder.
i didn't want to leave when you told me that you loved me.

leo graced your left shoulder, just slightly down your back,
your stomach wore lyra, lopsided, like your smile.
sometimes i couldn't breathe at the thought of losing you.

orion on one hip, pisces on the other, my lips on both,
scorpius, dangerous, starting on your inner thigh.
but it was that loving you that scared me more than losing you.

taurus, ursa major, both on your calves,
body trembling as i traced virgo onto your ankles.
i couldn't hold on, i couldn't breathe, i couldn't understand.

i always saved libra for last, a balance scale,
over the entirety of your back, my safe haven.
breaking the scale when i leaned over, lips against your ear,
*we can't exist together.

I want to talk about the sun and the way that your eyes looked beneath it. you're waiting to hear me say I'm sorry for letting you go the way that I did and I'm waiting to mean it. a man cries into his hands before buttoning his shirt and stepping outside. what is it about being that hurts us so badly?

I want to talk about the moon and how I lost myself to you beneath it. how many times did you touch me without laying a single finger on me? sometimes I lose myself to the thought of a family falling apart. I can't shake the feeling that the last hands I'll hold will be the ones to shatter my heart.

I want to talk about the stars and how I named every single one after you. there are two little girls, one a year older than the other, wrapping their arms around each other beneath the blanket to block out the sound of a marriage deteriorating. how many broken dishes until they decide they're better off apart?

I want to talk about the sky and the way that you made me appreciate it. sometimes I can feel you everywhere and sometimes I can't even bring myself to remember the color of your eyes. a mother tells her daughter that she's better off alone because hurting is inevitable. is it her fault that she tore apart every relationship that ever came her way?

I want to talk about being alive and how you found that to hurt the most.

how many times can we pull in just to pull away before we physically can't anymore? sometimes you would look at me like it was the last time. sometimes, when you would say goodnight, it would feel a whole lot like goodbye. maybe I can't let go of you because your last goodnight sounded the most real. maybe I can't let go of you because you have a piece of me that I need.

there's a woman on a train, her body trembling from her head to her toes, because she found her partner wrapped up in somebody else. the man sitting across from her watches her hands the entire ride. before the train comes to a complete stop, he leans over and meets her eyes. he thinks that he drowns. when she's gone, he finds a torn up picture on her seat. he wants to know what happened. he wants to know that she will make it home tonight. he wants to know if, somewhere, her heart still exists.

I broke my wrist trying to hold onto you. no matter how hard you would tug, no matter how hard you would pull, I locked my fingers between yours because I found a home in your vacancy. I can't count how many times you told me to let you go, how many times you meant it before I finally did. what is it about staying that hurts more than leaving?

"listen," an older woman tells her, "your heart was made to be broken."

I can't figure out if it's better to lie or stay quiet. when you ask me if I ever loved you, I look away. you ask me to be honest. I can't figure out if it's better to lie or stay quiet.

a boy finds his other half lying on a cold, tiled floor. an empty bottle, her fingertips wrapped loosely around it, and uneven breaths fleeing the lips that he found a home in the first time that she allowed him to. she broke the mirror behind her. there is broken glass and broken hearts and a broken existence. he can feel how far she is. she's wearing a temporary tattoo that says YOUR HEART WAS MADE TO BE BROKEN.

you were created to be loved.

I want to talk about the universe and how it took me to you.

I want to talk about the universe and how it tore us apart.

I want to talk about you.

I want to talk about the rest of them.

you were created to be loved.

if I can't miss you, the least I can do is miss the way it felt to know that you were mine (even if you weren't, not really). I remember watching you fall apart, a familiar road of self destruction that you drove me down too many times to count. you were so devoid of life that I couldn't ever figure out what you felt was worth it. if you felt anything was worth it.

sometimes, when your fist would find a home tangled in my hair, with my body pressed against the mirror, our breaths fogging up the glass, I'd forget that your fragile heart felt no purpose.

it was so easy to lose myself in our clashing tongues and teeth because the distraction was easier than the realization. it was the bruises on my hips that told me how you felt. you told me that you loved me through your fingertips. through tight grips and shaky hands.

I lost my shirt in the backseat of your car one night because you couldn't wait to sneak into your brothers house. sometimes you would touch me like I was a porcelain doll but most nights it was a fast blur of disaster. like a look inside of your mind.

“we're okay, it's okay, we're okay, I'm okay,” I never really knew whether you breathed out those words for me or for yourself. something about false reassurance.

I once found a song you wrote on the back of a sloppy page of notes titled Why Does My Heart Feel For Her and Only Her?

it was the following night that I stopped feeling my heart when I found bold messy lines through the lyrics. with my lip between your teeth I could only think of what you wrote beside the crossed out title.

THERE IS NO HEART AT ALL
(in neither of us)

Sometimes I wonder what came first:
falling in love or falling in art?
I wanted to write words about you before we even met
and now all I do is spill you from my fingertips.

Is the space between heartbreak and art
as far apart as the distance between you and the sky
or are they concurrent?

I don't love you anymore exists parallel to this poem
and I am the incipient to the line between.

i am a web wove between
a man with calloused hands
and a woman with calloused thoughts,

he worked for a life that he lives
but it's different than what he sought
and she is there in both,

three female webs wove
into fearing commitment
because love isn't slamming doors,

(love can't be slamming doors)

he listens for her and acts on it
and she listens for her and acts on it
and the webs are shredding,

there is a roof and four walls
that are decorated for holidays
by calloused hands and calloused thoughts.

this is my home –
your hands on my waist.
we stacked bricks on top of one another
until we were closed in with no way out.

we were stuck inside.

sometimes I lost myself in you because it was all that I knew.

this is the truth –
we closed ourselves in because we were terrified.
we were two lost souls, finding through each other,
and hiding from everything else.

how many times did I bruise your palm
just because I was asked when the last time I slept was?

it took a long time to find myself through you.
I had to lose myself ten times over before I even knew my name.

vacant roads were my favorite because it was you, me, and nothing else.
you drove fast with the windows down because you could.

we were home –
with each other.

I exist in this place
between feeling too much
and not feeling at all

I ache
I long
I fall

I extend my fingers
with hopes for touch
but touch is at a stall

I ache
I long
I fall

I rest at night
eyes open wide
but cannot pick up the call

I ache
I long
I fall

I look for you
I look for me
but all I see

is the writing on the wall

I ache
I long
I fall

there is no real way of knowing, but i'm here
and i'm ready, and i feel that could be enough
there is a sort of grace in this, in me being here
holding my heart in the palm of the same hands
that used to crumble and tear at any piece of this,
of being ready

but i'm here
i'm here

we are pluto, together, i've realized
we existed before and we still do
but now it's in a different way
a way that has changed

i am pluto, alone, i've realized
i existed before and i still do
but now it's in a different way
a way that has changed

understand this: there are pieces of me
that reflect and deflect, progress and regress,
respectively, in this constant state of /something else/

something like growth

there is grace in this-
in holding onto something much bigger than who are are
in being ready to feel

to feel

to know

there is no real way of knowing,
but i'm here
and i'm ready
and i feel that could be enough