and my fingers bled the moment you left--
I sliced them on a broken mirror
when throwing out the trash;
the cuts were
deep, the blood flowed heavy;
my first instinct was to **** the
wound and it helped briefly,
for a moment,
before the sting of glass surged

when will i learn
that love is not
late night phone calls,
perfectly designed
to hide your face.

when will i learn
that love is not
glances through tinted windows,
and secrets only told
through fingertips.

when will i learn
that love is not
a game to see who can
last the longest under
hot water.

when will i learn that love is not a game of truth or dare while god giggles in the corner, love is not the exit strategy to existence, love is not a band aid or a blanket and love is not a cure. love is not anything that i have ever seen or felt or touched or known.

but i think it might exist within that two second silence we shared after you told me how you wish you could come home to me every day. i think it might be buried underneath the miles. i think it might be found underneath your front porch.

a city that sleeps,
that coos, that cries,
that holds me with no rain;
the tiptoe treasures
and my trying-too-hard-to-smile-eyes-
there is always time, always
reflection, always melancholy,
but I'm reminded that nothing
is always. because always always
ends. and everything always
always begins.

burrowed in lies and tears
i've decided i still need you.
wine drunk on a monday
i beat the record for
most blinded in love.
you, with your laughs and honey
tinted eyes and pink pink lips
and your absolute destruction of my heart.

i don't even want the remains, please
bury them beneath the overground station
or scatter them in the river Thames.
or keep them, broken and all,
within the depths of your sock drawer.

expectations of epiphanies brought
a sword through my stomach,
replaced butterflies with blood;
and yet, somehow (without a heart)
i still love you.

maybe one day i'll understand
why things have to be this way
but for now my drunken mondays
will continue to leak the poison from
my eyes in an endless desire
to be yours.

Purple radiant heat
Reverberations of
Exclamations
Horrific holograms
Reality has received;

Testing teapots and
Tourmaline jewelry
Shattered on the wood floors
Fluorescent firecrackers
For days upon hours;

The nape of the neck
Where yours should be
Sheds blood
Pulsating the prophetic
Paralyzing truths;

Home is a verb, the
Truly inspirational
Deception of defeat
And the drip drip drip
Of disillusioned ichor

cursed to romanticize
the temperature it was
when we had our first kiss,
to meditate on your
cadences,
to memorialize the seconds it took
for you to call me beautiful.

my rhetorical self, the
one i've designed for you to
admire, has had a broken heart
for years. i'm getting closer
to discovering the boundary
between her and i. my
body, her heart, your mouth,
synchronized affirmations
to the unreal.

facilitated intimacy using
words as fingers and tongues,
fading bruises from sunday as
anger watches in the mirror.

my window covered with
droplets, green earth and
pink bodies devour alone these
stale replacements of life.

my bedroom begs for absence;
wine drowns doubts but
overflows to stain my fingertips
like a lover, like a curse.

disappointment in the doubts
of dreary days,
my fingers and toes
are chilled but
sorrow burns my throat;
there's never been a time
my expectations for love
have been met, i
pick open old wounds
for strangers to lick
but they always leave,
things always get too
complicated;
my disappointment makes me
bitter sweet on the tongue
of lovers and heavy in the hands
of friends—