i care about you more than i should. there's no rational reason for me to; it's been long enough, with few enough words between us and small enough talk. we've dissolved into strangers, but to me you'll never be estranged; i think about you everyday, even when you should be the farthest thing from my mind. when i'm putting on my uniform for a school you never attended. when i'm driving down a road that you couldn't even name with a map. when i'm dissecting a cat, for christ's sake, committing an act so clinical it could be performed by a robot. i shouldn't feel anything, especially not for you. but i do. i still do.

it doesn't consume me the way it once did, thinking about you. you don't consume me the way you once did. i don't ache at the thought of you.

but still. there you are. you've made yourself comfortable in the back of my mind and something tells me you've no plans to leave.

and something tells me i'm okay with that.

it took looking down
at the reds and browns
of the canyon below
for me to notice
that I was walking
on a narrow and
thinning rope.

i am heavy
[with ugly emotion
that nobody
deserves.]

i didn't donate blood today. i could've, but i didn't. my friends did. all day, people talked about the donors like they were heroes. we watched a video about donating, about a little girl whose live was saved thanks to a donation. my friends' blood will save lives. but i didn't donate today, because my blood is thick with misguided bits of you and to burden someone else with that would be to condemn them, too, to hell.+

i think part of me is still
waiting for prince charming
and it sickens me.