i'd
ripped up a list
with some
things that i've written
things I have gripped
to survive

a fish made of glass
that's been
swimming in madness
constantly
swallows her pride

salt water drips
from her lids
to her lips
drying ripples on
both of her thighs

but there's something
about mornings &
loving that woman
that keeps me up
most of the night

I've been choking from the moment
I was forced to let you go
I should have spoke it out of poems
so that you would ever know
that I am bowing out & broken
want to unlearn every bone
until my heart re-bleeds the reasons
I keep sleeping here alone

so won't you
untie all my finger-tips
& hand me back my lungs
I was the fool that glued my heart to you
please can't you see what you have done ?

exhausted by the nights & dawn
that break me over you

I've tried a thousand times and still
there's nothing I can do

I've skipped the songs
& cursed your arms
I burn inside my sleep;
to wake now wearing scars
from break-neck-love
made urgently

the truth in me
I'll never speak
of love that wouldn't keep;
my bones they lay
upon the stage
get played with bows of grief

the cellist stripped my ribs
a trick to twist in perfect fifths
& I admit, a love like this
a pain I cannot quit

on quieter occasions
& they were all just moments
I'd close to meet your truth
different coasts, different rooms
that, I'd noticed in you
cause I'd kissed like this too;
like the kiss itself had a mind
it wanted to mean what it was doing;

I generously swallowed my pride

that there is never a right time
never a right place
for anything

it always just comes down to honesty
and reason

and I can't reason with my truth anymore
I don't know how to stop
how to end this, *being in love with you

it's always the same
you everywhere
& me
finding the poetry in shaking
finally finding it silent
then realizing
this
this missing you
this loving you in volumes

it's the noisiest thing

I saw something
I found romance in reflection
before & after coffee
I compared the breeze to you
I felt humiliated
I've been all but
kept up
I've been all but kept by you

What have you seen in it ?

I'll swallow it after it cools down
&
small parts of me will never give up on you