I don't know exactly how to deal with what's happened
You were there, breathing, shaking
But I don't remember thinking anything was different
You reached out for my hand and I was reading a textbook about how to help people with mental illness

I held my breath for 368 days
But the thing is all I see is red
It clings to my bed sheets, it clings to the rug
It holds on to the bathroom floor
It remains on the closet door in a hand print
Footprints across the hallway floor
Why can't I see your face instead of the blood?
Why can't I see you smiling?
Why can't I remember that far back?

The thing is it's my job to recognize brokenness
Not only recognize but mend it
I'm the sewing needle for the torn up heart
But why didn't  I bring the kit?
Why didn't I have the right colour thread?

I feared you in the same way I fear too much broken
I feared you in the same way I fear my own heart beat
I feared you in the same way a small child fears the push
Mother's hands on lower back
Bike wheels spinning spinning spinning
Too much fast

My anxieties are the only thing that keeps me warm
My bones are eternally full of chill
But my panic keeps me sober, somber, here.

I feared the way you bent over backwards to make sure I was breathing

I always knew I was wrong
or something in me wasn't right, my chemicals unbalanced
because my fear seemed to always overtake the fact that you were madly in love with my obsessions
Madly in love with the way my hair would stick to my cheeks in the midst of mad apprehension

So I sat down at my piano in the middle of a panic attack
And wrote you some songs and poems and such
I imagined I wasn't an erupting volcano
I imagined I wasn't your biggest mistake

**** this.
*******.
we were never meant to be.
or so you've told me.

tonight there's a fire in texas
& it's screaming out for the all the bodies it's lost there
in some grand american war
in someone else's glorious battle

the backyard tree was too high for you to climb
& so you took a jaunt to the brooklyn bridge and jumped
to see what it was like to fly

& tonight there's a fire in her chest that bleeds
for her father's bones to be buried next to hers
even though for years he didn't know her name
or what her laugh sounded like
i guess he forgot to check the post

& tonight there's a broadcast on the radio
the presidents been assassinated
& somehow that's your fault
for being to open about your love for your best friend, tom
who also happens to be a boy

& tomorrow there'll be an earthquake in memphis
& it'll be because there's too much *** on tv
god must be flapping his wings hard enough to shake
our great and grand scheme of things

& yesterday a little girl lay awake in her bed
counting her ribcage to make sure she can see every bone
she's praying she won't lose track of them under the meat

& tonight i will drink a tall glass of wine
so i can feel something
other than all the pain we've created for each other

this is not a poem. it's more of an anthem, to honour all the nights i set my hair on fire with the wind & to raise a glass to all my glasses of wine brought on by poems written under candlelight. i'm not a writer, i'm just a woman paying tribute to you & all the ways you made my chest ache with infatuation & my finger tips tingle with skin-on-skin interaction. this is not a poem, i am not an artist. i am merely recollecting, reminiscing all the nights my skin was wild with alcohol & my breath was breathing out endless love letters & my guitar was singing out holy hymns. i was praising something. i was praising my body & the way my arms always unfolded for you & the way we always seemed to fit together. even when we didn't. but no, this is not a poem. i am not romantic but i was madly, romantically in love with you.

I'm trying to recall a moment where I really knew myself
I used to count every single sun kissed lamppost
I used to taste every single wine drenched kiss
Now my nights and days are all jumbled and joined up into one
And my lips cannot recall a single second of solitude in a slumber
I used to love the way my guitar sounded when it was raining
I used to love life and the way it flipped back and forth
Following no specific pattern, creating no schedule
Now my life is a calendar of days I can't remember
and nights I slept through not even knowing what the stars looked like
I used to count the stars

I guess all I'm trying to say is I used to be in love with love
and now I have to fight to keep it

we were counting silhouettes of all our lost lovers
you were tying your shoes into 23 knots to make sure you never lost your step
again I was collecting bed linens
trying to sort out our newly found lies
how do you forgive when you keep replaying in your mind the things you can't forget?
how do you forget
& how do you draw 17 new lines
create new boundaries from the past you longed to have left
but I counted a million stars I'd kissed upon your neck
painted lightening bolts
across your summer sky
I swear we loved each other once
I swear still love you once a day
but part of me has lost track of all my days and nights
you used to be my only crescent moon
I'd stick out my thumb
& no matter what you'd always fit in and fill up all the space
Some nights I wonder if it'll ever be the same again