i knew i had fallen
when you were taken from me
and i drowned in my own sorrow
for months
when you wouldn't leave this
ugh
wretched damsel
when i showed you the landscape
of me
and you insist upon creating shelter
upon it
when i stayed awake long hours
of the night
scared and
desperate and
wishing and
hoping
that you were the dove that stayed
who would never lift a talon
to my fragile soul.

You asked me why I traced the lines on your face,
I couldn't bear to tell you that I wanted your skin to burn my fingertips until we met again.
I found myself staring while you were sleeping, memorizing your every feature.

I don’t want to forget even the tiniest freckle.
I could paint every square inch of your room with utmost detail.
I memorized it while you were dreaming of all the places you'd rather be, and I was awake from the horrors of the nightmare that is your departure.
Maybe if I don't forget the view from my side of the bed, I'll be able to close my eyes and still imagine things haven't changed.

I asked Ana to help me,
be my best friend,
she said it would be hard
and once I start
there's no going back,
sometimes,
some people,
take it too far,
and can't stop.
She said there's no telling the outcome.
She's wrong in that sense,
I know the outcome,
the outcome is beautiful.
It doesn't matter if I'm a corpse,
I swear if this kills me
I'm going to be the skinniest corpse
you ever did see.

I want to say I'm an unopened novel on your bookshelf,
but that would mean I'm the Harry Potter series
(if I remember correctly)
and I might be, I wouldn't know -I've never read them,
but I've been in your hands enough to be a bit worn,
and there could've been so many chapters of us
if you had just opened the first book.

I'm an encyclopedia of a subject
you never got interested enough to read;
so much information, so much to learn
but my cover is plain, and my words are complicated
and there's magazines on your brother's dresser
of beautiful girls and little words,
so why would you ever waste time on me?

But I'm a wine-box full of scripted letters never sent,
and you're downing liquor as if to forget something,
and I hope you never try to forget me.

I wish you downed me like you did of that bottle,
but like old-wine, my cork was tight
and you didn't have the patience to open me.
Old wine has more flavour,
at the surface I'm sober;
at the core, I'm drunk.

We could've fallen in love
if we had taken the time to learn each-other;
but we started as strangers, and ended as strangers,
except now I'm left collecting dust on my own shelf.

I've been writing letters to a stranger
I swear I could have loved.

(NJ2014) (© All Rights Reserved)