Destructive thinking,
hollow eyes and bleeding thighs,
eight months thrown away.

In your bones, in your muscles
twitching restlessness.
That foul pit in your stomach
(oh God I'm gonna puke)
and your lungs can't keep up
and your mind races
races
races
And the real kicker
is that there's nothing
that you can do.
*nothing.

How ironic is it
that something as lovely as a Lisa Frank
butterfly-shaped bandaid
could cover something so ugly
(in both form and concept)
And oh,
There's no worse feeling than a relapse
into such an addictive hobby
(I thought I left that behind me)
How I miss the numb pressure
and the sting accompanying the post-period
of regret and infiltration
(Don't do it)
Welcome back
(Get out)

When every word is measured
and there is no solid ground,
a light appears to beckon
could this be hope we've found?
Through shakes and chilly glances
we've held on through it all.
I know this too,
we'll make it through,
dear, you're my wonderwall.

I don’t know what I would do
without your lips tracing those clustered purple lines
and your eyes telling me I’m beautiful anyway.
Without your hand on my swollen head
when I let eighteen years of **** burst onto that
plaid button-up I love so much.
Without your crude sense of humor making me laugh
until my ribs threaten to crack
and a snort escapes
(I don’t know how you think that’s cute)
And your professions and confessions that fill
my heart in ways I don’t understand but simply
can’t get enough of.
Without your being heating the back of mine
while I plant light kisses on your every finger
and that smile that gives away the lie
when you say you don’t like it.
Without those green eyes creating sparks in my soul
(Who knew I could house such a blaze?)
Without your jigsaw mastery
when I drop the puzzle and lose all the pieces.
I don’t know what I would do
without you.

Sleep is gentler when my olfaction is full of
smoke and spice and a hint of shampoo
(like Christmas with you in a log cabin)
And my ossicles still vibrate with variations of my name
and low tones of “I love you”s without the actual
three words.

I find peace in the way our knuckles inhibit that perfect fit
of our fingers, but we lace them regardless.
It seems your thumb on my cheekbone
and your strength blanketing my quivering being
are the only things that normalize my oxygen flow
and slow my racing heart after a ****
memory-mare
(nightmares are bad enough
memories are worse)

And most nights,
when your calloused fingertips paint circles between my shoulder blades,
I wake in the early morning
not with a scream
but with a welcoming sigh
to that crooked smile meeting mine.

A night with you is a night safe from ghosts.

It haunts me.
No matter what I do,
it seems the **** brown eyes never shut.

I can hide fairly well during the day,
unless it finds me in the instructor grasping my arm
(to get my attention)
or in a friend who playfully puts his arm around my
(neck not the neck).
And they don’t know that they have caused spots
in front of my vision and a barely suppressed
panic.

Baths are solace,
I scrub it away until I’m raw.
I shed it from my being in
red swirls that taint the inner walls of a porcelain
bed
(Hah, it never used a bed).

I **** in the heat from the scalding water
in hopes that it might burn out my temporal lobe
and destroy for good the memories that
wake me up at three am in a cold sweat
and a muffled scream
and the inability to remind myself that it is not,
in that moment,
robbing me of serenity and innocence and a full night’s sleep.

And God, why can the past feel so present?