i find myself again
at the corner of
porcelain dreams
and pillowcase nightmares
blinking back tears like
***** flavored rain drops
thinking about you
and thinking about me
and thinking about us
and thinking about her
entering our world
with her hurricane eyes
blowing apart the home we built
inside each other’s hearts
the insurance company
denied our claim because
the home was built
on a week foundation
i’m running now
through fluorescent galleries
filled with our ultraviolet memories
but the ceiling is riddled with cracks
and every time i end up stuck in a room
with all our masterpieces burnt to ashes
you used to trace
the lines on my palm
like the words
of your favorite book
but the endings the same every time
she painted a prettier picture
of high definition sunsets
with her paintbrush eyelashes
i keep dreaming
one day you stop running
one day those cough syrup lungs
drain
and you remember
why the stories i told
were the soundtrack to
your cosmic life
but you don’t
you never do

limiting reactant: that’s you & that's me
both of us standing on a cliff,
neither of us jumping
is this chemistry worth the kind that will decompose our hearts at the bottom of the ocean
or the kind that burns my empty hands

ideal law: ideally, breaking it
you're in the driver's seat, wrist on the wheel
our pulses driving the car and pulsing in the floorboards
speed, velocity, distance,
the physical sciences
(my lipstick distracts you from the road)

balancing equations:
you: black flame, glistening furiously
me: god knows what i am but clear and soft
disaster: the explosion is all-consuming, a violent display of reactivity and fire
people stand in awe, wishing they could be destroyed by something so beautiful

and here i am again
at the intersection
of pedestrian language
& old wives tales
swallowing gum
like 7 year memories
opening umbrellas inside
cause i can't seem get away
from all of this rain
i ******* with my left hand
cause i was told
back in highschool that
"it feels like someone else is doing it"
it gets me wondering
about the difference between
losing you and finding out
that some one else found you
or my sleep
or lack thereof
its starting to tear me apart
i keep having this dream
where you are in
an unfamiliar body of water
trying to wash my poetry
off of your hands
or the one where
something happens in my chest
every time you sit
on someone else's bed
i'm tired of feeling like something you've misplaced
but don't have the heart
to look for anymore
tired of you saying my name
like you're trying to bury it
i'm tired of wondering
if you can tell the difference
between the absence
of my voice & silence
the other day
i almost started sobbing
at work when a woman
asked me about
our equipment
i was explaining how
things come apart
and almost mentioned your name
it made me think
of how you used to say
things like "what would you do
if i showed up on your doorstep
one day?" now, i haunt
the windows in my house
i don't leave for weeks at a time
i sit on the porch like the dog
you didn't shoot behind the shed
the one that refuses to die
until you come home again
i told somebody once, that
you didn't even know
what my voicemail sounded like
i wonder if they thought
it was because you
are so important that i never
let it ring that many times
before picking up
or if you dont know
what it sounds like
because you've never called
you can't be the ****** weapon
and the search party
i'm tired of all the seats
to the ferris wheel in my chest
being empty
tired of your voice
being the one i look for
in abandoned places
that one sound i beg
to bounce back
down vacant hallways
i just seem to stand there
in all of that quiet
like someone looking for a mistake
on an eviction notice
so i guess the hardest part
isn't letting go
it's forgetting
you ever had a grip
in the first place
and since you've been gone
i wonder if when
you pushed yourself away from me
you used your left hand
so it felt like someone else did it

We killed the lights and found
the way to each other’s lips like magnets
who had been denied their center of gravity
for awhile. You stripped me down,
measured my sweet spots out in sugar spoons,
and savored me like a treat you hadn’t had
since you were a kid, all the nostalgia
landing on your tongue as you molded me
with your hands. My ribs pushed back then pulled
again, like bread, underneath the covers.
You whispered my name like a song
you can’t let yourself forget the words to.
I followed the map of your neck with my kisses,
retracing my steps as we danced in my bed
to the familiar sound of a tiny fan
and the TV turned down low, the light
making shadows on your cheeks as the screen
changed, my eyes dodging them just to capture
a clearer image of the face I dreamed
and dreamed of again. You know my body

like a monologue, writing me all the way through,
smiling at your favorite parts, and every time
I fall into this routine I hope that maybe
this ending is different, maybe you’ve decided
to rewrite the last page. Maybe I won’t have to look back
at our sour memories, maybe this time
we will leave the bookmark in the same spot
and kiss each other through all those times we said
it had been too long.