They say time heals all wounds
as though the clock faces
are doing us a favor.
As if we need
one more reason
to be indebted
to time’s greedy hands.

Time does not simply
apply the dressing
over careful, meticulous stitches,
lovingly pressing hope
against the puckered skin
in the form of a tender kiss.

Time rips the **** open
with desperate claws,
watching while we bleed out
and drown in the darkness
of our crystal-clear hindsight.

It scoops us up
to begrudgingly tear the flesh
from our still-beating hearts,
creating a crude skin graft
to cover the damage
and smother the cries
of the persistent lesion.

Time hardens the layers
that slowly gather on us,
clinging to us like dust
of all the years gone by,
forming sedimentary layers
that show our descent
away from the sun.

Time does not heal
any affliction at all.
It covers them up
with distractions and pangs
until they’re buried as deeply
as the people we once were.

The healing isn’t done-
maybe this is why
we humans
are so prone
to scarring.

Clasp your hands a little tighter:
they say white is the color
of the innocent;
and the pallor of the flesh
stretched over your shaking knuckles
makes you almost virginal.

“Say something,” you beg,
as if the inflections
could take the venom
from your voice.
Keep demanding;
the urgency makes my lips burn
under the stitches weaving them shut.

Beseeching for my words
only leaves laughter struggling to escape
through the seams of your impositions.
Instead, I can only smirk
as the icy desperation
trickles into your red-hot voice.

Implore me to speak
and you’ll choke on your words;
never realizing
it was you who threaded the needle.

Please allow me
to cling to your skin
like the scent of a long night,
leaving traces that smell
like rain and sadness.
**** me in like a bitter shot
so my name sits on your breath
like whiskey and disdain
and let the thought of me
pollute you like the drag of a cigarette;
remaining long after
I've vanished through your teeth
and mingled with the air that fills your lungs,
hoping this time
you'll die a little quicker
as you breathe me in.

They say if a writer
falls in love with you
you live forever.

Well shame on me
for keeping your blood
flowing from my pen
into your veins;
for allowing your lungs to fill
and steal my breath.

This conjuring through
graphite and paper
keeps you alive,
with me,
long after you’ve left.

each word
resurrecting you
to destroy me
all over again.

if only i could assign
numbers and equations
to the feelings in my head;
a universal value system
even you could comprehend.

Because then I could understand
that when I think of you
my heart swells like
one thousand helium balloons
and my feelings for you
are approximately
one million, seven thousand and two.

i’d know that how I feel
when you offer her words
divided by the times
you’ve made me smile
equals the lightness in your eyes
when I catch them on mine.

I’d tell the doctors that today,
my sadness is about ninety-four;
equaling my disdain for the mirror
multiplied by the pit in my chest.
and he’d tell me to laugh
until I felt like a trillion.

Maybe it would make sense
when people ask,
“how do you feel?”
and I simply reply,
“zero.”

You left me
drowning in a darkness
as vast as the lies
you fed me tenderly,
spun carefully
at the tips of your fingers,
slipping them in whispers
on your breaths
between my teeth.
My chest caved in
each time your touch
exploded across my skin,
disguised skillfully
under a ruse of affection.
Your tongue greedily
begged for any
semblance of a response,
so I sewed my mouth
shut with the threads
of the self-hatred
you left me with
each time you reminded me
‘good girls stay quiet.’