this is a different kind of yearning,
how can you crave a taste you've never known?
how do I grieve the absence of company I haven’t kept?
there’s a little bit of you left for me,
a shadow that leers over my sink,
a silhouette behind me, massaging shampoo into my hair
the echo of footsteps following me up my stairs,
you retrieve the keys from my purse

I sit on this sofa
and the you that I once had is beside me,
leaving an imprint on my left-most cushion,
I let you rest here once and now you are the trim on my front door
Unravel yourself from the braid down my back
and snake yourself from my drain
I hear you in the creak escaping from my floorboards
you are be the monster under my bed
Sage won’t eradicate you,
please leave this space
You lie beside me,
a sheet of knowing tethering me to the mattress.

how am i expected to keep a man made of blue tissue paper if i tenaciously spill words made of wine onto his lap ?
he tries to hold me late at night and i cry,
tears burning gaping holes into his paper chest
he is scorched by honesty and soon there won't be much of him left,
how do you stop such natural forces as wildfires and thunderstorms?
oh, to be a lady made of almond soap and frothed cream-
i was cursed with a furor-laden demeanor
fear is sharp and i tuck it between my fingers as i walk home at night,
getting home to him with blood-shot eyes and a fist full of glass that could tear him to shreds
he's here and i'm there, and there are four corners in the room in which we will evade each other.
i fling what i mean across the room and it misses him,
and he won't come closer because he knows that it will only hurt.
and maybe i want it to hurt,
maybe i resent him for being made of soft woven cotton, in comparison i am steel wool and i have never felt less manageable
i cry again on a Tuesday afternoon and he is standing very close,
he's riddled with these craters that are my signature.
i've never been more angry than when he melts under my hand,
the audacity of such fragility,
i never asked for this,
but what i meant to say is that i'd like to keep you

there is a longing that is growing like a tumor in the spaces between my ribs.
i imagine hearing another woman's name coming from your mouth to be a poisonous cloud that will enter through all the pits on my face and leave me with creamy brains that spill from my ears.
i'm sure she's much easier on the lungs,
a lot less of a woman to take in-
asking for less words.

when I die cut me into pieces
keep the bits of me in your back pockets and leave me at train stations
hide me in between books at libraries and tuck me between the pews at church
leave me next to shampoo bottles at the pharmacy and plant me with blue hydrangeas
stuff me in between the sheets at ikea and in stranger’s coin jars
I want to be known so much,
I want the world to have me
If they don’t want me as a whole,
maybe they’ll take the scraps

i want to be so lovely
tear the skin from my bones and whittle me down to nothing,
there-
am i small enough for you?
i want to be so tiny,
tear these limbs to pieces and press them,
dry me out like a bouquet and let my petals fall,
hang me decoratively throughout the apartment,
brittle and thin and lifeless and lovely

paper and pen won't do,
i'll pool blood around my frame and hope to find words in my own ink.
you'll stand right here and give me all the ammunition i need,
carving my skin from bone as you speak,
for i know this is your exit interview.
i will be a skeleton of a woman,
and that's just fine because at least i'll have been skinned by the handsomest man to leave this apartment.
my magnum opus,
i'll trace the blood with my fingers
and try to write about how it felt to have your attention for a moment.
you'll leave and stain the carpet with crimson footprints,
but that's just fine because there will be a painting to match my poem.

The first wine gets me to stop shaking, and the second one starts warming me from my center. And the rage I entered the establishment with on my hands stains the bar a bit, but Pinot spills over it and I no longer care. And I’m twirling the days events between my fingers, but my fingers go slack and I no longer care. And I’m thinking about the man with the wife who visits me occasionally and I think I smell him but I take a sip and I no longer care.