I could meet a million people tomorrow
But none of them
Will ever be you
And I hate them for that.

I tried to get through this night
Without your ghost in my bed.
I couldn’t.

I keep having barroom fantasies
Of your stupid, perfect lips
And my hunger for them.
I’m ravenous.

You’ve followed me like
An everlasting echo
That I will never outrun.
I will never find
Someone so utterly divine as you again.
You are nothing more
Than a lucid dream,
But that’s more than I am to you.

It would be so easy
To throw the towel in
And call it a life.

I can’t turn on the television
Because every “Breaking News” story
Makes me cry.
How can I go about my day
Listening to people complain about cold coffee
When a lover is dead
And nothing stays still for a moment?

How do we live like this?

It feels as though my body is collapsing into itself,
An eternal void of instability,
A black hole for wisps of passion.

How do I live like this?

I have known the love of strangers
Thousands of miles away
In bars and silent living rooms.
I have known quiet love,
Felt the fingertips of men sure in the simplicity
Of heterosexuality.
I have known quiet love,
But never the fingertips of women
Terrified of themselves because
They’ve been told they are wrong.

I don’t always have the courage to stand,
And we all know that it is easier to submit.
The true test of human endurance is the ability
To be beaten down time and time and time again
And always get back up.
I’m still standing,
With sore feet and a broken heart.
We are all still standing.
Except for the ones that aren’t.

I was writing this poem
In your arms.

Six feet beneath you;
You look like a god to me.
Everyone else is on level ground.

I was writing this poem
In the arms of your brother.

It seems as though his body
Was molded especially to fit my own.
He smiled when you didn’t.

I was writing this poem
In the arms of all your friends.

There were no introductions.
I’ll forget them first.
Nice boys, sweet boys.

You close your eyes
When you cower in the corner.
This man, this man isn’t you.
Dry mouths and too much scotch;
Animals for an evening.
Dreams of Edinburgh shattered,
Depression awoken by the bitter air of Los Angeles.
Where do you belong anymore?

Dull sandpaper,
Worn away by these city lights
But you can’t stop.
Surrounded by thousands and
You’re lonely,
Just like the rest of us.
I see those quiet tears.

I was writing this poem
In your arms,
In the arms of your brother,
In the arms of all your friends.

Don’t ask me to choose
Because I won’t.

2,960 miles between our legs
And you still claim
That you ache for me.
Your body throbs and moans
With no release,
Mine quakes with longing
For an evening or two.
I keep making these midnight mistakes
And you aren’t stopping me.
Your voice haunts my dreams
Almost as much as the curve of your hips;
There have been weeks of unacknowledged texts
But you follow me like a cat in heat.
You lie to me
And it doesn’t matter.
I’m not waiting for you to love me.
You think that’s what I need.
We’re hedonists, and that’s all.
Neither of us could bear the pain
Of falling in love,
So we won’t.
We’ll just be fingertips under the table
And cutting class
And Friday night bathroom stalls.

You should come with a warning label.
Caution: Will break your heart
And make you question everything.

The wickedness of fallible love
Is a lesson I will never learn.
I should’ve seen you coming.

It is so difficult to love someone new
When the last hands that held me
Were yours.
I didn’t know you cross your fingers
Before making promises.
I never did.
Not with you.  

There are no duck-and-cover practices;
Stop, drop, and roll doesn’t work
When your heart is on fire
And the smoke is suffocating.
Not everyone survives this day.

I am not a saviour.
You won’t find absolution
In my arms.
Cowardly hands
Write cowardly words
That you will never read.
My love burned quickly,
Fiercely,
And extinguished itself.
It couldn’t sustain
Its own passion.
There are still echoes of you in my heart
But they’ll fade out
Eventually.
You forget how easily voices are forgotten
When the intimacy is gone.
Secondhand smoke
Still does damage, though.
My breath quivers just as much as yours.
I can’t pull you from the wreck
That I myself am trapped beneath.
There is no winner here.
The stale words on yellowed letters
Hold no depth.
They make better tinder
Than literature.
The angel wings you thought I had
Are nothing more than crow’s feet.
I am not your saviour.

Tonight,
There is no love here.
The honey ***,
Once overflowing,
Is full of flies.
I am paper-thin.
I will burn easily.
My teeth aren’t as white as they once were.
My eyes don’t sparkle.
I am blue and purple
And jagged.
I am cold to the touch.
My eyes sting
With cigarette smoke.
My tongue,
With its sandpaper softness,
Will not grace your skin tonight.
Let the black sheets of my bed
Shroud me from moonlight and
The warmth of your hands.
Maybe in the morning
It will be better.
Maybe in the morning
I’ll forget that once
I loved you.
Maybe I’m just a little bit sour.