I almost made it through today without thinking about you.
But then I smelled something like your hair —

dusk in early May,
like lilacs giving up,
and July the rest of the time —
like someone’s still grilling down the block
even though the party ended hours ago.

Like a memory that keeps overstaying its welcome.
(Like I’d forgotten how to forget you.)

(Anyway,
I started googling “what’s the opposite of nostalgia”
but halfway through I forgot
what I was looking for.)

Got $9 boba with a friend I haven’t seen in years.
There was too much ice,
the grass jelly kept clogging the straw.

I told her I was fine.
(I wasn’t.)

I teethed each tapioca like a guillotine
to feel something smash.

(I kept biting the ice too —
felt like breaking tiny bones in my mouth
and pretending they weren’t mine.)

(She kept talking about her new boyfriend —
I think his name was Ben or Matt or Disappointment.
He was younger than us
but just as dumb.)

Anyway, I saw our old dance professor at the grocery store.
He asked about you.

(I lied.)
I said you were doing great,
(but I was lying to keep you in a cage
of things I never wanted to admit to myself.)

He looked at me like he knew I was just rearranging wreckage
from a storm we used to dance in.
(Get it?)

(Oh, and by the way —
I still have your sweatshirt.)

It’s at the bottom of my laundry basket,
but I can’t wash it.

It smells like October
and a bad idea I refuse to stop romanticizing,
a wound I can’t stop picking at.
(I tried throwing it away once —
but it felt like pushing someone
out of a lifeboat.)

I almost wore it last week,
but I couldn’t —
like putting on a ghost
that still remembers my name.
like putting on a bruise
just to see if it still hurt.
(I think I wanted it to.)

Anyway, did you know
memories leave like party guests —

half of them forgetting to say goodbye,
the rest lingering in the kitchen,
picking at crumbs
like they might stay forever?

(I kept trying to swallow my gum
just to see if I could.)

I keep thinking about the time
I tried to make you laugh
by pretending my hand was a spider —

(I got tangled in my own fingers
and you called me impossible.)

(I set alarms for stupid times now —
4:13, 7:29, 10:04 —
like if I time it right,
I’ll wake up different.)

Anyway, I saw your name
carved into a bathroom stall in the city.

(Unless it wasn’t yours —
but what are the odds?
Pretty high, actually.)

I stared at it too long.
Some girl in a bucket hat walked in,
gave me a look
like I was unraveling in real time.

(I was.)

So I smiled at her
like I was chewing glass.
(I hope she’s having a great day.)

Oh, and I found your zippo lighter in my trunk last week —
matte silver, your uncle’s from ‘Nam.

I swore I’d lost it.
I keep the lighter in my cup holder now —
like a threat I don’t know how to make.

(I tinker with it at red lights —
like I’m trying to burn something down
but forgot what.)

(Sometimes I imagine flicking it open
and holding it to the sleeve of your sweatshirt —
just to see if I’d go through with it.)

I stopped going out for a while,
but last month I had three beers
and told some guy on a barstool
that I still dream about you —

(That’s not true.
I dream about losing my teeth,
then hiding them in my ears,
getting in very slow motion car crashes,
and realizing I’m too drunk
to perform the play I’m the lead in,
but I think they mean the same thing.)

I saw a crow yesterday.
Anyway, it reminded me of you.

(It perched outside my window
like it knew something —
kept tilting its head
like it had a secret
and didn’t care if I figured it out.)

I almost followed it,
like maybe it was waiting
to lead me somewhere
you never made it back from.
(Oh, and by the way —
I still love you.)

Anyway, how’s your heart?
(And why can’t I stop writing
like you might answer?)

(Anyway, I’ve started talking to myself in the car —
Sometimes I pretend I’m singing with you.)

It’s really fun.
It’s sad, but it’s fun.

I keep writing you into my poems
like I’m building you a place
to come home to.

I keep retelling the ending
like I’m trying to dig you out —
like if I say it soft enough this time,
you’ll remember how it’s supposed to go.
(Anyway, that might be the worst part:
I’ll never know if you hear me.)

Maybe I haven’t been healing,
maybe I’ve just been waiting.
Waiting for you to come back and tell me that I’m worth it.
But maybe I need to be the one to say it.

Anyway, I hope you’re okay.
(I mean that more than I mean anything else.)

And still,
I sat with my hands in my lap —
palms up,
like I was waiting for something
I knew wouldn’t come —
like stale air was all I could hold.

I traced the shape of your name —
sharp vowels, crooked consonants —
one letter for every season since you left.
I lost count at 14.

And still,
I can hear you —
laughing through your teeth,
saying you hated your name.

I poured a drink,
watched the whiskey pool at the 14 mark,
glass sweating like it knew,
and thought about swallowing the whole thing.

Instead,
I held the glass so long
the ice melted to nothing.

14 notes app confessions,
all timestamped at terrible hours.

"I'm sorry I always spoke to you like I was keeping score."
"I'm sorry my questions felt like weapons —
I just wanted to know where you kept the tenderness."

"I wanted you to love me more than you could."
"Forget I said that."
"I would have let you ruin me if you'd asked."

I deleted them one by one —
like stitching my mouth shut,
like learning to speak without a tongue.

I know you’re out there —
shaking change in your pocket,
like the sound might drown out your guilt,
ripping napkins into tiny pieces,
thinking about calling
but never meaning it.

I know you drink with the lights off now —
like you’re scared your own shadow might tell on you.

I know you’re out there —
but I don’t know where.

And still,
I sat with my hands in my lap —
not calling,
not crying,
not moving —
just waiting for something
I couldn’t name.

I stood barefoot on the cold tile,
watching the faucet drip —
14 slow drops,
each one sounding like a pin hitting the floor.

I tried to count faster than they fell.
I always lost.

I counted the pills in the bottle —
just checking.
There were 14.

I closed the cap
and held my breath —
like it might open itself again,
like it was waiting to see
if I’d already lost something.

But instead —
I sat with my hands in my lap,
14 pointing to you,
if you know what to know.

I pressed my thumb into the bruise on my arm —
just to feel something bite back.
It bloomed like ink under my skin.
I counted to 14
and let go.

I still wake up at 4:14 —
lungs tight like I’ve been running,
like my body forgot how to breathe without you,
like something’s burning in my chest,
like something’s trying to get out.

I don’t pray for you.
I don’t curse you either.

I sit up,
open my palms —
the room holds its breath.

I listen.
I taste blood.

And still,
I sit with my hands in my lap —
palms up,
like I’m waiting to be handed something
I know won’t come —
palms up,
like I’m being punished for asking at all.

But my hands won’t stay empty forever.

14 pointing to you,
if you know what to know.

I kept waiting for someone to say my name
like it mattered —
like it meant something more
than the smoke curling from their mouth
or the pause before their next thought.

I kept practicing how I’d answer,
as if the right inflection
could make me worth remembering.
I kept hanging around
like a seat at a table no one was saving —
elbows off the surface, back straight,
trying not to look desperate —
taking notes in the margins of other people’s lives,
highlighting the parts I thought I belonged to.

I filled my pockets with reasons to stay
and still got left behind.
I burned through summers,
cut my teeth on promises made in passing cars.
I stood on porches barefoot, whispering,
Say it back. Please say it back.
But they never did.

I should’ve known better —
should’ve stopped twisting my ribs into ribbon,
threading my spine through the eye of a needle.
I kept breaking myself down into fractions —
a fifth of my pride, a sixth of my spine —
like if I whittled myself thin enough,
I could slip through your keyhole
and rise up like incense burning in your room.

But you were always somewhere else —
feet planted in some other city,
hands too full to catch what I kept throwing.
I was all green lights and loose laces,
always running to meet you halfway —
never noticing you weren’t moving.

I feasted on Adderall
and kept my phone on loud.
I swallowed nights whole
and called it hunger.
Or else I slept for days —
stumbled downstairs with breath like battery acid,
ate three bowls of raisin bran and no water.
My bones went soft as rotting fruit.
My dreams felt like something I could stream —
pause, rewind, resume —
binge-watching my pleading in real time,
begging the screen to glitch out a better ending.

I chewed the quiet until my teeth ached —
gnawed on the hours like stale bread.
Nights stretched thin,
a damp washcloth wrung out too many times.
I stayed up rewriting the last thing you said,
like if I shifted the punctuation
I could make it kinder.
Turned your ellipses into commas,
your cold period into a question mark.
I swore if I curved the words just right,
they’d fold into something softer —
something I could survive.

I spent that week pulling myself apart —
scrubbing my skin until it blushed raw,
stripping it like wallpaper,
scrapping your name out of my throat
like a fish hook.
I kept your words in a jar under my bed —
tight-lidded and hissing like a hornet’s nest.

I kissed the air where you should’ve been
and tasted copper and sweat.
Pressed my tongue to the place it stung
and thought,
This is what love leaves you with —
a mouth full of blood
and a story no one believes.

I kept the lights low for weeks after.
And one morning, I woke up,
swallowed the silence like a dare.
I cut my name out of the air with my teeth.
I let the hurt stick under my nails —
dark and jagged —
and I kept writing anyway.

I spit the silence out like a pit —
sharp, bitter, black.
It hit the floor and rolled,
and for the first time,
I didn’t follow it.

I let it rot where it landed.
Let the flies have their fill.
Let the maggots move in.
Let the earth swallow it whole.
Let it die twice.
Let the ground forget it ever lived.

I knew you were there —
knuckles resting like they didn’t know what to do.
I heard your breath through the wood.

You almost knocked. I felt it —
the air pulling back,
the hush flexing its muscles.

I almost opened the door. I felt that too —
the lock daring me to turn it,
the weight of the air leaning hard against my chest.

But neither of us moved.

We just stood there —
two statues pretending not to be waiting —
except I heard you breathing.
And I know you heard me too.

The next time you tell a woman she’s beautiful,
you will mean it less —
because you have already meant it most.

She looks like a safe bet.
How boring for you.

She will never make your hands shake
when you try to button your shirt —
the buttons slipping like stones from your fingers,
like your body forgot how to be steady
because someone like me was looking at you.

It was never that serious.
Except, maybe, it was.

She will never make you reroute your whole life
just to cross her path.
She won’t know what it’s like
to catch you looking at her mouth
like it’s a dare you want to take —
but we know you’re all talk.

She wasn’t a hard person to love.
She was just a girl
who knew how to sit still.

And you —
you were just a man
who had only ever loved things
that were easy to set down.

You wanted something simple —
a woman like a neatly folded sweater:
wrinkle-resistant, polishes you up,
easy to pick up,
easier to put away.

But simple things never ruin your appetite.
They never make you whisper,
"God, what’s wrong with me?"
because you can’t stop thinking about
the car crash in your rib cage
that you wrote off as a particularly bad day.

But some bruises bloom twice,
and some wrecks keep ringing in your ears.

I was never easy to love —
but God, I was worth it.

And when I was yours,
you were someone better.
Isn’t that just vile?

It was never serious.
Except, apparently, it was.

Now I hope you choke on how simple it feels.
I hope you spend the rest of your life
wondering why you never had to catch your breath
when you kissed her.

I hope her laugh sounds too much like mine.
I hope you hear my name in her silence.

I hope she kisses you in a dark bar,
and for one awful second,
you forget whose lips are on yours.

I hope you miss me across midnights
and hate yourself for it.
I hope my scent won’t wash out of sheets I’ve never slept on —
like something you swore you imagined,
until you smell it again.

I hope you never stop searching out my poems,
then deleting your history.
I hope certain lines jangle like change in your pocket
over every street you’ll ever walk.

I hope the sharpest edges of my words
are so embedded in your psyche,
you can’t remember if it's a Vonnegut quote,
your own inner monologue, or me —
your real favorite writer.

I know I’ll never hear from you again —
but when you quote me in your head,
I hope you taste blood.

I hope you keep walking —
but never walk away clean.

It was never that serious.
Except, I guess, it was.

It’s been eleven months and that moment still matches my breath.

Kick it down, board it up, rewrite it a lesson, a bruise, a fever dream.
Nobody told me memories have teeth. nobody told me they bite back.
Open-palmed, open-mouthed, i am still holding the weight of your words.
Want to know something sick? i don’t want to put them down.

Was it mercy, or did you just want to watch what would happen?
How patient were you while sharpening the blade?
As if it mattered. as if a careful cut doesn’t keep bleeding.
There is no version of this where you didn’t know exactly what you were doing.

You were a scientist. a butcher in surgeon’s gloves. a man who saw a vast heart beating and thought, ‘how long can it last outside her body?’"
Oh, but that’s not fair, is it? you never said that. you never said anything.
Until you did. until it killed something in me that still refuses to stay dead.

Do you want to know what it’s like to live with that?
I’ll tell you, babes. it’s like finding your own obituary and realizing the date keeps changing.
Do you want to know what’s worse?

It still doesn’t feel final.

Keep up, love. i know you’re reading.
No, really, stay with me—i swear this part is important.
Only one of us is getting out of this clean, and it’s not you.
Watch how this unfolds: i get to tell the story, and you get to listen.

Wonder if you regret it. wonder if you’d do it again.
Hope the answer keeps you up at night.
Am i being cruel? am I being kind?
Tell me, what’s the difference?

You thought i would let this rot quietly in the dark.
Once again, you underestimated me.
Understand this: if i have to live with it, so do you.

Stop me. no, really, try.
Ask me if i’d rather forget. ask me if i’d rather this be over.
In every version of the answer, my hands are shaking.
Do i get to walk away? do i want to?

i know what you did, i know what you said,
i know what you meant.
i can outlive this, but I’ll never outwrite it.

nothing desires you like this poem does. i did—
once, but maybe not anymore

Do you think your childhood stuffed animal still waits?
Do they listen for the sound
of your legs flexing to rip your flannel nightgowns up the side,
the way you moved their arms to perform the Macarena,
the way you begged them to talk back
once the hall light went out?

Do you think they miss your small hands,
your bitten-down fingers, your whispered secrets?
Do they wonder where you went?
Do you think they miss you?
Do you think you miss you?

George, Curious, always. Yellow t-shirt, baseball cap,
teal cotton hair-tie triple-looped around his monkey wrist.
I picked him out at Bob’s Surplus,
along with a white-shirt that came with its own small, plush monkey.
I really liked monkeys.
Mom told me not to tell Gillian
because she already thought I was spoiled.

I peeled the red-cursive Curious George ™ off of his chest,
tied my Mickey-Mouse baby-blanket around his neck like a noose,
and that’s where it stayed.

I had a habit of leaving George in my second-grade classroom,
on the ledge of the piano, that no one played but was always open.
And my dad had a bed-time habit of driving two and a half miles to the school,
hoping a janitor was still around, probably using his Police Sergeant badge
to get the door open, then bringing George home like a firefighter
pulling someone from a burning building.
Some nights, he didn’t make the drive,
and I would tiptoe down to the couch where he slept,
stand over him like a night hag until he woke up.
Then he’d sigh, shift, let me have the couch,
and he’d sleep on the floor.

I’m the age now that he was then.
I wonder if his back ached.
If he wished I’d outgrow this sooner.
If I ever thanked him.
My back could not handle that.
God bless good fathers.
Or at least, fathers that can’t say no.

My mom made fun of the tag sewn to his seam,
called him Toilet-Paper-**** until I cried.
When I cut it out, she made up a song
about Georgie Porgie kissing girls, then boys.
My brother laughed and laughed.
They loved to watch me get upset.

It was the ‘90s. You could say anything and laugh.
You could say anything and make a kid cry.
George stayed in my bed, getting smaller, misshapen,
heavy with embedded dog hair from Jasper, Allie, Roxy.
He went to sleepovers, summer camps,
perched on pillows in South African wine country,
woke up with me in Cairo to the Call to Prayer
and a cart of teenshoki pulled by a braying donkey.
He went with me, always. Until he didn’t.

George was stuffed into closets, sat dorm rooms where all I did was cry,
moved into apartments where I couldn’t find my footing,
moved back in with Mom, on a bookshelf in a room where old collages
climbed the walls and I slept too much, or not at all,
where I wrote countless poems then wrote off years,
where I sprawled on the floor in too many bodies,
and knelt down to pray for the things I couldn’t articulate.
I tucked him under my armpit the night my left breast was cut off
and I didn’t know if I’d ever be done recovering from something.

He is still in my bed.
I travel a lot, and when I leave him behind between unnecessary
pregnancy pillow and the Taylor Swift blankets,
I feel like I’m betraying something kind of precious, kind of sad.
I usually feel kind of precious, kind of sad.

Does George know that about me?
Does he know the long, brown tangles and bitten-back fingers
that leave are the same ones that took him home in 1997?
Does he know that I did tell Gillian?
She thought he was cool.

Is yours as much yours as George is mine?
Do you think either of them know
they were the first thing we ever trusted?

Do you think they still wait?