i wish i could have loved you
in our downtrodden, sinful glory
you were—
are—
my respite

i’m really trying to be happy for you but it’s not working. i want you to be happy, but i think that your happiness is my unhappiness.

your happiness is other people, is love, is dunkin’ donuts addiction, is her, is not me.

i just feel burnt orange, feel lack of oxygen, feel torn apart, feel rough edges and soft hair, feel ripping out fingernails, feel blood on my hands, feel messed up inside.

i’m making a playlist for you, but i’m talking to another guy while i do it. i don’t want to hurt him. will i ever get over you?

he told me

the truth

three years of truth

but one line

“i am head over heels for you”

but i think the funniest thing is...

he had me at hello

i hear you in my mind all the time

you don’t say anything
but i can hear you in there

shuffling around papers
putting away groceries
hanging up the laundry
changing the sheets on the bed

i never hear you say a single word

but i still know it’s you

because who else could it be?
who else could or even would
make a home of my mind?

there is nothing to love about my inability to not forget

destroying notes—
the notes i would have left you

painting my tears onto shoe boxes—
i cannot bring to mind the last time i had not seen them

it’s all the things you’d done to me
it’s all the scars you’d left behind

they plague me, body and soul

there is nothing to love about my inability to remember

but by God’s “good grace” i’ve forgotten your voice,

perhaps He thought it was His way of “helping”

but how is it “helping” if i am just ending up with more pain

i cannot put a voice
behind the pain
behind the hurt

i have no voice to blame at night
when i cannot sleep
when i cannot forget

he doesn’t text me

and i feel chills over my body—

it isn’t the ceiling fan

it’s what he said.

but i’m upset
that i was not there

and that he doesn’t mention me
to anyone else.