Some things I should stop doing include
reading about your zodiac sign
checking if you're online
wondering about your scent.
The infamous "something-missing" won't shake
from my spine ever, it ran back quickly
when I let what was mine slip.
I should stop writing you poems although a wise boy once said
if you keep writing, maybe he'll leave your head.
And you'll get sick of his name in every word, every keystroke
I agreed with more poems but asked, what if I won't?
What if you bloom like cherry blossoms in the cracks of my bones,
like the watermelon seeds I'd spit outside my grandparents' home
that turned into a garden of green rounded fruit.
Asked, what if it isn't
that easy to shake you?
Some things I should stop doing
but I know that I won't
include
thinking of me as a sailor
and you as a boat.

Eighteen, recovering from a love that ripped through my spine
stole every goose bumped piece of flesh I thought I could call mine.
Swallowed my heart whole while it was still warm and beating,
cut my wrists with teeth so sharp and left me with constant bleeding.
Bruised my skull with questions, answers whispered soon after
broke my nose with a darkened mouth filled to the brim with laughter.
Snapped each fingertip and every bone that resides in my hands,
stared into my eyes and stole the light with every "can't."
Yanked apart my chest cavity and poked with rusty promise.
As for my faith, it's shriveled. Every cell in me is godless.
Poisoned my organs, shattered my hips,
chipped every tooth and put a **** in my lips.
Tore all my skin off from ear to ear
they pooled with blood til I could no longer hear.
Femurs both missing, knee caps displaced.
Shoulders and collarbones skinned both with haste.
Every inch of my body
broken and bruised.
Every thought in my brain
screams I have been used.
Every cell in my heart,
at the pit of your soul,
still sings for you, dear.
Our love it still knows.

How have you been?
I think I'm forgetting the touch of your skin
on mine and it's similar to the feeling of an ocean in my ears
water blocked my hearing and nothing is as near
as it should be. I might be hit by a train
because my senses are telling me it's far away.
I have time
to let you go like the monkey bar handles
don't want to fall beneath so I'll cling to the candle
lit bedroom I once had with my first lover ever
wanted incense and kissing and hands moving slower than heaven.
With you it was quick
like a pin to my chest
and you pulled away too early
so I bled and I bled.
It's healed over but I'm so tempted to pick
that little hole back and let the blood run thick.
At least then I'd know that I bled in the first place
instead of wondering if it was a stomach flutter
and not the lightning bolt
I wasn't looking for.

You are a ferris wheel operator because
you keep guessing why.
I'd like to tell you
that you've taken me higher than ever before,
made me see what I couldn't
don't know if I can anymore.
Because I swallow too many pills that are sweet on my tongue
listen to the same songs he showed me the summer before love
making it to the middle is absolutely good enough for me
if you can use me like a ladder and get higher than the lows of the sea
we are polar opposites.
Balance each other out,
we're the flat planes of Kansas and we're going down.
It's been said that a person is only an atheist until they're dying
I say everyone keeps loving until they're told they're lying.
Only the truest keep fighting to hold onto the middle
and never let their love weep like the tree of willow
said every single person deserves a second chance
until they use that one to pull a gun
and blame it on their parents.

I had a dream you were a fountain
                         filled with cancerous cells
multiplying to numbers I can't count
                                           cried to you in a cab,
but  you wouldn't accept me.
You've repressed me
             blocked me out.
I don't reside on the surface of your skin,
I am the slight tickle in your bones within
the marrow.
Do you ever wonder what piece of clothing has touched me,
if the hair you haven't cut remembers my scent
and I want to ask if you meant
you loved me straight through to my bones,
every beauty mark and mole,
all my fingers and toes
every word I spoke
with your head on my chest listening to my heart beat.
Do you strive to see bits of me in every person you meet
or do you think they're too good for me,
                           I'm too good for them?
Did you love my lows that go so far as the Mariana Trench,
straight shot right up to Mars, higher than sitting atop the globe.
Did you know
you are my "it" and I can't let
that go.

When did you feel the most beautiful you've ever felt?
When it sent a lightning bolt through your bones and hit
every pore, caused your hair to stand on end
and your heart to pump more blood,
like you couldn't fit all that living into one breath
you needed the whole. When the sheets on the floor looked like the entire ocean
stretched out before you, your body is a boat, a vessel for another person's life
not a stitch of clothing on and not a single speck of dust
in the air of the bedroom. Lights wrapped around your ankles like
you're above the sun rather than underneath it,
but there are no boils on your skin and your scars have smoothed.
There are no hands on you
but your own and the ones of every person you've been before.
Shedding skin cells with every brush of a finger on your wrist
and this is it.
You promised yourself, I love you now.
I love all of you, somehow I always have. Not a stitch
of clothing
not a hand
held to your body warmth
and you're beautiful alone
you're the ocean and the boat.
I'm trying to write until I can't anymore
and it's words that flow out and it's sentences that pour
no longer about those lost, but those living,
and the ones that I strive to keep close, to keep giving
every bit of me away and I'll gain each part back
from other breathing and split ends and cells,
I don't need others to feel well.

Four letters, five. You're just like my child and I'll try my hardest to feed you wisdom
if you promise
not to spit it back up.
Kisses don't make the entire world better
but if it fixes your head, I'll kiss more.
I've never gotten stanzas quite
right
because sometimes I spend too long in one place and other times I
only spend the night.
You're unstable like the twin towers and I know that's harsh,
but your illnesses are tearing you apart
like planes, do you wonder who the people were and their
families? Their notebooks filled with words, little spots of blood from picking at their nails?
That's how mine are. Sometimes coffee stains, once in a while a tear
through the page from pressing down on my pen too hard. This is what a keyboard is for-
I don't need blood on my pages, but words mean more. Or do they?
I question that daily through texts and tea on my cell phone,
notebooks dusty under my feet with a leather strand braided to make it look neat
and spiritual. You're my baby.
I'll feed you love if you promise
not to spit it back up.