I feel your arms
when I listen to my favorite songs,
I hear your voice
when I look at the moon and
I see your eyes whenever
I close mine.
Why can’t you be the one
to kiss me goodnight
rather than my
crinkling sheets?
And why isn’t your voice
singing me to sleep
rather than these
broken records?
How is it that
you’re so full when
I’m as hollow as bone?
Can you teach me your ways,
because I’m gasping for air
as you swim in an
ocean of luxury
and I’m sick of
drowning.

How does one go back to life after love?
Will your morning cup of coffee taste the same,
or will it be as bland as crisp white paper?
Do your favorite songs turn into dreary ballads
that now sound cheap and forged rather than beautiful?
Is the one thing you look forward to
going to change from being held in his arms
to hopefully forgetting his touch?
When tears of joy turn to tears of hate,
where do you turn?Where does all the love that was once
spent on “the one” go?
Where did it all go?

I woke up to a bed layered in scattered pages,
with an empty coffee mug at the foot
and your glasses perched, crooked, on the tip of your nose.
Fast asleep, you hold a thick gray book
with your thumb rested on a worn page.
45.
I cradle the book and stare at the printed lines
and I find a marked passage, something to do
with the suicide of a young girl.
Heavy underlines, arrows, stars,
every type of signal to label something
important.
Note number 12 is scrawled in black loops to the right,
and I scramble until I find it
crumpled in his left palm.
Don’t ever let that happen to her. She’s too nice.
7:15 AM, I fall asleep,
the happiest I’ve ever been.

I wonder if
you call her by
the names you
used to call me,
if you stay up
with her until
the sunrise
night after night
to make sure
she’s okay like
you did for me.
Do you playfully
pull her hair
whenever she glides by,
or talk to her under
lamplight in abandon
parks like we did?
I hope you do.
Everyone deserves to be
as happy as you made me.