I’ll show you my heart in small pieces,
small enough to fit on a microscope plate
under a 100 millimeter lens.
If you look close enough, twist the focus lens
wrap your fingers around the body and warm the cold plastic.
In between the molecules and blood,
you’ll see my microscopic hand in your microscopic hand.    
You’ll see my legs wrapped round yours in the middle of the night, like headphone cords.
You’ll see my flashlight under the covers at night, reading your favorite book, trying to decipher the sentences that structure your neurons, line your brain cells, and flow in your veins
You’ll see me, trying to tell my sister about you, struggling to find a phrase for the person who occupies significant other, lover, best friend, laser-tag partner, 2 am drinking buddy and 2 pm drinking buddy, passenger seat dj, and late-night-kissing-in-the-rain person.
You’ll see me calling you my person, the only person who can focus the microscope just right, turn the lens like a dj, and not get lost in the minutia.

They tell you about the good dreams,
The making pancakes with my husband at 2am dream.
The dancing in the kitchen in our jammies dream.
The getting my dream job dream.
The picking out curtains dream.

They didn’t mention the other dreams.
The laying in bed next to the love of my life trying to decide
if I should jump off a bridge or just swallow pills dream.
The having *** with the lights off bc I refuse to look at my own skin dream.
The waterproof mascara that doesn’t run when I cry at my desk dream.

I couldn’t call them nightmares.
A nightmare is unreal, uncanny, but
a dream is a reality that hasn’t fully formed yet
when the veil between life and dreams is thin.
That’s what I’m afraid of

Our love was as deep and
as suffocating as the ocean. Oh,
to be drowning in you
again.

I am not the hands
that held me. I am my own
hands, scars, and bruises.

I watched it die. It took its last breath
in the back seat of a silver Jeep parked behind a TGI Fridays,
the windows so foggy I couldn’t tell if he was smiling
when he kissed her.
I couldn’t see if she hesitated when he told her
he was married.
I didn’t see them look each other in the eye
and carefully deconstruct everything he and I had built together,
pulling bricks from mortar with every kiss
pulverizing drywall with every touch.
His hand on her waist, shattering glass.
Her hand on his pants, jack hammering through cement.
And my face on the glass, a bystander, helplessly
spying, watching love die.
Except it didn’t die. It’s always been dead. Every flash of love
a blip, the way Gatsby saw Daisy’s face in the fog,
a white lightning crack against a sky of nothing.

I thought you were my
soulmate, but now I think you
have no soul at all.