they don't know like he does how her bottom teeth overlap at the front like boat sails / or that three moles on her thighs are the perfect example of an isosceles triangle / they don't know that when they sleep their feet fit together like bunch of bananas / or that when she traced circles in his hair it made a direct imprint on his soul / that's why they say she's not worth it / that's why he knows they are wrong.

I leave behind
a signature constellation of half scraped
blu tack smattered across the walls

a scrawl in braille to the shell's
next inhabitant: life is out there

I was here, living
I drew a picture of an elephant
for no real reason

I didn't follow the news enough
and skimmed books like stones

I persuaded three friends to beam
from a glossy page at a birthday party,
I cut a cottage from a magazine and
tacked it with a daydream

I hid from the clocks
and watched pounds stick then fall
stick then fall

I lived in this room,
now it's your turn

I tried to turn you into a poem,
to reach my thumb to the crown of your head
and compress you, deflate
and swallow you like the pill.

I never made you into a poem
because you had me pressed to the wall,
and the blinking cursor couldn't swim
in our plastic hugs.

Now I've made you
into a poem, and squashed
three months to thirteen lines
I can fold you up; crumple
you into a sock drawer.

I won't settle for any
mild "hello"s

bring me a
spicy salutation

will you never
learn? fill me with
insignificance, set
me on fire and I'll
burn off like a tick

:

with social graces carried
over in naive rubato, it
always goes too far before
I notice the source of all
this flying dirt

:

I don't share well, never
intend to pursue that
strange notion, always
feeling that I am not
alone should be warm but
buries me alive in
soggy thinking
tonight

:

mind over (it
shouldn't) matter

:

oh if time were a
bomb I'd blow us all
up and forget to look
under my ribcage

:

p(our) (my)self out