I was already mourning you
Before we even met
I was wiping waxy black mascara under eyes with the back of cotton long sleeves
I was already on hardwood floors closed up like a locket
Weeping into shiny silver hands
holding pictures of you
We hadn’t even met yet  
I was already calling my best friend while in the bathtub drinking wine
Listening to Leonard Cohen croon the pain my heart could never write through vein
I was already remembering the specific part in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Where she begs her doctor to take out her olfactory nerve so she can’t be reminded of her lovers scebt
I was already anticipating
the way you would haunt me through
all of the ******* five senses
I was already regretting how I shared all my favorite dishes around town with you and anticipating the weight loss to come shortly thereafter
I was already cutting off the vessel of my heart you would in roam
And attempt to inhabit
You see my dear
You were doomed from the very beginning

I walk along cobblestone
With childhood sterling bracelet
clanking on left wrist  
stacked with personalized pieces
sagging on linked chain

I drop charm by charm  
into cracks of amber granite

my last name
a diamond heart
a pink pony
a cross of roses
a ballerina slipper

a civilized timeline of marriage and kids and golden retrievers

my vowels
my lungs
my lips

I continue walking
wishing I could
Drop
my name at the end of your sentences
And all of the exclamation marks that usually

followed.

My silver bracelet emptied and open for

LGBTQ flags
DV advocacy
anti-trump
****** expression
poetry
the full moon
Zodiac signs
the *******.

A crimson curtain
Like a pleated skirt
You pull it back
with fibrous ropes of pain
Ten years, barred by rib-cage

Alas!
Ladies and gentlemen!
The main attraction
Has finally arrived!

Throbbing and cut
at the nape of aorta
Hailing hurt
valve. by. valve.
Bleeding cats and dogs
and
the animals within me
neighboring ribs
a shelter for the stray and wild and cross breed
                                    
                      ­                                  Center Stage

A moonbeam spotlight
shining light on age spots and pale pink vessels

Come and see
Is it all that you hoped for?
My sawed open vessel splayed on a single stool
barely pulsing.

A spectacle
of what my chest heavily heaves
A daily occurence

Nothing but a miserable audience.
Just me

Black and green scale segments
My coat of arms
I twisted around sage brush for 30 years
I had predators
and potential nests
Always
Foregoing eggs
Alone but capable of swallowing the world
Moving through long narrow casing
Like a jawbreaker swallowed by an ostrich

Then I met you

.Ecdysis.

I shed thin snow skin
A layer of suffering slowly flaking off of me
A new dermis of
a love I have never known
Affection I've never shown
and a part of me never grown.

I wore your long ratty red tank
all night
then the next day
then that night
and then I had to go back to
my buttoned up bereavement
my starched sadness
my dry cleaned darkness
I had to go back to it all

but at 5 o'clock precisely
I put that red racer back
back on
my brick bearing
back

During weeping grief
Clothes wear me
they sag heavy over bones
Cotton is cloth owner
over core
Concealing ribs
that, during loss, are useless
They merely cage a shattered vessel

During lengthy anguish
Food consumes me
Water sips me up
Sleep abandons me
Oxygen breaths me
Until all that is left
is an exhale
Lungs and life deflated

Dear loved ones are gone. Some of them still on earth
and some of them raining sweetly in my dreams

You are visiting OUR friends
Only YOUR friends now
They met each other through US
And I met  YOU through HIM
they just adopted a baby boy named Finn
and as you cradle babe
I spend twenty minutes steaming a dress I'm going to shove into a suitcase
and the bags under my eyes
could hold enough dresses to last me the rest of summer
Last week I taught myself
how to stop from flinching
at your ghost
Swallow the lumps you shove down my throat
wash it down with whiskey
My therapist called me last night
She said "it was out of protocol"
"I don't want to be invasive because enough people in your life already are."
Do I think I'll end up with a man?
I don't know
I don't feel anything anymore
I turned myself into you
thinking only with stagnant organs
only breathing with logic
only giving a **** when I feel like it
Only grabbing and gutting
only hunting and harboring
my soul
my vessel
my streamline sailboat
a river of loneliness
man-made and full of fish to ****
I am a salmon's skeleton