And after you left I threw myself to the wind
starting fires you weren't there to put out, down a rabbit hole with your tether around my neck
pulling me back to nothing.
You and your girl drinking tea in the city and laughing,
young urbanites
even in my own dreams,
you're wiping my tears on your toast.
And I really meant that I was gone this time
done for,
crazy,
ripped and pulled.
Until one day I sat down to write
and the words stuck in my mouth came running out like spit and blood and drool and blood and blood and blood
a piece of writing that no one can read
a piece of trash I forgot to throw away.
Oh how everything,
reminds me of you.

The city's best hypnotherapist
Can't seem to trick me into thinking you don't exist
With the shades drawn in his office
I remember tiny flashing thoughts
Of your breath rattling in your chest
Why won't you stop smoking cigarettes?
Of handwritten letters, begging
Your hands around my waist
Or as I wait,
the aspirin sliding down my throat
Thinking it would cure me of my broken heart
Of the words "I don't love you anymore"
Or
"I've been ******* her for months"
He can't make the thoughts fade
Of me on my back in the park
Blowing out smoke
Waiting for death while you fall in deep
Deeply, deeply, deeply
Out of love with me
I'm getting sleepy, very sleepy
As I fall into the grasp
There is no erasing
For what slipped through all the spaces.

I think I loved you most the winter your heating was broken
And we’d stay inside all morning
Pretending to complain that we couldn’t get out of bed
Our clothes becoming little islands on the floor,
Ones that we could not quite find the courage to visit

Your hand stayed glued to my hip,
Your breath warming my shoulder
Like a long drag of whiskey
That kind that had a home so far away,
In a glass bottle on top of your refrigerator.
The one that would not be opened
Until that fateful day in February,
When everything went wrong

And on that unbearable night
When you joked that you’d freeze to death if I left you
There was a long silence
Like it might be true.

Now it’s warm enough
That I show too much skin when sitting in bars
And you avoid me like the plague,
Whispering in any girl’s ear that’s near to you
Every time you see me watching out of the corner of your eye

We should have stayed inside when the ice began to melt
Because I think
When those doors opened and we finally ventured outside
The world had changed,
And so had you and I.

And I'm in love with you all the time
with the words that you say and
the love in your mouth
the way your tongue feels as it rolls over my eyeballs,
the name of your first dog you couldn't tell me.
your legs as tall as buildings
they crush cars
and they crush me
underneath,
with my teeth sunk into your shoulders
yours wrists turning
and your bones cracking
lovey baby lovey baby
are you slurring your way home again?
Just in time to stop traffic,
thighs trembling,
I've buried all your clothes in my backyard again.

how stupid i have been to think "i love you"
means "i won't **** someone behind your back
and pretend
i'm the righteous one"

I'm restless like a low-class little nothing. Or a something. Or something, I don’t know. I tried to run away when I was twelve. I kicked puddles, ate a package of crackers, came home. I wish I could come home now. But he doesn’t kick puddles, he kicks the stairs loudly when he’s drunk and can’t walk up. He stains the mattress when he ****** the bed. He calls me from the gas station at 4 am saying “I love you baby, come pick me up.” And I shouldn’t, but I will. Will I? I will. And I really want to come home now, I miss the comfort of my warm bed and your soothing hands and would you make me tea when I am sick? I know I’m older, but let’s please forget. He fights and get cuts and scrapes and scabs and bleeds them onto me and I don’t think it’s gross. I think it’s gross when he tries to make love to me. and it hurts. We are not one, we are two. Making love, the term makes me laugh. It’s called *******, I think. It’s not like in the stories or the movies or the fantasies, *******. But this is what grownups do, right? Smoke cigarettes on street corners and don’t use condoms and eat ecstasy like aspirin and sweat and dance and collapse and come home and cry. Because they used to be the good girls, right? Was I a good one? Oh, no, I really want to come home now. Plane tickets are gold and he is too afraid to fly and too afraid to let go of my arm. The bruises are okay, I like the shape they make. It reminds me of a horror movie. I used to not be able to watch them, I was too young. You won’t be able to sleep, you’d say. But I can’t sleep now and I think I might still be too young. I want to come home now, can I please?

If I could only sit still, I would write a million words about us, about you, about me at the bottom with my hands on that rock.
Scratching my fingernails against it so that I could go home and complain to you about how much my tiny hands hurt, and how I could not hold them in yours.
If I could hold my train of thought, I would type out a memoir about you and me and the time we decided to make love in a parking garage elevator late at night, my back against the glass. And who might’ve seen us while they walked home.
Their names and their faces, all those people that aren’t us. I would write about how when those doors opened, the world outside had changed and so had we.
If I could keep my fingers steady, I would dial your number on my telephone. I would cry your name into the speaker, and I would wait patiently for you to take me back.
I would be on hold forever.