not very long ago i thought i was going to say to you,
"i love you."
i thought i would say,
"i want you,
and i hope you want me too,"
and i thought that maybe it was what i wanted.
but where has the innocence gone,
and where is the love?
and when did i stop needing you,
and more importantly when did i start again?
and then not very long ago
i was filled with the kind of anger and disgust
i'd forgotten i could feel for you.
it took the words and the breath right out of me.
i'd forgotten that part of loving you,
and all at once i remembered again.
it took the want and the respect right out of me
and it filled me with the deepest sadness.
a moment of short-sighted drunkenness,
it's not what i should remember about you.
it shouldn't consume the thousands of goodnesses i see in you
but it does.
a few hours ago i was in a place we shared once
and i ached for you so badly
and now, again, i am hollow.
you fill me up and you hollow me out
and i forgot that wanting you is exhausting,
but i remember now
and now, again, i am lost.
and i hope you ******* read this and i hope it ****** you off
and i hope it makes you think i'm immature or reactionary or naive
and i hope it makes you indignant or dismissive
and i hope you don't give a ****.
jesus, i hope it makes you think all sorts of terrible things about me,
i really do.
i hope it makes you think i'm pathetic,
i hope you think it's unfair
because you're **** right, i hold you accountable,
because you're better than all of them put together
and you act like it one and a half times out of ten.
you disappoint me as often as not, now.
isn't that terrible?
i used to think the sun rose on you,
i used to think it set on you,
i used to think you were everything in between.
not very long ago i was going to tell you.
i was going to sit you down and say it all to you
i was going to speak until i'd done everything i could do,
but now
i'd really rather not even look at you.
maybe i'll love you again
and i will again allow myself to be filled by you,
to feel all the things in the world for you,
to burst with love and with pain,
but tonight you hollowed me.
you left me shocked and sick and numb tonight,
angry and disgusted.
tonight you exhausted all the light i put to you,
you burned all the love,
burned it and scattered the ashes,
and you saved me from putting it back together again.
it's over now.

he knew how to walk, with the most delicate balance
200 feet in the air
His delicate pointed feet padded onto the rope
his narrow hips
and strong skinny-muscle arms
were like a song
he had red red lips
and black black hair that curled around his ears
and he wore in his eyes a sparkle

and she knew how to walk, with the proudest swing of her arm
through a pit of lions
And with a point-toed bow
how to make them lie down, gentle as kittens
She knew how to sweep her arm up, and make their knees bend
and their red mouths yawn at her, sweet as kisses
she knew how to cast me secret-eyed smiles with her lovely curling mouth,
look what they think i can do
but i knew
that they were seeing the magic in her
that i did

i remember the great proud elephants,
and the wise rap-tapping monkeys
the tigers prowling and proud in their cages, so sad
i remember the lions, and how they would roar and roar
until she came around, and then, like anything, they would purr

i remember the ringmaster in his coattails,
sweeping his cane and tipping his hat, shouting,
"LADIES!"
crash
"AND!"
crash
"GENTLEMEN!"
crash crash crash, a fabulous,
intoxicating,
crescendo

i remember me
with my hat lowered, and my eyes glittering out from under it
my lips curled and coy
and my feet,
planted lightly,
as if to dance.
With a sweep of my hand I would make magic for them.
A rabbit
A scarf
A beautiful woman disappearing behind the snap of a lavish red cloth
leaving the audience
gasping
and gaping.

once, someone asked me how i did it
i told them
think of the tight-rope-walker
the lion-tamer
think of the ringmaster
magic is people, i said
and people
perform.

If you gave me a thousand years
I would not be able to express to you
how irritating it is
   that I am not wearing this coat
     but I can feel it.
It' s just sitting
in the chair
behind me
scrunched under my back
and the ******* zipper
is digging into my elbow
     and it is the most bothersome thing.
I love this coat
because it's yours
   and wearing it reminds me that I'm yours, too.
But right now I swear -
I will destroy this ****.

you got serious, talking about a girl
we both know.
you said, "she is not special," shaking your head,
and i nodded.
i fell in love with you then, the stars in your eyes
and the one dimple in your cheek,
the not-serious gravity
of the way you talk.
you joking
mischievous
and clever boy.

you look at me sometimes, thoughtfully
just looking
in a way that makes my hands shake
and my heart rabbit-tap against my ribs
(so loud, i'm sure you can hear it).

i am pining, i am pensive.

the next time i see you, my pretty boy,
i refuse to stand in the hallway next to you
while everyone talks about what a great time they had
or lay on the floor next to your chair while you explain
some war game to me, that you're not half as serious about
as every other guy on the planet.
the next time i see you i will plop down on the couch next to you,
shoulder to shoulder,
and i'll talk to you, lightly, about how
i'm not sure
if you like me.
i'm not sure
if you like anyone.
and i think you probably do like me,
and that i
definitely
like you.
"so i think,
we should hang out sometime
or something." and then maybe i'll get up and move away again,
or sit there with you.
maybe i'll plant a little kiss on your cheek,
or put my head on your shoulder,
or just sit there with you.
maybe when we leave
i'll smile at you like i always do,
but i'll also make my way through the ocean of our families
and hug you tight enough that they'll all finally stop bugging me.
maybe i'll do that.

The cancer ate my sister's heart,
her liver, her bones,
and now I'm alone
with my sick-stomached guilt
and my never-told confession.
Remember, we were younger. Our neighbor's sister
came home with a ****** nose and you turned to me,
"What would you do if that was me?"
6 year old certainty, "I'd **** them,"
swelling with 6 year old bravado,
"I'd ****
anyone
who hurt you."
Our mother was appalled and our father told me not to say things I didn't mean, but
I meant it then.
And sweetheart, I mean it now.
I can't **** the cancer, because it's already killed you.
I can't **** the husband, because he's already dead
(left you widowed and heartbroken, my only sister,
and I am to blame).
And so I'm standing here, looking at the
jagged-box-shaped rocks so far far far below,
and I'm thinking
(stacking box, after box, after box
in her empty-floored apartment),
and I'm wishing
(to the crier of sorrows I've never known)
and I'm breathing
(if only he hadn't been the adulterer)
and I'm jumping
(with me).

the emptiness in my belly
is brought on by the knowledge
that you have your funny-tragic
thinking-feeling
trying-failing life
without me in it.
and the fullness in my heart
is brought on by the thought
of your voice and your face,
your shining-eyed and dimple-pocked mischief,
and by the hope
that someday
i'll have you.
the tears in my throat
are brought on by the fear
and by the realization
that i am not
the only person
you could love;
by the revelation, of our sameness
and of our happy differences.

and the words at my lips
are brought on by the thoughts in my head
which are brought on by the beating of my heart -
*i love you, i love you, i love you.

have i, then, ruined
everything?
am i such a betrayal to your picket-fence heart?
you
all i wanted
and all i want.

dear noah,
you beautiful boy. you were the youngest,
and you were so bright.
you're a star now, sweet boy, above everything and
so bright.
your sisters and your mother will remember you,
your smile,
and your left-behind half, she'll have parts of you with her her whole life.
you're not forgotten, you beautiful boy,
gone as you are.
you're a star now, sweet boy, and we wish for you to be back.
your blood and your body are
still
and stopped
but your spirit?
eternal
and your forever-smile
is what they'll all see when they close their eyes.
your mother and your sisters will love you,
like we do -
all we strangers
who feel like we know you
just from looking into your shining photograph-eyes.
dear noah,
you beautiful boy,
you've left the world so soon after you came into it.
you beautiful boy,
how it will remember you.

girls like me, we can't make ourselves stay.
i wish i could, i do.
i can't shake the itchy-skin feeling of being here
and i can't help but want to get away.

we have fickle and jealous hearts, girls like me.
we can't trust ourselves to be loved
because we love so changeably.
we're difficult, girls like me.
difficult to love, difficult to fall out of love with.

we're born with anger.
we have all the ghosts and the wisdom our hearts can hold.
i am difficult to please and it's no one's fault but my own
and i get tired of people and i get tired of places
and no matter where i am i always want to leave.

i don't choose to be as restless and as jealous and as jittery as i am,
and i don't choose to feel so old some of the time
and i don't choose to be so guarded, so hypocritical, so abrasive.

girls like me, we are beautiful and strong and ages old -
it has been since the beginning and it will be till the end,
spirits like ours.
we are breakable and irrepressible
afraid and invincible
and we are made to survive things and to know things
and we are made for the wildest of laughter
and we are made for the too-big types of sadness
and we are something to see.

"and i thought,
'i'm doing the right thing,'" you said.

my brave boy,
you are.

my brave boy,
keep breathing.

two-years friends and lifetimes of knowing,
i've seen you, and i know now.
when you said the words,
the look of contentment you had -
the solidarity of self you had -
the knowing of heart you had.
who can say it's wrong?

the church who locks people behind bars of unhappiness
for who they love?
you are above them,
you and all your love.

my brave boy,
love like you do,
and love who you will.

"and i thought,
'i'm doing the right thing,'" you said.

my brave boy,
you have.

guess what?
you can't lie to my best friend
you can't tell her
that so-and-so sent you that
( frickin ****'s )
picture
(funny how you saved it)
you can't rope her back in with your
manipulation
,your
modification
of the truth,
and you can't buy me with your
half-assed excuses and you can't tell me that it's
none of my business
because you've exploited her
and you've lied to her
don't mean
that you've earned her.
she deserves better and you deserve
to be alone forever
with your self-pity
and your short-sighted
under-the-table
pathetic
selfish
actions.

guess what?
you can't tell me she has a choice
when you've given her none
telling her
she's the best things in your life
(how 'bout you treat her like it?)
and by the way
can i have a picture of you
( insert thing she's not going to do for you
here )
and there's a reason
you filthy
lying
cop-out of a human being
i won't hear you
tell me that
she's
chosen you
that she's
happy with you
because
if she's happy with you
how come
you still have to
spend so much time trying
to
convince her?

guess what?
i don't buy you.
i hate you.
i resent you.
you make me
sick.
and even if she doesn't see it
even if she holds onto your pathetic
whining
excuses
i see through you
you bile-throated liar
and you don't ******* deserve
one single tear
you've pulled from her,
you don't ******* deserve
the dirt on her Converse,
you don't ******* deserve
this poem.

because it makes you seem
almost like
you're worth something.

and the fire smells like acid
and the moonlight looks like rain
and the ground, my feet don't feel it,
and suddenly i am filled.
with fear and with longing i am filled,
the brooding fear and the desperate longing.
the brooding fear that he won't know -
he will be missed.
he has been loved.
and what if i, at the end of it all, am only lost?
and the moonlight looks like rain
and the ground, my feet don't feel it
and i'm fearing the absence
and i'm waiting on the pain,
and i'm fearing its absence
because my heart, it's going numb,
and i swear, i can feel it,
the turning-away of feeling,
the willful numbness,
the manifesting fears.

my fears are as follows.
i am afraid of water,
of pain,
of high-up places.
i am afraid of getting stuck in one place.
i am afraid of dying in a terrible way.
i am afraid of the medical irregularities of my heart,
the condition that gives me too many beats at one time
and that will, someday, cause the beats to stop altogether.
and i am afraid that my life will be nothing like i want it to be.
i am afraid that my art is mediocre
and my poems unoriginal.
i am afraid that i will never love anyone again,
and that i will be bound, forever, by his ghost.
i am afraid that my fear will choke out my hope,
and that i will ******* myself,
and cheat myself,
and extinguish my ambition with all my doubts.
i am afraid of myself,
but i am so endlessly inspired by everything else.

ask me to rate my pain on a scale of 1 to 10,
   and i'll give you a crippling number.
  an above-10 number.

ask me to look the boy who no longer loves me in the eye
and i'll shy away. i'll avert my own eyes.
i will walk by him as if we are strangers,
       and i will feel the seams on my heart pop open,
one by one.

ask me if i feel like breaking
   and hurting.
ask me about the emptiness in my chest
        and the grey behind my eyes. ask me if it hurts my heart to beat.
    ask me if my blood is still in the habit of quickening when he's close.
ask me if i regret anything,
and i'll tell you that i regret everything.

      ask me if i love him
      and ask me if i want him.
           for those, i won't have an answer.
           only silence. only thought.

ask me if parts of me hate him,
  and i'll tell you about the low burning in my belly,
         the hating-blaming-burning
and the ******-up way it makes me feel.

ask me if i miss him.
i'll tell you that i am hollow.
i'll tell you that my whole body, my whole heart, is nothing but missing him.
i'll tell you i might just blow away
   without his love to anchor me.
i'll tell you that i feel absolutely empty

and it will be the truth.

there are parts of me that force the pain,
that let it roil in my bones until i am breathless.
it builds until i exhale it in an herbal smoke,
or until i write it in a fervent and blood-rushed poem.

there are parts of me that don't feel the pain.
these parts are healed, and most days they win out.
they pervade the unhealed parts of of my heart,
and they fill me with an ecstatic joy.

there are parts of me that remember
and there are parts of me that forget.
there are parts of me that take in what i feel and use it
and there are parts of me that gladly let it drift away.

there are parts of me that are strong
and parts of me that are not,
and mostly i only show one part or the other.
i have no in-betweens,
and that's why i am me and why you are you.
i believe that's why someone fell out of love with me
and i believe that's why i am so changeable, so wild, so full of doubt.

i am pieces and parts,
broken and lovely,
tessellated and electric and free.

i think by nature i'm a gasoline-pourer -
    i don't strike the match but
  goodamn it, do i set up that fire.

i am. i'm a gasoline-pourer and a poison-spreader
and i destroy fragile things.
i'm a gasoline-pourer and i'm afraid
      we might be the kindling.

hello, poetry.
no, no, keep your seat.
i just wanted to talk to you about
how i can't stop writing you.
if you could stop pushing into my head
and making my fingers itch
and my eyes wander,
and if you would stop showing up in the margins
of my geometry homework,
well,
i guess i just wouldn't be me anymore
(probably be doing better in geometry though).
so, i was going to ask you to stop.
but, on the other hand -
it would get pretty lonely.
just me and the margins.

dear sarah.

i heard
today
that it was in your blood,
your bones,
your body
(the cancer, sneaking and slipping its way
into your sixteen-year-young heart,
that beats the same as mine).
i heard
today
your sister,
weeping,
and asking us if we could please,
just sign this card.
you're scared
and it would help.
i heard
today
the boy who loves you,
sniffling into your sister's shoulder
(no one had the heart to tell him
that the blackness is inside you),
and i heard, today, my heart
stop
and my throat
clog
and my eyes
fill.
dear sarah, i don't know you
well
but i wish you
well
and i heard today
so many hearts
break.

"bring another bottle," you tell me, leaning
against the bricks
hunched
in the rain -
your eyes, they glitter, out
your coattails are long, lavish, and filthy
and your hat
is pulled low

i can see the care in you
from time to time
i feel it.
"you ain't gonna leave me, nance?" you say,
and i hear the fear
the uncertainty,
and then i go to you.

filthy london, it's brought you down
and me down
with you.
the little boys, the old man, they have questions in their eyes
when they see me let you, lead me, away,
but they don't see
that under the grime of your crimes
and the filth of your sins,
there is a heart, black, patched, and wounded
but beating.
for this i love you.

your hands on me, my man
can be a thing frightening
a thing thrilling
when you beat me like a dog
when you kiss me like a lover.

your violence, my man, is a curse
because you would have better for me
if you could give it.
and your bitterness, my man, is deserved
for the low-life life
you've been given.

and i feel you,
how you whisper in the nighttime, "nance."
and i quiver, just to hear it
"nancy," you whisper, gruffly, after the alcohol's worn off, the ***.
"i didn't mean none of it, nance. not a thing of it, eh?"
you whisper, roughly, bowing your head to my shoulder.
"you're a good girl
for not leavin' me, then.
and i ain't never deserved you
a day in my life."
and i pretend to sleep
to hear it.

you'll be the death of me, my man.
they tell me so,
and i know it's so.
but first
i will be the life of you.

i'm jonesing for a human being -
can you do that?
i am.
it hurts like a rose-smoke-burn in my throat
and a deep-throbbing ache in my chest -
      waiting for you
counting the days
until you're mine
to inhale
and exhale
and inhale
again.

I used to write to wend my way out of the darkness,
to talk myself out of the sadness,
to cure my broken heartedness,
but now I find that

Because you took my heart in your hands
and because you bared and repaired me
I have only joy.

I alone hold the joy of your freckled skin,
I alone know your virtues
and I alone hold your sins.
I alone know your tenderness, your truth,
and I alone have you, and

You, alone, carry my burdens and my vices,
hold my laughter and my care,
and you alone have brought me here.

if it were up to me?
   ****. it'd be cigarettes and tea
     and my giant cat by a giant window, and sparse furniture, and wooden floors.
it'd be a certain someone and poems scattered around every paint-splattered surface,
and writing on the walls in sharpie,
and tights and socks and sweaters and walks in the park.
          it'd be mid-morning sunlight and sleeping till noon and no walls separating the rooms.
         it'd be london or new york or maine or ******* canada or something -
something far away and obscure and artistic
where it rains a lot
so that i can dance.

in the purple-blue, and star-glittering night
yellow swirls shot across the sky
and the black tip-topping trees, swayed.

i learned, standing
in the sweeping grass of that bruise-colored
gem-bright night
of dreams.

i dreamed
of rain, and of blue wind
of soft meadows, and of driving sieges
of oceans rolling over yellow sunset-dappled beaches
and of birds, wheeling.

in the falling sparkling yellow, of that purple-blue night
i spread out my arms, tilted up my face
and twirled in the whispering waist-high grass
twirled
until the stars were golden halos over me
and the purple-blood sky was reeling
and the grass rushed up to meet my back
and i laid there, breathing, and i laughed.

maybe it's okay. i think sorrow suits me -
i sabotage happiness.
pour gasoline all over it and
kick at it and
provoke it.
i can't sit still with happiness like i can with sorrow.
it doesn't make me write or think. happiness doesn't fit my heart quite right. it never has.
i can be alone, you know.
i can be alone and i can be sad and i can take my pain in large and crippling doses
and i can sit still and let it all catch me and wash over me and rip me apart
and i can let the stitches come undone
and i can let it seep into my heart and make me feel the blackest things you can imagine.
i have that capacity.
i'm that type of person.
and in the end i can let it right back out again -
it's like breathing in that way. i've learned to manage my pain, after all these years of having it.
it's not new to me - just yours is fresher
and maybe worse than what i've had before,
but it's not a novelty.
it comes
and it goes
tide in
tide out
crippling
then fine
then crippling,
and i will sit and i will let it take me and i will feel what i'm feeling and i will think what i think and i will live with it like i've always lived with it, and i will not hurry to heal, and i will not force any sort of happiness, because people need sorrow like they need oxygen. it is something real and necessary and raw. i can feel it and still survive. i can let it in and let it back out again, and i will be fine. and i don't need you to know that. and i don't need to tell you. and i don't need anyone to worry. because this is part of what i do, and how i am, and i can control my dosage, and i can control my suffering.
it suits me.
it does.

you can't remove a piece of clothing -
        not a sweater,
  not a shirt,
    not a pair of ******* socks -
without thinking of them,
picturing them, you know?
like,
  not even in your bed or on your bed or anywhere near your bed.
      just thinking of them,
because you get to this point where it's like,
the whole reason you take off your clothes,
is so that this one person, who you love, more than anything
can touch you better
or see you better
or so that you can feel them with things that aren't your hands.
  it's ******, i guess. for some people. for me. that whole skin-to-skin thing.
but anyway
it isn't about *** - wanting people, i mean.
   it's just that you're doing something
   in their absence
    that you normally do,
      or sometimes do,
      or have done,
     in their presence
and it feels weird
and it makes you feel weird,
and then you miss them,
and you write poems like this one.
or whatever this is.

it's pretty embarrassing, as a cycle.

the second you tried to break into my frozen heart -
was that when you knew?
that loving me would be
the most difficult thing, the bravest endeavor.
the second you shut me out with your frozen heart,
neither of us knew
that that was the moment mine would thaw
and break
and all the fire i'd been holding back from you would manifest
as the bitterest anger
and the most acute pain.
and i wish, my darling, that i had been able to let it out to you in love,
that my frozen heart had thawed for you while it still belonged to you
and that we had been less stupid, less young, and less cold.

it's a lesson in love,
a stinging and bittersweet thing.
we lost our tenuous hold on what we had.
we did not treasure, cherish, or try,
and our similar and fickle hearts won out on us.

i won't regret loving you,
because people like us, we take what we can get.
frozen hearts are grateful
for whatever broken glimpses of love they can cheat from each other.

last night i was filled with poetry -
filled to the brim, and now i'm not.
last night i was filled with pain and life
and with the joy of knowing things,
and now i am ordinary.
last night i wrote,
"he taught me how to bruise
before i bleed,"
on a slip of paper.
i knew what to do with the words then but
now i don't.
i have no poem to slip them into and
no storyline to follow them and
i can't even turn them into a painting.
they sit and they stay
and they stare at me and remind me
that i am not a writer, because i don't write when i most need to.

watch me -
i'll braid my pixie-short hair,
wear stars in my eyes and
dance like everyone's watching:
can't be done? i'll do it.
never been done? it has.
watch me -
i'll laugh at all the wrong things,
trip both ways on the stairs and
get up beaming:
i'll snag my hair into pretzel-braided crown around my merry face and i'll
spark my eyes at you when you look at me doubtfully.
watch me -
i'll rock what i rock
talk what i talk and walk how i walk:
swirl black into wings over my dark lashes and
my eyes will laugh underneath,
smile my wolfish smile with my one wonky back tooth,
and i'll blow you away.
watch me -
i have no idea what i'm doing,
and it's a hell of a thing
to see.

he said,
(this boy
who is not who i love
but could have been
in a life
where i didn't love
someone else already),

"i would kiss you now,
if i could."

i said,

"i know. i feel it."

i said,

"it's in the air."

i said,

"it feels thick, between us."

i said,

"the air

feels

tremulous."

"tremulous," he repeated. "that's good."

and so we sat
in the tremulous air,
me and this boy i could love,
but don't,
but don't,
but maybe.

we sat in the tremulous air
and we didn't act on it
and i'm glad,

but now

i can't

sleep.

it's why we write these poems, you know.
we are a delicate
    and intrinsic
        and easily broken bunch.
when our feelings creep out
    like sneaky, giggling children,
and then someone
  -some of them
               don't even mean to -
crushes them
and we call.
   "wait!"
      we call
    "i didn't even know
           they got out!"
but they did.
  some people
a tender friend
a boy as adorable,
                     breathless
                           clumsy
                              and careful
                          fumbling, but trying
                                                as can be
cradles them
   delicately, in their hands
and knows
         they must be tended
well -
   isn't that
          why we risk
the crushing?

I remember when loving him wasn't so wildly painful,
and I remember backseats and whispered things
and I remember winter nights and tiny joys.
I remember when I fell asleep against his arm on the way home from a dance I hadn't wanted to go to -
I remember a kiss on the top of my head,
the gentlest thing you can imagine,
to wake me up.
I remember the thousands of tendernesses.
I remember the the ecstatic joy you filled me with.
I remember I couldn't sit still when you were close by -
I remember the electricity, the wildness
you put into my limbs and the rhythms of my heart.
And truth be told these are what I'd rather remember
and this is how I'd rather it be.
I'd like to hold onto the joy and the recklessness,
the love instead of the loss.
I'd rather remember our happinesses, because they were so many.
I know your fickleness and your faults,
I know that you are in a constant state of moving on,
that you do not hold on and that you probably don't remember
but you know that I do.
I carry things with me and nights like these,
they do make me remember. They make me want and ache and they fill me with things I don't have a name for. They make me breathless and nostalgic and crippled. They make me think, write, and love. They fill me with the same abandon that you did, only quieter now and deeper, but no less beautiful.
And it's an odd thing, to remember love without feeling it,
Or to feel love in ways you don't understand because they feel so odd and out of place, being only yours. It's a difficult game and an exhausting one, and I'm struggling, still, to find my footing.
Today I remember loving you.
Later I will remember missing you.
Later still I will remember remembering,
Or maybe I will forget altogether.

girl, you're pretty, but as empty
as the laughter
you ting-a-ling out for those hungry boys.
they think you're simple and so, so easy
(to figure out)

they're not worth
the dirt on your designer shoes.

girl, your eyes
are empty as glass bottles
and only half as green.

you crinkle them up in your pictures but your smile
is forced as your baby-blond act.

girl, your jack-in-the-box *****, bounding from
pretty boy to
pretty boy,
wears a little thin from time to time,
even
especially
for you.

you're not more than that, they'll say.

girl, you're pretty, but i am too.
my eyes are full as glass bottles, and twice as green,
and i laugh
with my whole body.
girl, you're pretty, but you've got to find a way to make boys' eyes burn
into something other than the back of your skirt.

girl, you're pretty, but sometime you're going
to crash-land into yourself
and realize that there's a person where you thought
there was only a porcelain-face
and an empty ******-inkling of a laugh.

i'm sorry that things were easy
until i made them hard.

  i'm sorry i stayed mad so long when we would fight.
i'm sorry that i got jealous of your friends
    and that i didn't say "i love you" back sometimes.
i'm sorry i was so shy around strangers and you weren't.
i'm sorry i didn't try harder to make you happy.
i'm sorry i have trouble looking at you.
i'm sorry i can't talk to you.
i'm sorry that i'm starting to cut you off.

   i'm sorry we never got to make love the way i wanted to -
    properly, you know? with a bed and candles and all the time in the world.

i know you wanted that.

     i'm sorry we'll never spend the night somewhere together.
         i'm sorry we'll never be able to wear shorts in the nighttime and be somewhere outside and look up at the stars and feel the warmth of the air.
                i'm sorry we loved each other in the winter time, because it's ugly, and even at our most beautiful it was hard.

  i'm sorry you felt like you had to make things up to my parents.
    i'm sorry you never did.

i'm sorry i sometimes wouldn't tell you what was wrong.
i'm sorry i would cry when i got drunk
   and that i couldn't be alone at parties
and that i lost your jacket that one time.

          i'm sorry you fell out of love with me.
       i'm sorry for your left-over feelings that you don't know what to do with.
               i'm sorry for our rough patches and our arguments. i'm sorry if i could have done more.

i'm sorry if you feel guilty. i'm sorry if it's my fault. i'm sorry if i pushed you away.

i'm sorry if it seems like i hate you. i'm trying to let you in.
it *****, and it's hard.

i'm sorry it's taking so long.