I don't mean to use you as a safety net
because the truth is you deserve someone who feels the bed sheets beside them when you're not around as more than just another empty space
but I've spent so much time falling into the arms of danger
I only knew how to love and let it destroy me
and never how to disassociate the two
so I let the idea of love die without a euology
and I sought comfort instead

you’ve been told that you love too much
as if the way they receive it is your fault and not theirs
you’ve been brutalized and burned
and they kept saying that maybe if you were a little less of this and a little more of that
you wouldn’t keep waiting for people to hurt you
like maybe you should work on giving in moderation
but believe me when I say
someday you’ll find someone who welcomes the depths of you
you felt like you had to hide from everyone else
he will never reduce the galaxies in your mind to mere constellations
he will love the way you give and the words you write
but he will love the way you love the most

someday, years from now
when you are waiting for her to come home
and your mind drifts to thoughts of me
and you like to think that I'm wandering aimlessly
drawing maps out of the past hoping they'll lead you back to me
you should know I've found a new resting place in the stability of someone else
I show him every scar and the stories behind them
and he smothers them in a kindness that cleanses every record of you
I left your memories with my shoes at his doorstep
and I stopped missing you when he welcomed the parts of me
I always had to hide from you

we used the right words at the wrong time
we were kids, tired of our hometown
cranking the heater and writing poetry with our hands in the humidity on your sunroof
you'd kiss my fingers and talk about us
another us, far from here
where we had already spent mornings in bed that faded into quiet afternoons
I told you I'd miss you and we left the spaces between us as some kind of divine obliteration
I'm forgetting the taste of october
and you are learning how to brave the chill of december without the warmth of me

isn't it wonderful to think that the light that I am seeking is also seeking me
healing may come in waves and so does missing you
but I'm giving myself a few more days and days may turn into months and that's okay
because I might not be where I'd like
but I am surely on my way

if my father has taught me anything in twenty years
it is to avoid a man with any resemblance of him
and it's not that I feel sorry for myself but if we're being honest
he broke my mother's heart before mine was ever intact
and I was born trying to piece together a mess of a man with no intentions of being saved
because I believed every drunken "baby things will be different soon"
and I thought that if you loved someone it meant pulling them out of the pit they dug themself into
so I keep letting people fall temporarily in love with me
and trying to fill the gaps of my past with boys with their own open wounds
hoping my words are a scapel until they realize I'm just a human and not a surgeon
I just knew what it felt like to have your heart ripped into shreds before I even knew what organs were

you touch me and the cracks in my lips bleed I bite them so hard
no one has ever been this close
your fingers draw circles on the back of my legs
you kiss every part of me I say I'd like to change
then your lips drip honey on all of my wounds
(the same ones he used to call a burden)