your name still grabs me in places
and lunges at me with heavy surprise
because i am always unprepared for it's
presence when i'm not the one who's said it.

it comes at me,
like a deep, heavy incantation
it brings my guts to their knees
like a smokey hex,
it tells me something untrue.

your name has meant something for so long.
it's presence weaved through two others
becoming real in your body.
no one will wield it's magic like you.

i often wonder what it means that
i had to know two others with your name
was i always looking for you?

i will regard it like something quiet,
in my heart something of sacred chant.
i will remember what it was like
to know that you held it best.

strength of spear,
somedays i forget the reality of your distance
and how close you were
somedays both things make me want to throw up
you are not here.

*sunday, november 2 2014, 8:42 a.m./8:21 p.m.

i feel both self destructive and self saving
i want to hide myself in my room,
keep my personality buzzing between my two dimples.
only for myself, only for myself.

i want to take up the men who've asked me
for drinks, or for my time, up on their offers
i want to go and be politely disinterested
i want to cleave myself from my bones
and act like someone who does not live
inside this body, someone you won't recognize

but mostly, more than anything at all,
i want to give everything i have to you.
this is the pain i feel the very most:
i still want to give all of this to you.

and so, i give it to no one.

*october.28.2014 8:41 A.M.

i think sometimes that i may have
inherited my mothers indifference to friendship.
to deep, lasting, real friendship.
i get tired like her,
effort becoming like clay feet.
it's not for lack of love, for lack of fascination,
and appreciation, and genuine adoration.
but it holds me down sometimes like steel sky

i love you all, i do.
but fights make me nauseas and running is easier.
i will apologize and grovel and listen and take blame.
but if after all that everything is still of a half packed house,
i will take the boxes that are mine.

*thursday/10:41 P.M./august.21/2014

you will come home to me,
safely.

*sunday july 20th, 2:00 a.m.

our friend found a painting of a naked guy
riding a horse that looked exactly like you.
and this spitting image made me think of
the different lives that you lived before you
found me in mine.
i need to believe that we have lived before this one,
that we'll continue to live after this one.
i need to know that the olive in your skin
is built up sun from the first time you stepped outside
from every life before this one.
that your eyes got progressively more blue from
every time you watched the sea.
and your stretch marks on your back remind me of lashings
and i hope that you never suffered before this
and that you will never suffer after this.
your crooked bottom teeth remind me of
fallen empires and crumbling ruins.
i think of you in the 1800s,
your taste for caramel pulling your
perfect teeth side to side.
when i look at you i cannot believe
that you made it to me at all.

11:43 P.M.
*Wednesday/July 9/2014

i remember i loved you so much
that i left a bowl of dry ingredients for brownies
stranded in the kitchen when you asked me
to come over.

and when you came home from toronto
and i got off of my third or fourth shift
at my first job
i left early and i ran to your house.

and for your 17th birthday (before i acquired
my majestic cupcake gig)
i spent all my babysitting money on
a worn sweater with the gucci label screened
onto it.
i had planned this months before we even dated,
i remember thinking we were going to be so close
that it would warrant me getting you a present.
i had only kissed you once and had only spoken to you
for two months.

and i still remember what i wore the first time
we hung out (rose gold crop sweater, black jeans, brown boots)
and what i wore the first time we kissed (tights, black romper, braided belt, earrings that kept falling out)
and what i wore when we broke up (flats, black high waisted skater skirt, weird 90s crop bustier)
and what i wore when i saw you for the first time afterwards (light wash jeans, grey knit top, pink sparrys)
and what i wore when we had our end of the line fight (black jeans, purple halter top)
the times i saw you after weren't overly notable, you reached out and i recoiled. you noogied me and i didn't let my friends make fun of you.
and then you asked me to start coming over again (light blue jeans, navy turtleneck)

i'm not sure what this poem was ever supposed to be.
i wish i remembered what i wore the night you told me
that you missed me.
but since you've been back, or i've been back, or we've been back
i only remember what it is to be with you.

we'll keep growing.

*11:18 P.M. June/22/2014

i smell your sweater and tell myself i don't love you
and i rub my fingers through your hair and allot
days to wonder if i really want you or not.
and now that i wear my glasses or my contacts
i can finally see the way that you look at me.

we have done things in such a way
that if you leave, or if i do,
somedays you and i will wake up
with each others cheeks underneath our palms.
or my legs between yours,
or teeth in each other's necks.

may.4.2014
*10:10 p.m.