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 Nov 2016 Maia Vasconez
J
Cold tap water, colder shoulders
are you mad or still waking up?
When is the last time you slept through the night?
or better yet, spent the whole night inside?
What are you looking for out in the street anyway?
This road's been a dead end since the first time
you let the liquid sugar hit your veins harder than your lips,
and instead of sips now you indulge every day just to get by,
but I still don't get why you let yourself get that bad.
You forgot about the daughter, mother, friends you had,
didn't you?

We didn't forget about you,
the sugar still turns you white,
even in your casket I can smell the apologies as I bend over for
one last goodbye,
I refuse to watch a family breakfast crumble
at the hands of ****** again,
I refuse to let a substance win,
like it did with you.
whenever i hear a wind chime i think of your voice. i wonder what it's like to be your bedsheets. what it would really be like to understand the jargon in your head. i ******* want to kiss you sometimes and then others i really do want concrete between your hands & my skin. i can't think straight all the time so i wonder if it benefits me at all to explain what it means that i don't want or expect anything from you but if we accidentally liked eachother in that middle school "sort of way" then i wouldn't say no. i want to really understand what you mean when you say "stay" to me in our texts. i wonder if your sleeping pills do to you what they do to me. i'm thinking again about "stay" and maybe i'm choked up on you leaving for school up north but i'll never tell you because get the **** out of here and don't look back especially not for me. stay. your smile, genuine or not tears me in two. i wish every face on the planet had your smile and i am ******* afraid of you wearing lipstick. i'm terrified of your bare skin and goodbyes. i hate farewells and see you laters. i knew the first time i saw you interact on your phone while drinking coffee the way you text people and how i now do the same thing. i get around read receipts. i sometimes want to hear you say you want.. not so much me, maybe me, but my company. theres a park near my house where i've imagined us paddle boating. i got written up at work once for daydreaming about it. what the **** is in a friendship anyway, decency in a human isn't biological. i get hung up on knee jerks and gut reactions. i want to know what the ******* are thinking about when i look up and you are looking right at me. but then again, i don't. as long as i'm wondering. as long as the door might swing open or closed. stay. go. run. **** your collarbones. **** your chest and skin and lips and everything i hate but crave and might like about you without say so. stay. sit down and explain to me why it is that i care anyway. i am afraid that if i say i want to *******, you'll think i mean *******, and not "*******". i wanna know if any of this sounds familiar and i here i am back to wondering what the **** is going on and why you're looking at me. the hair on my neck stands on end when you do and another thing... **** poetry. i cloud my feelings for you & anything else with the abstract so you'll never really know if i ******* hit rock bottom or not over the fact that i know we will never kiss. somebody just said "**** buddy" on tv and i think sometimes symmetry between irony & circumstance. i have harbored some of these thoughts since the night you said hello to me. i'm sorry i had to get over the fact that once upon a time i wanted to save somebody, and you weren't going to let it be you. i do sometimes think my hands might break you, that you spend your day painting a picket fence in your head that you can't get on one side or the other on. i felt like you didn't want to get up from dinner and i rushed it out the door because i am afraid to start a sentence with so. so stay. i am sorry my words often wear brass knuckles. your smile shoots to **** and if i ever die while you still remember my name i want you to read this or read something at my funeral. i don't know if these butterflies are waiting for me to jump or sit down but they speak up when my phone lights up & it's you.
Now my clothes are stained with the memory's of the boys that took them off.

The ones that never bothered to learn my middle name.

And I never found out their favourite colour...
I can't get dressed without a flashback now days
Think I'll trade my old guitar in for a gun,
I'll just pull that trigger instead of strum,
Should be a whole lot easier to play,
And then finally I might get to have my say.

Think I'll trade my old guitar in for a gun,
The crowd will move and then they'll run,
Bullets for notes and screams for cheers - what a joy,
Get a load of my new shiny musical toy.

Think I'll trade my old guitar in for a gun,
Your ears will be ringing when I'm done,
I'll point that thing coldly at your head,
Cheer quietly as you're going to be dead.

Think I'll trade my old guitar in for a gun,
Then I might start to have some fun,
I'll play it loud and turn it up to eleven,
I'll send you all on your way to Heaven.
someone's in the next room over
having *** while we
are weeping
what a way to mark the occasion
the day my fingers found a wound
you let someone else doctor
it's upsetting see
the bible in drawer next to us
the way our hands still
fit together
like the torn halves
of a love letter
the way you got
all dressed up like the rain
and how we couldn't tell
the difference in the shower
it was the longest hour and a half
spent crying
the hot water wouldn't give up
so why should we
right?
even though it was scalding
neither of us touched the ****
we knew this was supposed to hurt
your hair
a black mess against my shoulder
my fingers
oil in the vinegar of your hands
our bodies
the great divide
all the sobbing
a river runs through it
without the courage
to carry or **** us
so we step out
and drip dry
down to a mute breakfast
composed of quiet
and last nights liquor
as we came back in
there were people in our room
at first i thought them detectives
dissecting things
to see who had died here
i had forgotten this
was a hotel
and they were only
cleaning up after us
i wanted to stop them
plead
that the sheets were still perfect
that if they clean the bathroom
no one will know
what happened here
someone has to remember
"please
i know
these cigarette burns
by name
i will bury the faucet
let me take the tub
i don't care how
if i have to
i will drag it home by hand
"
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