I’ve got Nike shoe-boxes filled
with newspaper confetti basketball highlights,
a Lucky Charms cereal prize, a hair clip
from the Homecoming dance, picture after picture
of little month-long memories. I’ve got a dozen
temporary candy box boyfriends
who faded just as quickly as they sparked. I’ll reopen
them occasionally, remind myself why my middle school mind
found it so important to save stale Valentine’s Day lollipops
and balance that with the tender, childish idea
that baby love is the realest love and maybe one day
all those text message breakups would come back to me.
I sort
through each dent my heart has suffered that I stowed away
in compartments, but you,
who’ve seen me through the longest,
have no place under my bed. I’ve got nothing
visible to hold of you because truth be told
you’re only my friend if the lights are out and the door is shut.
I have no pop song sweatshirt that still smells like you,
no cliché letters I’ve soaked with tears, no movie tickets,
no dinner matches or menus or pictures that I could cut
if I hated you enough.
I’d have to collect your sweat in a vile and brew it
into a perfume just so the smell could give me something
disgusting enough to feel when I remember you.
If only I could capture my nightmares, remake the images,
mold your body out of actual clay and light you up
without having to kiss your pelvis. We’ve made a mess of this.
You’re just a flame I forgot to blow out.
You're just a name I left hanging on my mouth.

It began in the hallway
Lips gingerly moving to the tastes of bottles.

It started light.
You had those same Atlantic eyes that would rage hurricanes in my memories


I could do this for centuries.

Be the barcode on my bra strap so maybe
I can finally be sellable skinny. Be my relationship goal,
the text to check outside my door, the 5k, 140 character post
about a teenage dream ****** through low brightness screens.
Be the slam poet screaming whiny, new written love songs
on the shareable Facebook post. And maybe I’m just as bad,
but at least I recognize when my eyes fall numb from staring
at self-expression turned self-obsession. Maybe it’s Jack talking back
through my shot glass or maybe it’s the blacklight absorbed
into my skin. Or maybe it’s a girl in a “vintage” dress just sizing out
bigger than the edges already cut out for her. Maybe it’s me
bending backwards over chivalry and **** coming back from the 90’s.
Don’t blame me for biting into the media sandwich that is magazines
and the indecision of being too clingy if I just freakin’ called you.
Cause picking up the phone is a lot more risky than the kissy-face emoji
at the end of a message. Don’t blame me for consuming
tissue paper lies designed to target my own vulnerability, or my lack
of understanding the truth because all everyone
has ever told me is just a step in the manipulation blueprint
to get what they want, or just get me to bed. I only trust old photographs,
things I wrote down when I couldn’t sleep, my mom, and the dirt
I used to bury my own reflection. Be the 50% off on my receipt
just so I know I got something off. Be the nicotine in my cigarette,
the Blink 182 voice inside my head, the joints that hold me up
where I stand, and maybe I’ll finally know who I am.

Back in 2003 I found a piece of me
buried, like a shard of pottery, in the sandbox.
A Hot Wheel’s car, little rusted with one tire missing
that I used to shove in the little zippered flap
of my Powerpuff Girls backpack. Older, fifteen,
I carved another piece of me out and pasted it
to a vanilla letter, sliding the envelope through the slits
in his locker door, and I lost it. I’m not even sure he read it.
Nineteen, faded and little stolen, I threw another piece of me
into my mother’s grave. Plush petals, rosary beads, crystal
liquid drops infused with microscopic memories. I cut
myself in slivers and jammed uneven edges together
just to gusto the void, compact the space, walk solid.
And now, twenty-three, I press my face against a mirror
and slide my arms into a flannel, grandpa, hammy-down.
You took the last piece. You crawled into my guard, tore the lining
and spit your black blood on the blank memoirs I had hanging
next to the split.

Take me, now, if that’s how it’s gunna be. You wanna live
with the dust bunnies in my baggage? Feed off my insecurities,
my staggered breath, or my mercury dreams? I don’t want to be saved.
I’ve made my own maze with only one way out, so you’re trapped
in the Miss Havisham model I’ve made, rotten cake. Build yourself
a new girl from my discards, suckle the marrow from my bones,
and blow, like a glass ornament, a pretty replica of who I am.
Isn’t that what you wanted? Wasn’t that part of the chase?
The sweet idea that you could pull some perfect women out of the rubble?
I bet that’d be nice to show off, you *******. But here’s the catch,

I know I’m broken. You don’t need to remind me. So take
the smiles I’ve learned to draw on my lips for two cents,
and give up the **** fight I know you won’t win.

After the last bombing,
boys crowded me like vultures, trying to ****
the last good bit of me out and use it
to revive their own secret pride, make it a little sweeter.
They absorbed the sun-rays from my skin,
drank my kisses in like the final drop from the canteen.
But you showed up, a mirage in khakis and a clean shirt
with hair melted gold and a pressed button-down,
and I pulled you like an afterthought
through the membranes of protection
I made for myself. I caved.
I let myself fall through the reassurances, the promises
of never allowing myself to feel
that sentimental over a night spent sleeping,
your touch like little electric shocks tickling
my skin as you breathed relaxation into my ears
and memorized the ***** of my stomach into my hip.
I climbed through the covers and opened my mouth
as my heart bloomed over you. I guess,

I'm a little dried out. I guess,
since there hasn't been a single call,
that you've noticed how badly shaped I am and how
unsound my actions may be. But, baby,
I meant every thank you, every smile, every little
spotted kiss on your collarbone. And if I have to

I guess I can forget you. Tie myself to my footsteps
as I trace the cracks back to the sand you found me lying in
when you rode my hope like the sun
and proved that maybe the pain has only just begun.

Disconnected by the root, wasting
our time between sheets instead
of between conversations You kept
yourself in backwards hats and vague
excuses to the questions I was asking.
I lit myself on fire, extinguished the flame
in the shower after we finished, cursing
at the droplets sliding down the curtain.
***** this! and ***** that after you ******* me
into the enjambment that was your free space—
your convenience. I fit only if you push, I matter
only if it’s after midnight and the world
outside your door and bed frame
doesn’t have to know. In the daylight,
I’m a ghost that you always see. I’m the ruby
spotted from the corner of your eyes, the shine
that hurts to look at, but no one can know.
Of course. No one can know the way your mouth
rests between sighs or how your eyes lock
into mine when your bruising the inside of my thighs.

I’m the extra beer in your back pocket.
I’m the ***** in the towel who’s promising
her better self that she won’t go again,
that she won’t allow herself to try to patch
the promise from too long ago. The relationship,
shattered early, that mended itself crooked,
that became a book thrown at the wall
and a sweet, dissipated call. I’m the secret solemnly kept
at night when you’re drunk and ugly and begging
for some beauty to curl up next to. I’m the last line
in the best country song, the whisper
you scream for when I’m gone.

yes, i know the way his mouth twitches when he smiles,
how his eyes will turn to different shades of green when the hours
change,
and how he lends his fingers when you need assistance,
and how his room was our paradise, and i know how we screamed
to those songs in his car late at night, the snow pressed against
the windows

but what i don’t know, dear friends,
is how my words are empty pill bottles,
"he forced me"
and your cheeks tighten, your eyelashes dry,
i don’t know how my bruises, the blood caked on my thighs
are not as important as his pride,
the way he speaks of money like his one true love,

but what i don’t know is how when you were passed out,
sleeping away through **** hazes and drunken episodes,
his fingers scraped the back of my neck, and pushed and pushed
and pushed until
my teeth were coated with fear,
my throat gurgling with guilt

to my friends, i do not understand,
and when you mention his name, i am back in that room,
fifteen and in love and afraid,
with you under blankets,
oblivious

To his Best Friend

You can tell him how incredibly annoying
it is that he makes love with his socks on,
and you can tell him that no matter
how many country songs he plays
the jeep will still be broken and the sun
will still go down at five o’clock
despite the garage lights and the cans of Miller.

Tell him I really didn’t notice him when he walked in,
and tell him that maybe I’ll be over to the party Saturday,
or that he walks pigeon-toed and that’s why
he ***** at walking on the curbs.

You can tell him anything you want to, just
don’t tell him that I love the way he holds a spoon
like a shovel or how his hair sticks up in the front
outside his hood in the mornings, or that his pants
don’t fit his waist that dips in from his belly,
soft, skin warm from my body lying on top of his,
and don’t tell him

that the more backwards we bend the more forwards
I fall. Don’t tell him that sometimes I make the bed
just so I can stay longer, please,
don’t tell him that the way he looks in a towel
with water dripping from his bottom lip
makes me want to crawl back into bed, rattle
his bones, and **** the kisses with my teeth
as I dig myself deeper into this infrastructure,
this balance, between hating what I’ve done,
and loving someone
who’s never going to think you’re enough.

Don’t tell him that I’ve strung together our moments
like a necklace and that I wear that burden
on my chest, hoping, between prayers
that I find a way to breathe. Don’t tell him
that I’ve broken over him. Don’t tell him

that sometimes my double-takes are triple
and sometimes I cry in the bathroom
and sometimes—
just please (save me*) please don’t tell him.