You are not what I am looking for
not the flashlight in a power outage
not my mother’s hand when crossing a busy street
not a glass of wine in the middle of a stressful week.

You are not kind or creative
you are not clever or desirable
you are not unique.

You are drunk
pulling on my skirt
pleading for permission that I’m too weak to deny

I am trying to blend in with the walls
as I watch you stumble down the hall to grab my waist
You are not what I am looking for.

You are bored and pessimistic
you are "I love you" one night
you are “I don’t want you” the next day
either way you are hovering over my chest
your fingers laced with my flesh
you are not what I am looking for.

You are a broken promise
you are the winter tree who refuses to grow leaves again the spring
you don’t believe in seasons
you are resistant to any change.

You are “I’ll stop” but never when you should
you are leaving me before I have the chance to leave you
running down the stairs screaming “catch me if you can”
unaware that I am anchored to my stance.
you are not what I am looking for.


You are a text that I usually leave blank
you are the shot of whiskey that finally leaves me drunk in the passenger seat of your car
you are playing really awful music
really loud.

You are “please, just this once” until 4 a.m.
I say “then will you let me sleep”
you smile as you steal opportunity from my heavy eyelids
you are an empty coffee cup and an awkward silence
the following morning
you are not what I am looking for.

You are “What if I never fall in love”
you are “I don’t want to be alone”
you are chain smoking  after an argument
you are using me
you are uncertainty
you are not what I am looking for.

I had a heart
that was concrete like sidewalk
you had a voice like chalk

I swore I was going to
memorize your laugh
try to photograph
the way it would add color
to the grey gaps
where not even weeds would
dare to grow

it is too bad
chalk succumbs so easily
to rain.

You tricked me
Made me believe there was something
Yet, here I am
With no light to guide me
Feeling like nothing
I loved you, still do
But something's changed in you

I thought you were a lighthouse
Out of reach, maybe
But guiding me to safety...
Turns out you were the wind
Causing waves of hurt
To crash over me

Now the light has dimmed
And I can't find my way
Not without you
But you led me astray
I'm drowning, dying,
I can't breathe
And "I'm sorry" was all you had to say

I don't need you
I've seen others sail on their own
How hard can it be?
But my muscles are weak
My lungs are filling with salt
That spills out of my eyes
I can't do this alone

But that's how you've left me
To fare the dreadful ocean waves
With a broken sail and no mast
Joining lost souls in watery graves
Because your bright light never shone past

You're dead inside
I see it now, clear as the light
You stole from me
There was no lighthouse,
Just me, chasing after a dream
That I didn't really need
And now there's only darkness
As far as I can see

That night it snowed
so hard
I melt you between my lips
like an ice cube

Each time I touched your ribs
I was trying to let my love echo
through my fingertips

I fell half asleep on your bare chest
as you repeatedly said
“I love waking up to you”

I love:
waking up
you

do not date a girl
who writes.
she will internalize
everything,
carve poems
into your eyelashes
instead of
kissing them,

she will analyze you,
calculate age
from the rings
your coffee cup
leaves
instead of refilling it.

she will memorize
the way your
lips curl around steam,
but not that you
take it
two sugars,
no cream.

she will read your
palm instead of
holding it
against her chest.

she will not
blink
when you leave,
because she is
already
romanticizing it.

I spent six years playing padiddle
with the shine in your eye
each time you winked.

Now I am falling asleep
beneath a blanket of sweat
imagining how few seasons are left
before the honeybee
is only able to live in captivity.

I would never touch you with angry hands.
Apparently I could never touch you
with the right words either.

“It is hard to hate a broken thing.”
Even harder sometimes
to accept some things
are broken.

The only time capsule
I ever buried
is decomposing
in the bottom of my belly

filled with the different ways
I have not been able to
cope with loss

It resurrects names
remembers faces
who are changing
and living in different states
while I am still trying to digest
their absence

It looks for the bundle of fur
that once modeled a now
empty, worn collar
unable to comprehend
only one set of brown eyes
gazing up from the floor
during Sunday morning coffee

It is learning to accept its reflection
could just as easily be
a shadow