if I am the frying pan then you are the fire
in a way you’ve always been my gateway drug
[oh her]
and I’ve always been their gateway to you (we have never
really been that similar) if I am the street lights then
you are the stars (you have always made that one
pretty clear)
I am covered in your footprints
your hair kind of looks like mine
spit on my face and we’ll see if I start to look more like you
[oh it’s you]
we were born in hospitals and since then my infant skin
has felt like plastic in your hands
(I’ll sit down in the dirt to see if I can blend in
with what you say you really love) smile and maybe
I’ll remember
what I really love about the grass growing through the sidewalk
(I remember once you told me you would love me
if I could show you where the sidewalk ends)
if I am the bridge then you are the untamed river
I’m sorry if I couldn’t see below my feet but you never bothered
to look up either
you have always been my gunpowder and I
have always been your bastille (whether you are rogue or royalty
has yet to be determined) you have always said
that I was hollow and I held matches in my teeth hoping
it would prove me volatile
[always you two]
I used to think our bones were the same metal but you’d
be the first to tell me yours was forged in a hotter fire
I think
mine will be harder to break (and we will both be melting
for years) if I am holding their hands then
you are bleeding beneath their feet if I stand alone
then you are standing on their shoulders
(I remember you like charcoal on a cave wall
like a name carved in tree bark
there are sets of your fingerprints next to mine all down
the highway
hold my hand against the dirt and we’ll see
if the heat of battle in the blood red riverbank will be enough
to burn this skin from our bones) we are not friends and
we are never going to be strangers (and more than anything
I am sorry for that)
if I am midnight then you are three am
if I am the sun then you are (not the moon)
arcturus
in a way I’ve always been your gateway
in a way you’ve always been my coup de foudre
[oh this again]
in a way your poetry was always my first love

I am a lost cause and they’re still waiting to grow old
if you heard me say that you’d be disgusted but
you’d say it right back
to you I am a flower on a broken stem it’s hard
to miss the grief in your eyes no matter how many times
I tell you I’m not dead
I can hear them in the other room their voices
tucked behind mourning veils
it’s like they’re circled around some abandoned chrysalis
like she quit while she’s ahead and
if lives were prophecies hers was not fulfilled
(oh isn’t she
isn’t she empty)
they have pictures of the time she raised butterflies
they still have the empty jar and she stopped missing their wings
a long time ago
they told me I died and I swallowed dirt to prove them wrong
(oh isn’t she
empty)
I cut myself open expecting a desert
and instead I found a waterfall

It’s not that hard to explain
there’s me and then there’s my body (neither one matters to you)
there’s my mouth and then there’s my heart rate
there’s your eyes and then there’s your poetry
(I haven’t seen either one in a long time)
you’ve never been that hard to understand
I know you’d love to think you are and the rules
are complicated but they don’t change
(it’s okay though
most people are like that some are just better at
lying) I met you
as a child I left you something different
I met you and you rolled the dice (it wasn’t
until you were older that we learned to play the game)
I left you when I realized there would be no winner
I met you a child and left you an animal (and
there’s nothing I can say to make up for that)
it’s not that hard to say I’m sorry
I’ve been saying it for years it’s reflex it’s a tic and to you
every apology was a suicide note a notice
of my progressive apoptosis (it’s not
your fault it’s not
that hard to say I miss you) and for you
I weighted dice I counted cards I hid aces
up my sleeves and gave you my jacket and for you
I weighted words I counted stars just
to prove I couldn’t I hid galaxies in my mouth
just to prove I could (it’s not
your fault even though you asked me to) I
have been walking in circles on frozen floors
punching through windows cutting up
old love notes and paper snowflakes you
have been painting on cardboard walls
(my heart has grown out of yours and
there is nothing I can say to escape that)
I have been outside pounding on your windows you
have been boarding them up with lines about
how I was so close and should just
keep trying
(you kept saying they were paper but you lied) I
have been doing my makeup like yours and
drawing on my skin like you draw on your walls
you have been coloring over me
(there are other things breathing in your walls with me and we
are the heartbeat of the scenery
the god of the machine)
I have spent years backtracking to your door
I have spent years detaching from my floor it was
a picture you painted with your eyes closed and we thought
it was beautiful
it was a picture you painted of that void space
that existential wasteland behind our eyes and I thought
it was real (and there’s nothing I can say to make up for that)
I have spent years beating against brick walls until
my hands bled my picture
has become abstract
it’s like I’m imprisoned inches off the ground my consciousness
got lost in your blood spattered sky I have spent years
beating against brick walls until my hands broke you told me
to lift my feet up off the ground so I dragged them to the edge of a cliff
I have spent years beating against brick walls and
it has been years since I could touch anything at all
you saw the bones of my cut fingers and said they were beautiful
I will never pretend that wasn’t my fault (and
there’s nothing I can say to explain that)
I have been clawing at my face so you will call me beautiful
I cannot live anymore in this rotting skin
I think I’m ******* bleeding
I think I’m ******* toxic (I have heard you say
the same thing before and I’ll never know whether
you meant it) I wiped blood from your face
with my spit but you wouldn’t risk my infection
there was a kind of balance in the way you held me
on your fingertips but I have grown too heavy
because I was too much in myself to float off the ground with you
and too much in love to let go (I am trying so hard
not to be in love with this anymore) I swear to myself
that the feeling of this earth on my hands means more
to me than you do I swear to you
that in your existential rapture I will not purge myself
of your sins (my exodus did not come soon enough and
there’s nothing I can say to escape that)
I will breathe the prophesized sickness of this world
but I will not breathe the sickness out of you
never again will I look down at my footprints
and wonder who they belong to
it’s not that hard to remember
there was me and then there was my body
maybe they used to matter to you but
neither one belonged to me (and
there’s nothing I can say to make up for that
there’s nothing I can say to get them back)