you shrewd mistress.
when you are restless you raise
mountains with your power over
the earth then claim
no one made the effort to climb against
you

you shrewd mistress.
arranging daisies by color,
shape, liveliness and smell.
pulling petals till your fingers bleed
all so you can feel well
you

you shrewd mistress.
tossing and turning,
finding the hidden meaning behind your dreams
sitting next to strangers,
thinking about all the love there could be
between him and
you

you shrewd mistress.
standing quietly in the cold,
you’d never make a fuss.
just wait for it to build up and over,
build another mountain
wait for someone
anyone
to climb over to
you.

i feel like my heart is drooping
weary like a wilted flower
and i am thirsty for your touch.
you left me
alone and unravelled on my
twin sized mattress
all so i could remember how
bad i was at stopping myself
from falling in love.

there are borders that i draw
and fences that i build
to keep these things from
falling out,
to keep myself from falling down.

so i wont dry up and wither
when i am waiting for your touch.
when i am waiting for your love.

i am losing my hands to razor blades again.
my demons wont stop clawing at the walls
of my heart shaped pandora’s box.

i am forcing laughter so hard that my ribs are sore.
and you are still so beautiful that it hurts to look.

oh what a pleasure to be
the cigarettes you keep on smoking,
i could creep inside you so softly.
baby could you sneak into me?
**** me quietly from the inside out

i am crying so hard that my eyes may bust out of my head.
you didn’t like it when i called my self abuse a
public display of affection for you.

did you rethink your “i love you more”?
were you embarrassed by the bruises
that my little fists left in your door?

i am always the one that loves more.

at a certain point
theres only so much i can say
about how the sea carries my heart gently
or about how my stars don’t always align

i could talk about
how i may not feel like the boy
who fell into the well
but more like the clock who ran outta time

i sit and think
that maybe i feel
like a signed off tele at 4am
pulling you from the arms of sleep

selfish as always
unforgiving like a natural disaster
that no one could prevent or see
i run dry and forget how to put anything
delicately.

i have the nasty habit of
holding onto things and never letting go.
even when the bruises and the gashes up
and down my arms tell me so.

i am so much stronger inside of my head than out.
but the fact that you could never love me the
way i needed you to love me
****** me up more than you will ever know.

i cried so long, so hard, for so many days
that noah didn’t even have time to build a big enough ark.

you told me to break my back for you, and i did.
you watched me build it back up into a bridge
so you could walk, sprint, jump across it.
and i was just happy your skin was so close to mine

my concrete spine absorbed the angry heat
of your late night terrors and hurricane mood swings.
but all my desires were abstract concepts,
things you could not meet.

i began to crumble beneath you and begged,
”let me hold your hand and i will let you
pull the rope that’s wrapped itself so comfortably
around my neck. please. leave me hanging for the last time”

i have not let anyone break my heart like that again.
no one has gotten close enough to
take a tour inside the coffin of my heart,
to catch the scent of a love
that has yet to finish decaying.

look for me in the obituaries.
cut me out and tack me next to
the newspaper clippings of the people
that you sent missing all because of
your indifference to intimacy.

and maybe i am pathetic in the way that orpheus was
when he tried to raise eurydice from the dead.
because sometimes things are best
when we leave them alone to rest.

because sometimes when we don’t let go,
we find ourselves in hell again.
alone again.
with nothing to call our own.
again.