The other day I woke up to the smell of your absence clinging to my skin. I took 8 showers that day and I am still not quite sure if it's possible to feel a phantom limb where there wasn't one in the first place.

2. The way that squirrels cross the street makes a lot of sense all of a sudden. I'm sure no one told you that you have a way of making their skin crawl in the most desperate way. I still can't eat on your side of the bed without choking on the residue your dreams left.

3. I read the obituaries like I used to read the creases your smile left, they're not meant for me.

4. Stars manage to keep their deaths a secret for years I wish I were as committed to forgiveness as they were. I stuck my hands in scalding water today and left them there until they begged for redemption, it sounded a lot like your name.

5. It took me two years to find out your middle name, that is not a metaphor. I used to think that the slower I said it the sweeter it would taste. I stick my fingers down my throat hoping to find the words you left there I'm so sorry for being too weak to say them back then I'm so sorry they couldn't make you stay. I drew highway maps on the palms of my hands that led me right back into my own arms, how is that for irony.

6. Television.

7. Lips that don't bruise when they touch my own, I want a love like a car crash. I want painful, and desperate, and no good for me, I want to not want this.

8. I've blown out so many candles I'm suprised I haven't put all the stars out yet. If the universe were capitalist shooting stars would be marketing to my demographic. I would be the poster child for wishes that will never come true.  

9. Novels that end exactly as you hoped they would

10. Nearly 160,000 people died in the 1945 bombing of Hiroshima, Japan. 69% of the city was left in ruin. The radiation caused by the explosion was said to effect those living in Hiroshima for the next 30 years. From what I know, hospital walls are lined with cynicism and pain and I can't think of anything worse than oblivion than near oblivion.

I like to think that I have five fingers specifically to fit in between yours
The palms of our hands are highway maps to all the places that we'll ever kiss each other.
I like to think that your hands were made for mine bc you have five fingers too and you fit as well into me as I do into you I think that god made your hands for mine and I don't even think about god.
But I do think about how well your hands sit in mine resting so comfortably you'd think my hands were the perfect place for dreaming and I dream about your hands and all the times that I'll get to hold them I don't want to let go.
I remember when all we held of each other were our hands and things felt so much lighter then, trust me,
Your hands are the easiest weight to bear.
I only ever want your hands to occupy the empty spaces of mine bc there are ghosts that visit occasionally and I never want them to stay
Please be my fingertips
Dance on my palms, god made my hands for you, I promise.
I was not meant to pray with these hands bc they are less than holy but so are yours.
I've never held stars in my hand but I'm sure if I did, it would feel a lot like you do. I keep love in these hands.
I keep you in my hands but only bc you fit so well.

I feel like I am cracking and there is no glue that can hold me together.
Together we fought the most amazing battles I wish they would put us in the history books.
I thought that we were gods amongst the stars we started storms cascading rivers flow so overflowing with our own words we made dictionaries jealous.
We fell in love because neither of us knew how to swim I think we were the most beautiful memorials ever given for the living it didn't get more monumental than us.
I used to wonder how many pages they'd dedicate to us how many lesson plans would be written around us I wondered how many times we'd be diagnosed I hoped we were contagious we would've been the most beautiful disease anyone could ever catch.
I find myself catching my breath now every time I see the bridge we built I have yet to burn that one and I'm afraid when I do it won't catch fire, but fire is the only thing that will erase us now.
My eyes get so heavy at night now I hope I can keep them open a minute longer because my monsters don't hide underneath my bed.
My head holds nightmares that haven't been made into nursery rhymes yet.
This has turned into the hardest part, no lullaby can calm me down enough to sleep because you aren't sleeping next to me anymore
I swear this is a tragedy far greater than anything they dare put in the papers
Why weren't we in the papers
Where was our eulogy
Who will remember
What we were,
When will this stop hurting.
I hope that this stops hurting soon.
I know now that there will be no idols erected in our name no bindings brushed with our title no one will be turning pages of us in anticipation our plot will never thicken.
We have become the turning point in a war on words. A war on ideas, we are just an idea now and we aren't fighting for the thought of us any longer we'll fade like the end of a sentence that was never meant to be spoken I can no longer imagine the martyrs we would have become, because we aren't we anymore.
You and I-
I can't stand these new pronouns please come back I like the way "we" sounds on my tongue make this "me" into an "us" it can't hurt to go down in history I heard that the fall is not as bad as it seems, please fall with me again.
There were hundreds of articles of clothing written in the bedroom we shared.
Sometimes I read them over and over again knowing that they will never be published please let me have this story I want us to be more than just another undocumented event
People deserve to have our history repeat itself.