I run here
when things are bad

Here I am

because You are sticking your fingers
down my throat and plucking out vertebrae
until I can't move
caught in your shadow
until I begin choking

and You hang off me like a wet shirt
two sizes too big and unfeeling
I try to throw You off
but You're clawing at my legs and
pulling me down to the dirt
from the soil that you crawled up from

With You
it's like the city took a breath and held it
and I'm holding mine too
because any sudden move
and I'm thrown to the ground
and my neck snapped back by my hair

You are the monster in my closet
the beast in the hollowed parts of my chest
the voice in my head that plants seeds of doubt
and I'm done with You

But You keep coming back

Your fingers

are inside

         my

                 wet

                          warm

throat

pulling out

                        sighs

of desperation

and cries

that thunder down like rain

What should I say?

                    Tell me about love

Love is sticky
like tack
in your mouth
clinging to the back of your tongue
your teeth
making them rot

                    Tell me you won't fall in love with someone else

I don't want to
feel it
hang from my rib cage like string,
tying me up inside
only to turn to razor wire when
when I'm done

                  Tell me what love is

It's a choking hazard
a worm crawling in your heart
making a home
and when it leaves
there's nothing left
Love is a city
full of lights and exhaust,
blinding and suffocating
It's a summer turned winter
no clothes, bareboned

                    Tell me, do you love me still?
yes.

I catch myself
thinking of our plans
that don't exist
now

and like trees
I'm shaken
in the wind
of what we once had

and I fall
into daydreams
and you're there
but I remind myself
that
you're not
and
we're done
like evaporated water

and it's strange
to think that the future of
you and I
are
no
longer
you and I

but it has to rain sometime

i didn't think i'd write about you like this
ending up here in a space that wasn't meant for you

in the beginning

i didn't think you'd end up in here as a past tense
as a memory
chalked up as a tragedy, a pile of words

as a goodbye

this isn't how i imagined
us

I wish someone had told me
while I sat in frilled white socks
and a pink dress on Easter
that love isn't just
for one and only one

I wish someone had told me
that while I would fall for a few
or many
that guilt was useless
because time is thin
and people are sudden
and you can't help what you see

While I watched judges, pastors, shamans
tie the legality of love together in bows or Gordian knots
no one ever told me about the power of eyes
or how to feel about fluttering caused by another
while I'm supposed to remain landlocked with just one someone

Now I'm sick
because of all the feelings screaming through my fingers, curling them, and I have nowhere to place them, and yelling falls in the quiet because I'm guilty
guilty
guilty
of thinking about others
when, apparently, I'm only supposed to think of you

I wish someone had told me
that love is not an is or isn't
It's a maybe, how are you, do you like ramen, music, don't leave, goodbye
And it most certainly hurts
when you aren't sure what to do about the others
who's eyes are pools and who lure you to the edge and pull you in and then you lose them altogether

Why did no one tell me