i saw you on a balcony smoking a cigarette
between your fingers that extended like
tree roots. i wanted so badly
to just grab you and **** the nicotine right
out of your veins and into mine. maybe one
day you'll be addicted to me.

there was a couple on the 1train
and every second there was a pda. my
pupils grew threefold for the opposite reason
theirs did. her boyfriend left at 225th, and i
couldn’t help but look at how miserable she was.
her once butterflies now struggled to fly underground
and fell off the platform near columbia. they lost their wings
the same way i lost love back in the hot month of june.
she became a normal human whereas fourteen stops ago
her teeth were snow and his face was an avalanche and
their lips had a conversation that their
eyes weren’t paying attention to. she closed her eyelids
and i could imagine that her imagination was him holding
her hand; running his thumb through her palm, trying
to predict a future with him in it. they were lost in each others
glasses and they were blind to everything but
their silhouettes. he took a piece of her soul when he left,
i pray he returns it back.

she was as see through as her
fish-netted leggings.
she sat on the quad with flowers tangled in her braids
and a book of poe on her lap.
she told me about how his voice at 3am over
the phone sounds like god, and how his eyes
look like jesus; she was a catholic girl, raised
with a bible in her right hand, and a handful of experiments
she thought up to change the world when she was seven
in the other. she told me about the cracks in between
his fingers, and how they resemble the roman roads;
not perfect, but they all lead to his heart. sometimes,
she likes to picture the way her right eye
twitches when he kisses her, and then she
starts to wonder about him and how he
treats her similar to her father but the words
to describe this aren’t coming out of her mouth fast enough for her to think of the next sentence.
“tell me about you,” she asked.
i write poems in the dark hours of the night you talk to him;
i am envious of whatever faults you find in his fingers.
i never knew god, but **** i swear i met him in your laughter.
i see your teeth in my dreams but when i wake up, you’re still
talking to him at 4am.
i memorized the way your foot lifts off the ground when you’re about to
take another step, it’s hesitant but curious, similar to the
way i want to tell you all of this but instead,
you sit on this bed of snowbound grass
sharing stories of poe and not enough of what makes your
eyes twitch, or what faults you can find in me. open your hand,
place it over my black heart, i don’t remember the last time it turned red.

monday:
i saw your angel (or was it a
ghost?) walking to leo.
tuesday:
she won’t leave my bed and
i don’t know how to politely tell her to leave.
wednesday:
i ******* hate wednesdays.
thursday:
i bought you a drink at the bar and told
you my story about my summer
and you simply cried.
but all i could think about was the cranberry and
***** that was in your hand and i couldn’t help but
wonder if she liked that drink as well.
friday:
you sat next to me in chemistry and my professor
lectured about relationships and how chemistry
is the devil in jeans and a kanye t-shirt.
saturday:
i can’t sleep knowing you’re doing better than me
and your ghost won’t stop crying now.
sunday**:
i drove my car seven hundred and twenty miles
on the interstate hoping that she’d let go of my
neck.

at times i have to remind myself
that the air actually loves me and the car rides last
longer when i'm happy but the sunset will never last for
your perfect picture; my bed is my home
and it's okay to live alone while you're young and old, but never in between;
the music i listen too defines what my goals in life are,
and the voices give me guidance more than you can imagine;
i am my own smile and you are your own teeth,
and i'm perfectly fine that you are not me.