it was
all too easy,
forgetting your name,
tasting the starlight tucked
behind someone else's
wisdom teeth,
our soju-laced smiles
crashing at 90mph
and the memory of you
caught  
in the headlights and wreckage,
our 2am laughter
echoing in your bones
from 5654 miles away,
my hands knowing
the age-old roads
that led to brand new places,
and the faded map of you
folded and kept hastily
in my back pocket.

*(I was far too proud
to ask for directions
to come home)

My lungs are sighing up a storm,
lips lightning-lined and
lonely

a constant reminder
that even with all this thunder
in my chest

I was never strong enough
to hold on to you.

I had always loved dancing
on skyscrapers -

all the world a doll's house
at my feet
and so close to thy sky,
I could taste the sun.

but fierce winds make fools
of us all, my love,
and static
only makes everything
cling -

and now I am standing
in the middle of a field

not yet burnt and broken,
but waiting

for you to strike.

even the bravest bones
cannot weather every hurricane alone -

and my tired heart is still trying
to beat in places
where the world is hushed.

I am waiting
for the quiet.

sometimes I think it was easier
when there were spaces in between
you and I

if only because
    friction
can burn even the best of us,
and

hours upon hours
of our bodies pressed
against each other
means that every move you make
    shakes me to my core.

*it will not take us aeons
to cross our oceans.

watch me write your name
in scars,
in stars,

watch me write your smile
in broken hearts -
broken parts of me :

watch me bleed you out
in stories and supernovas
and even if I can't ink
all the pieces of you into my poems -

darling,
watch me try.

write a poem about me,
all inked hypotheticals
and pretty words dressed up in rationality -

give it to her
and tell her she's beautiful,
that she writes like a dream,
and leave just enough spaces
in between your favorite metaphors
to string them up with a maybe,
a silhouette of me,
just enough space to wonder
if she's only bright in my shadow -

because darling, I want to know
what it feels like
on the other side
of sadness.