you swore, with every space between your teeth, that his words would not let the halves of your heart split vertically or that when conversation existed in your two minds that you’d wash your hands. he kept his lips sealed, washed you away from his mouth as he lingered on the tip of your tongue. the time he crossed his fingers with his own instead of yours crossed your mind a time or two, but by the time his shoulders carried less weight than yours, you realized that over was already in his vocabulary and that you were just another bad word his mother told him to never say aloud. you were never said aloud, you were never spoken of when his mother asked him why and you were never given the chance to come up–you were an ellipses catching wind of the empty piece of paper. you were never supposed to cross paths again, cross t’s or meet each other’s eyes. his momma would always say that you had the biggest eyes she’d ever seen–something not quite doe-eyed, but nothing close to dull. his momma knows best, as all momma’s do, and she told him, “son, she is…”

his mind never strayed from you, at one time in your lives.

she is, she is, she is–

his eyes were a dusty brown
that  made  her  feel euphoric
and   maybe  that's  why  she
became  addicted   to  ******.

was there a time in
your day when you
thought about me
the way you thought
about the missing
pieces in your heart
that i couldn't
completely fill?

was i just the sketch
of your latest masterpiece
that you forgot to hang on
your wall because you
couldn't find the right shades
of red to paint with?

was your shade of red so far
away from the color of my
blood that you were passed
satisfied when you tore down
the walls of my house just to
fill your paint can with the
river of my body?

you had no mercy when you
took me to bed, i had no self-
esteem to tell you that i couldn't—
i wish i couldn't—but you wouldn't
have given me a chance—not with
the way your eyes spoke of false
love that i believed to be true.

i bared myself to you; i fell
asleep in the crook of your arm
to the way your heart beat
thinking that it beat that way for
me—but it wasn't for me. i was
your added layer of skin that you
peeled off when you left the bed—
i was the metallic mistake that
began to rust over when you hung me
on your clothes line; droplets of rain
covered me—touched—me more than
you ever did.

your spit was the acid rain that
fired my flesh to bone when you
barely contained your anger; your
hands left prints of un-medicated
discipline on the mounds of my
lower back—outlines of ugly
paintings covered the canvas of my
body; my body was not a work of
art and, yet, you used the pallet of
your fingers to make improvements
on the faulty machine that could
barely function throughout the day
and weeped into pillows at night.

you depicted the silence as a detailed
symphony that somehow only played
for you.

they say lovers never forget the
creations they make together—
we barely laughed and you never
slept and i never left my eyes open
for too long; i was afraid you'd deem
them capturable—hold them with
your rough hands and splash the color
on paper for your own amusement;
you could see the pain in my eyes, but
you never bothered to clean up the mess
in them—you sat there with a brush in
your hand as you watched the light rot
away.

my eyes were never opened for
too long for i was afraid you
would take away my sight and add
it to another painted apparition that held
a girl in iron chains—the blood in my
veins colored deceit in the lanes of my
ribcage; i could barely hold in a breath—
a moan, a sigh, a whisper—when your
hands took apart my limbs one by one—

i could barely keep my eyes open
when the light began to fade, little
splotches of my fingers touched your
arm and for once i knew what it felt
like to be touched in a way that pained
my senses with an abundance of fleeting
ecstasy—

the reckless complexity of your fingers held
the love i harbored in my blood,

but my blood wasn't the right
shade of red because i was just
an outline for your latest master-
piece and i didn't make it
to your wall because
you didn't have the
decency to ***** me against it.