subtlety is not a trait I possess well, when I mention
late night texts and infatuation here and there I mean you,
the problem is that I've been here before and I've
fallen too fast.

the problem is that I build these walls that cave in
quickly and resolutely;
I am a dreamer of romance and like
procured fat bouquets of sunflowers unexpected,
quilts, meaningful embraces where the whole world
drops right out of your stomach.

I worry myself because this heart is so brittle; it's known
to have been dropped a time before;
I'm sick of sweeping up slivers of organs like glass,
always laying everything that means anything out on the table for people to poke around in like
I am some kind of mystifying tag sale.

even though things seem different this time,
they don't, really,
anxious wrists and fingers that don't
hold pencils very tightly,
hugging sweaters and the memory of a
quite lovely monday night
and some really awful ones time and time before.

I have love that stutters on the edge; in
lines of chalk bent around the figure here
ghosts linger, waiting for another dear
to gnaw away tomorrow and fresh skin.
see, you marked upon a canvas so thin
and fluid that sheets, scents left from last year
took whole seasons to fade, to disappear
into folds of paper and soft chagrin.

those I left behind with purpose remain
scattered around, but you cut off that hair
I loved and left. I found a simple thought
somewhere in my head, "come home all the same";
lashes curled some thousand miles from there
but faint memories lost when ships are caught.

caked on makeup, lyrical lash lines, clear
thoughts for the first time; trying so hard to type
out the right words to make the world stop spinning ten
times too fast in the wrong direction. can't you see it's making me ill,
the way you casually can't decide and lean
on calves of glass and card towers of achromatizing dust?

I am a kaleidoscope of many other ashes to ashes to dust;
cut across from rib to rib and leeching out the clear
air you breathe. I am perennial, the one to clean
you up when you fail to break the mold and fall back on type-
casted stereotypes of who everyone else thinks you should be. still,
I am the one who doubts and falters, often

has the idea that we are erased and quick forgotten
the moment our idiosyncrasies peter out and dust
replaces bones we came to know. I am shrill,
and I talk too loud at all the wrong times; I can never clear
the plates I stain with blood and pile high with subtype
after subtype derivatives of things I should do and glean

vivification from carefully, anxiously. you have this lean
skin and enviable, insouciant lilt to your walk towards me at ten
o'clock when I can't see straight anymore, can barely type
the last letters of my poems. your eyes are clear
and you're free of that indestructible and obliterating dust
that clogs my lungs and makes me feel so ill

so often. shallow peaks of your shoulder blades, time at a standstill
when I merge into highways of veins and clean
breaks from responsibility, softly tracing jawbones that clear
my head for just a moment; hands that tremble to fasten
the world back onto my hollow aches and faltering nervous system. I dust
off your window sill and think maybe you're the type

that complements an irrational daydreaming messy busy type-
writer kind of lover. you know, the kind that hates to pay the bill
on time because that's another deadline to miss, who lets dust
fly around because vacuums interrupt abstract art and lean
cuisine, who likes cats and very, very often
misplaces her phone somewhere on your clear

floor nothing like the type she has, like the type I have, like the way I lean
toward your infrastructure to hold me still; darling, you brighten
my mornings of habitual stardust and glass not quite clear.

across that pavement still warm from the new spring sun
your body saunters; shirts that smell like clean cotton
and hands that saunter across my trembling ribcage that for one
moment today feels actually weightless.

wrapped up in your arms and your blankets,
I think of nights when we walked downtown and saw those city lights that
drew me in like a moth to a flame with a camera;
bright rectangles softened by blue black that drew me away for august.

you kept saying that this wasn't a mistake.
liquor soaked through the phone lines and bright almonds
in my face cried out; I loved you and the way your hands felt
so cool when I sat on that warm pavement one terrible night
crying for everything I was worth because I didn't want to lose you
in august or september or ever.

I loved you, and you didn't even know what you were saying.

soft rain slices skin apart at the seams, watching rain
slide down and pool in my lap. watching you pile things into
duffel bags, watching my hands wring themselves and
pick apart the flower growing in the space where my lungs were.
he loves, he loves, he loves.
petals are put forth in clustered buds of brighter times, bear the dyes of vivid days,
cascade and separate in the fall.
I'm breathing in the spaces between yours; even here
somehow you got away.

this winter I will pull off my coats and notice that you are written
down my arm in ink that doesn't fade like time left,
fails to blister and run like chalk drawings on the pavement,
keeps over seasons, over marigolds, over strangers and coffee,
and he loves me nots.

this time of year things grow piercingly
into your heart; blades of grass push through
tender flesh and harden into sand-sharpened
needles that ache so delicately-

covered in spines, and ailing,
touching the face of the boy you have loved
and telling him softly "never forget that."

we wander through piles of photographs lost in time,
moments drifting off trees of held hands and cracked green bus seats
that are whispering the laughs of ashes
and the thirteen year old love for a best friend who
honestly knows why your heart is so sore.

we move on, we surrender things we loved and those
we loved,
I can take your hand and tell you all the things I want to believe,
but stagnant, I wonder how I will ever live,
lively,
with the hearts so dear to mine left so far behind.

late october,
today my heart is wandering,
I still listen to your music.
things I like fall in my lap and I pick up the phone to tell you,
someone I can hide behind

maybe I just like warm waists and strong arms
maybe I like feeling small,
I met this boy today, love,
he reminds me of home, of fresh tortillas wrapped in tinfoil
he reminds me of this summer, and of you.

he doesn't like the things we liked,
but he's a different fabric
and I am patching this idea that
we never stop loving anyone