last night scraped painstakingly
from the fissures in my brain
scraped like ink from wood-latch boxes with
fancy carved roses on the top

chewing apart memories with
your nails clenched into my hand
I am falling out of love all over again

clicking keys and snapping wrists
ripped strings and fractured minds
slipping into different facades
of distances that felt closer
six trembling months so
long

touching your palm
with a face that isn't real anymore
pillow cased fingertips touching cheeks
bumping elbows ripple through ponds of
tension seething just under the skin and
details throb in my temples

I have vanished from the city skyline
I am taking back my couch, I am stepping on dried roses
pilfering paint from butterfly wings
frankly darling sweet pea
there were these picnic baskets and sunflowers

bitterly lamenting to everyone but printed on both sides
of your business card it says "heartbreaker"
and printed on both sides of the fortune cookie it said
"not your business, move on move on"

stitching holes in my cheekbones, I
haven't got the heart to put up walls
haven't got the nerve to break them down
still painting you into my sunflowers and I am
so wary when I scrape elbows

I keep writing the spaces between heartbeats,
I keep touching the things that aren't real,
I keep saying how I'm going to change into something,
I keep erasing the lines that I've written before,
and when will I write for myself.

it takes skyscrapers filled with polaroids
it takes little white lies and telegraphs
it takes reflective puddles of gasoline
it takes armfuls of daisies and paisley print napkins
it takes princes and paupers and slurpees and silver
plated bracelets and philosophical books and memories
of people sitting on cracked green-brown bus seats
it takes things I knew and throws them away; it takes crispy hot nights
when cheekbones are sweating and boys who know nothing
of what they want filling their hearts up with and euros in pennies and sitting
on six clouds of old medications and basements with just too much dust.

it's a matter of time,
it's matter of perspective,
it's a snapshot hold-back parallel circle of constant irrevocable dimensions of porch swings
and merry go rounds undeniably irritatingly provokingly making me sick.

swish swish go cassette tapes I keep within reach
I can pull out their insides and stretch out the tape to reach to the moon
past the treetops and over the sun and into my head while I sleep.
someday I'll tinker with those that dream nothing,
and someday I'll write for myself.

one o'clock in the morning
switch switch clack clack
there's a train and it's streaming swirls of
steamy illumination
clack clack
eyelids drifting; icebergs, somewhere, melting.

there's a part of my brain and it's
it's drifting back to you
you're walking on those steaming lights
palm on palm and eyes on eyes on faces
creased and turned
with curiousity
and the beginnings of devotion

there was a past, storied; perhaps too complicated
and it's faded; I have managed to turn my head
painfully removed,
toward blue jackets being pulled on
blue and maroon
blue and maroon

you're different, and she's absolutely different
I do not know how I missed the mark
(but oh I hope that she does worse)
blue and maroon
when patched together minds of mine
**** backwards and--
I can't feel you anymore, I can only think
so maybe this is better

blue and maroon
he's getting better; he's not perfect in the same way
but you weren't either in a big way
his faults don't rattle my teeth in my head
and blister my fingertips completely out of bitterness
my eyes don't bleed of acid when he strikes an ill-planned chord
you're gone
and I am staring at this train
eyelids drifting
thinking of blue and maroon

these last two weeks drag on.
I wash my hair all the time, rinse and repeat rinse and repeat rinse and repeat repeat repeat repeat repeat
slithering out of my follicles and sliding down the drain
toweling my hair dry, and
then you're creeping into my skin
you're creeping in creeping creeping and there's a whole bar of soap, gone.
and I think I'm finally clean and you've etched yourself in the pads of my fingers
that I rub on sandpaper until they bleed, ****** ****** badges of I'm winning!
winning this game with you in my lungs, pushing out with all your hands and your feet;
I can't breathe out, you won't let me, I hold it hold it hold it I touch edges of darkness feel my eyes
clog with pinpricks, stars, explosions and I've suffocated you, let out my breath,
calmed by your soft murmur in my ear, your touch on places we always went together,
I am cleaning cleaning cleaning trying to get you out of my skin and my hair and my thoughts
thoughts like you didn't even care and you don't even think about me anymore and all I do is think about trying to scrape your brains out of my innards.
vivid intakes, passionate obsession, cleaning cleaning cleaning the house the yard my hair (again) the door the mirror you wrote I love you beautiful the car seat you pulled me into the feel of your lips and your hands and your hair when you sweat because I could make you
feel.
and now I look in that mirror where I can't erase your words and I don't see that girl you watched anymore;
all I see is ***** of skin and listless hair and blue purple circles stalking my eyelids and profound sadness and I see so much that isn't even there because the one thing I need to see I can't because it's
you and you're wrapped up in her like a present
and all I got this christmas was coal to match this listless hair and an inability to see reality and a really awful obsession with wanting to cause you pain
pain pain pain pain what is pain, pearl white
what is pain

pressure pressure pressure
hollow paper skin
I'm not a paper airplane and
I can't pretend to fly
through stormy wednesday mornings
when the rain begins to drop;
here begins the tailspin
structure folding under
paper-coated hollow bones
the skeleton that shivers

here begins the pressure.
irking little seed
with roots deep cut,
knees cut down
to bleed you on the street
and stretched upon the ground
pressure curls you under

I've got here this paper skin with
tons of flesh to mark
reorganize to find inside
organs tucked in battered skin,
with paper thin
crumpled in your hand
you thought it ripped;
really only crinkled

do you know what it's like,
standing on the edge of a cliff screaming at the top of your lungs
but nobody seems to be around to hear you
or respond, because even your own echo ran
off with your shadow just last week,
and you're patting tissue to your face, crying
leave me alone!
but there's no one here
and all those ratty voices tearing apart your eardrums,
peeling off your kneecaps,
they're in your head.

there's this way things slip into the past,
quicker than it feels like;
I miss old brown jeeps and something
to do all the time. these same walls,
breathing but just barely,
sleeping, waiting. you seem
forever ago but showers at one am seem
fresher than when they actually happened;
I don't know which way it is to that restaurant
anymore, and I watch people change all around me
it's this irritating feeling of feeling like I've been there,
and wanting to escape,
or wanting to live,
and I swore I heard my brakes squeal tonight right
when I passed over the same railroad tracks like always,
flickering lights and I feel there is something significant here,
though it is probably my overactive imagination
and no one to ponder with.
do you know how last week I laid in those purple flowers on my lawn
and listened to the bees buzz around my head
like I was in the center of the universe
or a highway, everything streaming past on both sides
something extraordinary but
most likely just a star in with about a billion others.
just like the ones you have to put
binoculars on to see.
didn't you lose those in your attic?