When I think about it,
I feel your skin on my fingertips.

In every line of my fingerprints I feel your skin sinking in
the little bumps, the hair on your arms and roughness of your back.

The coolness of your shoulders
and warmth of your sides.

Hot and cold
I can feel your skin
As if it were just yesterday.
It’s been exactly 100 days.

I hear the vibrations
Of my name in your voice
Of my nickname in your mouth.

It’s almost too palpable to accept
It’s not real anymore.

They say it takes 30 days to break a habit
You’re no longer a habit
But I can’t help but feel the stain of you on my skin.

I wish I stole something of yours
So you HAD to come back

So I could show you that it’s not me
That’s it’s the timing and the distance

This empty feeling of unknown
And wondering what is worth holding on to
Or when this knot in my throat will one morning be gone

I wish I took something of material
Because it doesn’t mean a thing to you
But for me it means everything

One more time to hear your accent
And play that hard to get routine I have down pack by now
To compare languages, and thoughts, and sayings
That we both know and don’t know
To inspire each other to change our ways of thinking
And to challenge each other
That we do have this connection
And we do have a reason to
Fall harder and deeper
Instead of remain on the surface
And be shallow
like material things

You’re a drop of permanence
Left as a stain

I knew it was coming
I held on by a thread
Waiting for time to cut you loose

I want to promise myself
That this won’t last

I want to promise you
That it can still be us

Somewhere in a distant place
That it will let us be

I hope your eyes sting
And your throat is sand paper
When you think of what you did
To me


But of course you won't
Because you win
And I lose
You win her
*And I lose you.

I go out to dinner with a near stranger
we sit on the same side of the booth and
I think about how you're the only one who
knows how much I hate that

I drink a drink with ***** and lime and
***** and it almost makes me feel like
I know who I am when I'm with someone else

I don't think of you often but last night I did
I remembered how your arms are the
only place where I am not self-conscious

I lie next to him on my balcony and
there are a lot of stars above us but
I'm the only one who notices

he is thinking about what I look like naked and
I'm counting how many hours of sleep
I will get if he leaves before 2

there is not an absence of feeling,
just a different kind than I'm used to
he touches my hand and I smile in
a way that doesn't feel forced

I spend a day with a near stranger and realize
there is so much he does not know about me,
so much he doesn't care to

like how I got my nose pierced at 14 or
the amount of time I spend in the mirror each morning
picking myself into something I can carry only semi-confidently

he only learns I can't ride a bike when he asks if I want to
he has no idea that my blonde is shielding a deep brown or
when I got the freckle above my lip or
the inch long scar underneath my chin

he doesn't care and that's okay
when he leaves we say I miss you but
in a different way than I'm used to

it is not a pain swelling to be morphined
nor is it a pulling from the gut but instead
it is the ever temporary desire to fill the excess lonely

we say I miss you and still mean it but
it is not the missing that a body feels for
a phantom limb

I am with him now and probably will be again but
moving on doesn't mean I don't miss you
it only means I'm trying not to

just because I'm all right doesn't mean
I don't wonder how you are
I can still be happy with the existence of a quiet ache

but yes I do
miss you,
I will until the day I can sleep without having to count sheep
I will miss you even if there are no stars in the sky to remind me

I don't think of you but last night I did
the moon was too bright and
I was the only one
who noticed

It’s too early in the day for me to feel this helpless
It’s too late for me to say something to change us


The most crushing part
Of you leaving
Is you taking everything I had left
Of us
Of me.

I’m spinning
My nose is running
I can’t feel my throat
And I don’t even care what I could look like

I just want to know you’re here
You can’t even be here.
Now you’re even further than before.

And I’m sitting here wondering what the difference
Between then and now is
Because you actually left long ago
But hearing it
Out loud
Rips me to pieces.

The absolute worst part,
not knowing whether I should expect you to come back

I am angry for the way your eyes touched mine, how
They looked at me and without thinking, made contact,
You
Opened your mouth and the word beautiful
Fell out

I don't know if it was the 2 am restlessness or
the alcohol speaking but
What you said burned a pit in my stomach
I planned on filling it with your smile but
you stopped sharing it with me

I wanted to pile the void high with the thought of how your
Hand pushed hair behind my ear and
Your arms reaching out like you needed me

You told me,
I was beautiful
Whether or not it was an accident does not matter when
I can still feel how your breath felt brushing my cheek as you spoke and
How I blushed, laughing, turning my head to break the connection
I shook it in response saying,

"No, I am not"

Because beautiful things don't confess to their own knowledge of being

You said yes
I said no,

Because beauty is a privilege I have never been allotted

You said yes, you are
I said okay

I don’t know why you had to tangle truth into a lie
If I were truly beautiful to you, you would say hello and still mean it
I'd like to think that if I really were, you would want nothing else but to hold me at all hours of the day, to
Kiss the face you held in your palms and just watch the up and down of my eyelashes but
You don't and I understand, it's okay

It has been a month or two since you spilled poison into my open heart and
for the first time I am remembering this encounter,
It is too sweet for your now bitter
I ask myself why I still think of you and
I know it is due to the way you spoke to me, how
You touched me too gently for too long
Your fingerprints left holes in my memory foam skin, I let you get too close.

This is simply sadness that
is too tired to morph into anger
I am only angry in how you made roses out of words
to plant them in my garden, unfit to grow
I could never keep much else alive besides myself and
everything dies out eventually
I should have guessed that we would too.