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.

I am trying to forget you

Really,
I am

I have been drugging my memory
Repeatedly
Every night
Drinking from bottles
Filled with liquid strong enough
For me to untaste you
I still do

It's funny how
Nobody mentions touch
As the most important sense
Associated with memory
I still feel you everywhere

Your hands on my skin
I am trying to erase them
Your fingerprints must be
Permanent ink
They are no longer visible
But I can still see them

I tie my tongue in knots
So that when I choke
On words
It will be on my own terms
I still cough up yours

I am trying to forget you
The way your voice sounded in my ear
Breathless and humming
I can still hear the ringing

You are the melody
I cannot get out of my head
The music that I cannot stop singing

I am trying to erase
The parts of you drawn onto me

I have gotten four tattoos
In the past three months
And two of them remind me of you

I am trying to forget you
But I purposely don't try
Hard enough

If I really wanted to
I would destroy the proclamations of passion
I once wrote to you

If I really wanted to
I would delete the pictures sent back and forth
Like ransom letters
Thinking my body could force you
To surrender your heart

I used to consider swearing
To be a holy thing
You swore on so much
That it is no longer sacred

Humans are incapable of certainty
I have bent my pinky fingers in half
Just to come close
To believing promises
But people
Always let you down
And disappointment
Is inevitable

Your salt lips
And iodine mouth
Left a burning sensation
From every cut that you made
In mine

I am trying to forget you
And the way you said my name
How you only said it
Quietly through phone calls
Directly into my ear
As if you didn’t want anyone else
To hear you say it aloud

I am trying to forget you
But it is not easy
The moving on
Is a crossword puzzle
I do not know the last answer to
There are fifteen spaces left
That I don't know how to
Fill
With anything other than you
There is so much empty
Left over

It is much easier to hold on
To memories
And remnants
Of what could’ve been
Than it is to accept
A definite ending

Our future
May be dead
But you are still
Very much alive in me

If I really tried
I bet I could forget you
But I don't think I want to.

I've been split open
Sewn up and made new
But even the finest surgeon
Couldn't get rid of you

"This
is a familiar scene for me;
You,
with your eyes on the road,
and myself,
watching the sights
as we pass them by.
There
are so many things
that I
want to ask of you,
so many questions
to be answered,
and yet,
there is a quiet
between us,
that which we also share;
the familiar sound
of silence;
the sound
of all the things
you didn’t say.”