On March 17th my doctor tells me that maybe I should spend Saint Patties Day with someone other than you and I guess he doesn’t realize that you are always here The next day the luck of the Irish isn’t on my side in spite of me being well half Irish You come over and we do get lucky in our own respect but thats as far as that goes with a satisfied smile and friendly nudge because the mattress felt like wires and the sheets like sandpaper with my pillow becoming a slate of stone inscribed with all the things you whispered to me under thinner, softer sheets, I slept on our memories. On the 31st my doctor tells me that every time I think of hurting myself I write something with a marker on the spot of skin I want to open So every time I think of you my skin is covered in stanzas and when I shower its similar to being flayed alive but the snake which cannot cast its skin has to die so I cast my skin every night On the 14th of April my doctor says to turn my pain into beauty so hes telling me to write poetry I vowed eight weeks prior to this day that you’d stop showing up in my stanzas but this poem has no structure so technically there’s no rules to be broken On the 28th of April I told him about Law Class how we learned about mens rea and actus reius I told the doctor how everything has cause and effect like how an insult can lead to a fight which can lead to ****** and comparatively how one wrong word lead to confusion which lead to heartache so you were guilty for ****** in your own right rooms never echo until they’ve emptied and I never echoed until you left me my doctor remarked as much a surly voice saying “see, son, she’s stolen your soul” it would justify all those sleepless nights where prayers didn’t keep me earthbound and I’m just nodding my head because maybe he’s right maybe heaven is locked in chains but maybe hell is a lifetime with you but the only difference between the two are the locks and i keep losing my ******* keys i am the epitome of dead art which is why my doctor cancelled our next session; he ran out of brushes. so i was left standing in my bedroom like someone looking for a mistake on an eviction notice confused and staring at all the things that lead up to that same moment i had been torn from my foundations and then you came to mind you whom did the tearing but stayed innocent all the same you made me wonder how can you be both the lumberjack and the tree? its ******* confusing. and she doesn’t get it but i dont expect her to even though when its cloudy it just means god is lonely without her too as neither of us could stand to watch another sunset with her absent believe me when i say it is more than possible to love someone so much it hurts them and that while love is this void somewhere in the same plain as space and time it is not one that you want to fall into because dragging yourself out of it becomes a chore. i use a lot of analogies and i think thats how poetry works something to mediate and make home to the things that i guess bother you but she doesn’t bother me i bother me so thats why theres so many of these poems and this might be my longest but i just dont know where else to put my thoughts of her my chest can only contain so many stanzas before bursting my heart can only beat so fast it can only feel like a padlock for so long and i can only write stanzas on my skin for so long before i decide they look prettier in red