All my exes know about you
because in severing
myself from them
they only heard me
cry out
your name.

Everyone I have ever loved
and will ever come to love
will sit with me at a
table set for three
and always wonder
whose company
I was expecting.

When I run the next two
relationships to the ground
I will tell myself it didn’t work
because they were not the one
for me.

Still then, I will beg myself
to stop looking in all the
wrong places
just to prove
love is not meant for me.

How many times can you look for
sea turtles in swimming pools and
belonging in half-hearted promises?


How many homes will you build out of paper
yet spend the night gathering every
scream lodged in your throat
to build you the boat you will
escape with in the middle of the night?

How many times will you say
it didn’t work because we weren’t right
for one another?

Didn’t your mother tell you
if you want to find what you are missing
you must not search with your eyes shut?
Eyelids crinkled,
palms shielding you
from every crack of light
begging to be seen.

You will blame the world
before you find fault
with who you keep for company.

You cannot blame
the darkness—
he is the only one
you ever let in.