Pinned my stomach to the sky
Strung it up with tinsel and filament
Carved kisses into my sternum
With elastic lips.
I can feel you fading from me,
Morsels creep away,
Nothing holding them there
Any longer. I feel less sad.
It is somehow worse.
You had long since left.
Where did the memories
Of me go when they unstitched
From your head?
My heart beats
Like a stillborn child
Against its mother’s womb.
I am an uninflated punching bag
You have hair like chocolate fire
And a sun inside your face.
I stared as hard as I could,
Burned your chapped lips and brow
Into my retinas, you left
The ghosts of your arms
Around the back of my neck.
I, petrified,
Pretend you are a still-life
And paint you onto my eyelids,
With faded ink from
childhood picture books.
My stomach is a canopy
Of starless sky pouring half
Digested everything
Onto the robins in my chest.
I see you and smile,
But maybe you missed it?
I am going to a movie
With a girl who wants to kiss me.
I am gathered up inside
All of her arms.
She cries to her friend
In the backstage bathroom.
I do not know how
To make the words happen.
She finds me beside her
And her mouth is on fire.
I wish my hands were holding
The soft of her cheeks.
She says:
I thought we were going to be together.
I know I have a heart,
Because it is trying to leave me.