"Everyone feels their emotions in a different way"
my mother had tried to explain this to me on many occasions but I never got it
It wasn't until I started loving you that I realized it wasn't so much a way, but a place
I feel everything in my chest
Like when I first knew I liked you
We were doing our chemistry homework and the smell of your skin blocked me from thinking
You told me, "I'm glad we met."
I felt an overwhelming sensation of
joy, excitement, nerves , potential, trepidation, wonder, and hope
I felt it rise to the bottom of my throat and gurgled like a stream right after the rains in May
Finally it overflowed into the eloquent and graceful words of
"oh ya.....****"

Or the first time you told me you loved me
I swallowed the words down into my chest where they bounced off each rib like a xylophone
Until I spat out the melody of
"Holy Crap, I love you too."
Sometimes when I close my eyes I can still feel them ringing

Or the last time we talked
When you said you didn't think you could give me the time you thought I deserved,
When I knew you were saying you didn't love me anymore
When you grabbed my ego by her black hair and slit her throat
Her blood dripped down my trachea and into my lungs
And I stood there drowning in my own murdered self confidence
Until I spewed out the blood soaked works "*******" onto your memory

And every night since then
I can feel my ribs caving in on themselves, puncturing my insides
The same ribs that were once the waterbed for my stream of emotion
The same ribs that used to be the keys of a xylophone
And I lie there and can breathe out nothing but the absence of you