i think i always knew that eventually,
i'd write about you.
i dont like to admit that i remember anyone who's gone
or was never here to begin with but
i've dragged five skeletons from my bed so far and
a wound half-clean is a wound infected.
i dont want to admit that your effect on me lasted longer than i'd hoped
despite my stubborn patience,
waiting for the stains to fade on their own.
i like to pretend that if you saw me as i am now
you might
see me the way i pretended you did
and the way i always felt on the verge of swallowing my tongue
would be mutual.
when i think about love i see you laughing, even though i know
that's not what i felt
but it's the closest i've ever been,
and i think that's good enough.
it's been eight months since we've spoken but i still imagine you reading these
alone and quiet,
or maybe in the midst of sound and laughter with my words
as a welcome cage.
but we're strangers now if we weren't already
and even when i saw you every day and
my poems were the only thing anyone
could respect,
i dont think you ever read them. i never asked you to,
it'd be too personal. and besides,
i knew this feeling wouldn't last.
i know this feeling won't last.
i can still see the way you looked at the ground when you smiled.
can you still see the way i tried too hard?
can you still see the way i felt like my bones were ground to dust
with the effort of not drawing your hands on every blank page
of my sketchbook.
this isn't my poem to write, and
yours isn't my name to say, i know.
i don't know if you were perfect or if i just
didn't know you at all.
don't think of me as weak. don't see me as sad.
just see me as a girl who mixed up all her emotions, a girl who
mistook loneliness for love,
and it stuck.
i don't think of you every day anymore,
but when it hits it hurts.
i don't know if i want to run home and rip apart every street to find you
and be honest for the first time
in my sorry life,
or hide in soggy peat until roots grow from my skin.
i know i don't love you but knowledge changes nothing except maybe
adding shame for feeling sick
anyway.
i'd like to see your sketchbook now.
i'd like to see what you draw now, i'd like to know
if you love your art now
the way you didnt when i knew you.
i'd like to know if you're loved where you are,
like you should be,
and if my name is any more
than an unused entry
in a dictionary youve never used.
ive been wearing clothes you'd probably like.
ive been drinking things you'd probably like.
i think i'm becoming more like you
every day
without wanting to, and i don't know if thats something you'd love
or hate.
this is the twentythird condolence letter i've written to you
but never sent,
but now at least its somewhere other than grafted to the roof of my mouth.
i don't know.
the only places i saw you were heat and concrete and dust
and sometimes
rain so heavy it pinned you to the earth, but here
the soil is so rich i feel like i could burst into leaves if i touch it and
like there are death caps beneath my skin,
growing in the damp air, i dont know.
i dont know .
sometimes this place is so pretty it makes me sick.
reminds me of how far-removed i am from anyone who makes me feel
real.
is there another version of me in your mind?
one more similar to the body i left behind,
more similar to the one i pretended to be for you,
do you think of me and panic? do you think of me to feel real?
my fingers have been hooked through your clavicle for the past two hours and i still
can't look your skeleton in the face
without feeling ashamed
for feeling.
you know a language i don't.
tell me the truth in a way i dont understand
so it's not another thing i have to know.
was my act convincing or were you looking at the ground
so the pity didn't show on your face?
was the reason you stopped watching me draw because you were afraid
one day
you'd see yourself on the page?
it hasn't happened yet.
i hope it never does, but sometimes
i can't help picturing you laughing,
looking down like my eyes are too bright
to look directly at.
sometimes i can't help picturing us in the heat back home,
sitting in the grass and
neither of us is crying, but i think
the stains you left on my skin are probably
art enough.
i have polished your bones bright white.
i have stuffed the eye sockets with paper so i can look you in the face.
shame fractures my sternum just from
the line of your jaw,
but the roof of my mouth is clear, and my sketchbook is still someplace where
i havent burned your image.
maybe tonight you won't be in the background of all my dreams. maybe tonight
i'll dream of saying goodbye.