i have the nasty habit of
holding onto things and never letting go.
even when the bruises and the gashes up
and down my arms tell me so.

i am so much stronger inside of my head than out.
but the fact that you could never love me the
way i needed you to love me
****** me up more than you will ever know.

i cried so long, so hard, for so many days
that noah didn’t even have time to build a big enough ark.

you told me to break my back for you, and i did.
you watched me build it back up into a bridge
so you could walk, sprint, jump across it.
and i was just happy your skin was so close to mine

my concrete spine absorbed the angry heat
of your late night terrors and hurricane mood swings.
but all my desires were abstract concepts,
things you could not meet.

i began to crumble beneath you and begged,
”let me hold your hand and i will let you
pull the rope that’s wrapped itself so comfortably
around my neck. please. leave me hanging for the last time”

i have not let anyone break my heart like that again.
no one has gotten close enough to
take a tour inside the coffin of my heart,
to catch the scent of a love
that has yet to finish decaying.

look for me in the obituaries.
cut me out and tack me next to
the newspaper clippings of the people
that you sent missing all because of
your indifference to intimacy.

and maybe i am pathetic in the way that orpheus was
when he tried to raise eurydice from the dead.
because sometimes things are best
when we leave them alone to rest.

because sometimes when we don’t let go,
we find ourselves in hell again.
alone again.
with nothing to call our own.
again.