I LIKE TO SAY YOUR NAME

I like to say
your name

when you're
not here

turn you
into sound

conjure you out of
thin air

so that you appear
before me

dressed in sound
only

memory sketching in
the rest of you

as if sound
was just an outline

and love
colours you in

adding the voice last
so I can hear you say.

"Hello you..!"
and there you are

as present
as present

can be.

I like to say
your name

when you're
not there.

words moved me, and
God
i wanted my fingers to blister and my
bones to ache
but my mind withers and my heart breaks
i swallowed ink and still i couldn’t
make the words flow like they used to as if
almost as if
they refuse to

someone told me i fall for kind people because i can't stop letting everyone walk all over me, and at least the kind ones will try not to leave bruises. and i laughed like it was a joke and i was the punchline, but i found another bruise in the mirror last night.

i fell for another kind person, but the problem is that kind people lie. and i never know how to distinguish the black and white from the grey. i'll never know if you like me because you treat everyone like stardust and glass.

but i actually am stardust and glass. i am precious and fragile and everywhere and i need to be held. i want it to be by you. but people that weren't as kind already broke me and now if you touch me the way i want you to you'll cut yourself. and blood doesn't wash out of a doormat.

so i don't initiate conversation. i hope you can't see my broken heart on my sleeve because it has your initials written on it in ink. i haven't decided how close i'll let you look. but maybe one day i'll let you walk all over me and hope that i feel like home.

and still,
it is there.
an undeniable
and persistent
sort of ache.
the kind that sinks,
and festers,
and cries.
it is still there,
"the missing."

i wrote so much poetry for her
because she was always busy not loving me
and i had to fill the time loving her somehow

but see the problem is
now he and i are so busy loving each other
that i don't even know how to write him a poem
and valentine's day is tomorrow

i feel like i drank too much coffee.
just a side effect of my heart strings pulling
trying to find you, even though i was the one who dropped you off
at the airport.

i got home feeling cracked open
no coffee spilled out
just 'i miss you's and lint

you left a t-shirt for me. i wanted something to smell like you.
i fear i will never wash it again

I’ve always been a bad sleeper;
In fact
When I was a little girl
And I’d finally had enough
Of wrestling thoughts
and sticky sheets,
I’d tiptoe across quiet hallways
With sleepless eyes
To find solace in another couch or bed,
As if heartbreak
could be left behind
Like tear drops on pillows.

-LMJ.