And what do I serve with tea?

Of a cake layered with words - a slice
A croissant with stirring smilies
Quiche with quaint archaic spice -
Fresh from a poet's repository.

In the clink and chime of quills and ***
And spoons that stir the brew of tea
Dark or creamed, winter or spring
Here's to a cup of poetry.

and here i am again
at the intersection
of pedestrian language
& old wives tales
swallowing gum
like 7 year memories
opening umbrellas inside
cause i can't seem get away
from all of this rain
i ******* with my left hand
cause i was told
back in highschool that
"it feels like someone else is doing it"
it gets me wondering
about the difference between
losing you and finding out
that some one else found you
or my sleep
or lack thereof
its starting to tear me apart
i keep having this dream
where you are in
an unfamiliar body of water
trying to wash my poetry
off of your hands
or the one where
something happens in my chest
every time you sit
on someone else's bed
i'm tired of feeling like something you've misplaced
but don't have the heart
to look for anymore
tired of you saying my name
like you're trying to bury it
i'm tired of wondering
if you can tell the difference
between the absence
of my voice & silence
the other day
i almost started sobbing
at work when a woman
asked me about
our equipment
i was explaining how
things come apart
and almost mentioned your name
it made me think
of how you used to say
things like "what would you do
if i showed up on your doorstep
one day?" now, i haunt
the windows in my house
i don't leave for weeks at a time
i sit on the porch like the dog
you didn't shoot behind the shed
the one that refuses to die
until you come home again
i told somebody once, that
you didn't even know
what my voicemail sounded like
i wonder if they thought
it was because you
are so important that i never
let it ring that many times
before picking up
or if you dont know
what it sounds like
because you've never called
you can't be the ****** weapon
and the search party
i'm tired of all the seats
to the ferris wheel in my chest
being empty
tired of your voice
being the one i look for
in abandoned places
that one sound i beg
to bounce back
down vacant hallways
i just seem to stand there
in all of that quiet
like someone looking for a mistake
on an eviction notice
so i guess the hardest part
isn't letting go
it's forgetting
you ever had a grip
in the first place
and since you've been gone
i wonder if when
you pushed yourself away from me
you used your left hand
so it felt like someone else did it

start a conversation//
i care a lot and that shouldn't make you nervous//
i talk so much, god, just let me listen
//
and then slip your hand under my shirt and whisper some small talk
unbutton my pants while you talk about the weather
i'll tell you that i think rain smells nice when you lick up my stomach
and i'll run my hands down to your hips as i ask you what you ate for breakfast
"I had peanut butter toast," I'll say,
finding your zipper
\
despite how much i love our conversations now,
you can always talk a little more about yourself

My membrane is a flower and too many people have plucked my petals from the stem.
I ripped out all of the pages that had scripture in them, scripture that told stories of who I was back then, scripture I had written with a broken pen.

I kept your voice in a box that's in the attic, it's safe inside a headache, it still sounds nothing less than tragic.
Remember my hands and how they shook when you took everything away, when the demons weren't at bay,
when I screamed for them to stop but still, continually,
everyone's been taken away,
so when people stay please understand that I have to push them away like waves from the shore and ****, I know that's clichè but I'd rather die than let them live in my heart for only a few days.
They still try to talk and I reverberate about how it's unholy to say my name that way, it's unholy to keep me in the fade.
It's unholy to remember me by my eyes and not by my lies.
I have good alibis and it's nothing but true when I say that
I forgot what love means,
I believe it's an illusion that most people just dream, they told me I'm crazy but **** I think I've had more nightmares than dreams so I would know better than to keep my lonely stem stuck in bad weather.

They're over there seducing themselves now, they're seducing themselves with medication that leads to hours of a permutation of all the items in her chest, he leads her to a mutation of what he thinks is best.

I only weep between sheets.

They're far too confident in their self extraction and I just don't understand how that happens, how self absorption can lead to something so terrifying, placing yourself in a box so you can delegate yourself, you're too delicate, it's not good for your health.

That voice inside that box talks in third person now, it says you're not doing too well.

sometimes my eyes droop and my vision gets blurry,
my lungs lag and my flesh gets tingly,
sometimes i feel my heart beat in my throat
and every time i touch my skin it feels like it's peeling off
sometimes life feels like a dream
and i can't tell what is reality