If people were like peaches
the scent of their beauty would slap your face and astound you before you catch sight of them.
The constantly blushing skin breaks when bitten to reveal the sweetness cloaked within.
Some flesh is left around the heart that has been hardened by too many days abandoned in the sun.
The body is consumed ravenously by the eyes and mouth, the most beautiful part of the fruit.
But then the heart appears, the absolute entity of the fruit.
The heart has never been a competitor of beauty for its delicious casing.
And so it is disposed.
Without a backward glance.

The other day I woke up to the smell of your absence clinging to my skin. I took 8 showers that day and I am still not quite sure if it's possible to feel a phantom limb where there wasn't one in the first place.

2. The way that squirrels cross the street makes a lot of sense all of a sudden. I'm sure no one told you that you have a way of making their skin crawl in the most desperate way. I still can't eat on your side of the bed without choking on the residue your dreams left.

3. I read the obituaries like I used to read the creases your smile left, they're not meant for me.

4. Stars manage to keep their deaths a secret for years I wish I were as committed to forgiveness as they were. I stuck my hands in scalding water today and left them there until they begged for redemption, it sounded a lot like your name.

5. It took me two years to find out your middle name, that is not a metaphor. I used to think that the slower I said it the sweeter it would taste. I stick my fingers down my throat hoping to find the words you left there I'm so sorry for being too weak to say them back then I'm so sorry they couldn't make you stay. I drew highway maps on the palms of my hands that led me right back into my own arms, how is that for irony.

6. Television.

7. Lips that don't bruise when they touch my own, I want a love like a car crash. I want painful, and desperate, and no good for me, I want to not want this.

8. I've blown out so many candles I'm suprised I haven't put all the stars out yet. If the universe were capitalist shooting stars would be marketing to my demographic. I would be the poster child for wishes that will never come true.  

9. Novels that end exactly as you hoped they would

10. Nearly 160,000 people died in the 1945 bombing of Hiroshima, Japan. 69% of the city was left in ruin. The radiation caused by the explosion was said to effect those living in Hiroshima for the next 30 years. From what I know, hospital walls are lined with cynicism and pain and I can't think of anything worse than oblivion than near oblivion.

There your body hung
And all you left was a note
And all it said was *I'm Fine.

I now see why people call it
"falling in love",
because you don't just trip,
you can't stand up after
and dust the dirt and blood off of your knees
like nothing ever happened
if the one you are falling for you
doesn't catch you
you can't patch it up with band-aids
and hydrogen peroxide
it's not a little trip
it's an enormous, mountain high fall
and if you don't land just right
you wind up with a broken heart
instead of broken bones

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
Like a raisin in the sun?

Or fester like a sore--
And then run?

Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

my dog lies on the concrete patio
pink belly up
the fresh alabama sun cooking the air
draped solid over us like a wet blanket.

he is not part of my reality
he cares not for tardiness
or three-day-leg-stubble
or cleaning the lint trap.

i ache to be a part of his
pink belly up
only stirring to watch the children
play across the street.

As quickly as the ocean's waves turn themselves in
And as nimble as the ballerina making her final spin

As timely as the spring flowers come to life
And as melancholy as tonight

As agile as the lion's prey
And as doomed as the words I could never say

I love you, I love you
With as much blood as my heart can take
With as much breath as my lungs can contain
and let go.
Infinite.

I love you, I love you
With as much width as these tiny hands can hold,
With as much as steps these feet can muster
Limitless.

I love you, I love you
With as much time as this universe has.
*Boundless.

You were my oxygen and I was your carbon dioxide.