and i'm stuck shaking writing fevered poetry
with a broken pen between my fingers,
you're stuck dating a girl you don't love.
you equated your writing with some dark diary you
threw off the highway as if
there wasn't anyone supposed to read it-
as if i don't stay awake for long hours
coming up with questions
of what's in transit from your mind
to the paper,
we both know i wouldn't dare read it sober,
today you told me you loved me.
today i told you to stop

she swallows coffee like she swallows pills,
leaving behind
some strangled
bitter lipped thoughts swimming in her mind,

denouncing prior dispositions,
innocence is lost
through trial, tribulation
emotion and logic dance crossed-
legged through this party of depression

hold on, hold, on,
i can't be your cure but can't i lead you to it?
we talked about going to Michigan, New York, can't you remember?
sat on my porch with wine and your pack of reds,
you know more than anyone that i just can't shut up when i'm drunk,
i can't shut up,
i'm drunk,
you said you'd visit me in the city,
or anywhere, i need you to wake up.

he starts swallowing alcohol and pills,
to numb out, to forget, to sleep,
it's not her fault it's not her fault it's not her

right now there are eleven empty containers of alcohol in my bedroom,
but it's fine, i'm fine.
i've been telling myself for more than a year
that i wasn't going to write anymore sad ****** poems about you,
but here we are.
most days i'm sure i don't miss you,
but then i listen to the wrong song,
and before i know it -
i'm screaming along to band of horses in the dark,
stalking your twitter favorites,
and somehow,
i've managed to get snot on my forehead.
yeah, nostalgia is an *******
but not all the memories sting.
there was that one time we went to the movies
and i slipped on some ice and fell flat on my ***.
i just sat there while you took a picture.
but i'm glad we could laugh about it.
i'm glad we were comfortable.
in my head, we still are.
in my head, we're oversized-goodwill-sweater comfortable.
we aren't as comfortable in real life
but i'm glad we still laugh.
this is the part where i don't bring up the time you told me
my laughter could cure your sadness,
because i'm pretty sure i already put that in another poem,
and it makes me really ******* sad.
did i ever tell you i used to play guitar and piano?
i loved them, but i never tried very hard.
i wanted to be good without having to practice.
i wanted to be good without having to practice.
i wanna meet the girl you write about
so i can ask her how she manages not to love you back.
because i've tried everything & i am so tired.
i forgot this wasn't supposed to be a sad poem.
i'm not good at happy anyway,
i never have been.
but in your absence i've learned a lot about softness.
so if i ever find myself back in your passenger seat,
i won't correct you when you sing the wrong lyrics,
i won't ask why when you take the long way home.
i won't ask you why you don't have your seatbelt on,
i'll just say a silent prayer
and watch for signs that you might be about to swerve.
right now there are eleven empty containers of alcohol in my bedroom,
and i didn't find you at the bottom of a single one.

- m.f.

I want you to put me on your tongue and let me dissolve into you like the tiny white squares that turn those glossy hazel marbles into black holes and intense stares. I want you to kiss me and see negative colored rulers in the corner of your vision and I want you to have trouble making a decision between kissing me and observing me while I'm sitting on your chest and I want you to laugh like you did with your cherry colored lip curled over your childish grin over and over and over again and I want you to forget the conversation topic every time you close your eyes because the world inside of your mind is filled with blinking images that you can't quite explain aloud so you settle for little talks about Rosa Parks and Indian style kisses and how the ocean is the Earth's thing or the complexity of butterfly brains and whether or not they remember their caterpillar memories (they do). Describe to me the first time you saw your favorite color and what developed the affinity for it: yours, a glacier blue toy that resembled the ocean and mine, a lavender Easter dress that twirled when I spun. Tell me about your school crushes when you were four and what you got your clothespin moved to the sad face for and I'll write it all in ink on my knee caps because "God, we're such writers" and you'll check the clock in the gaps and search for tunes or lighters and I'll want time to slow down because the nights spent with you usually seem as though minutes are just a few seconds shy of sixty, which turns the little hand pretty quickly.
I want hours, weeks, decades, to analyze the freckles on your face or the pace at which you move your tongue and precisely how it tastes.
I want you to tell me that your brother would like me and about the mountains in Tennessee and maybe next time I'll try to stay awake, unless you want to listen to the way I breathe so fully when I dream.

When I close my eyes, I want to be able to see what you see.
I want you to keep burying the numb parts of you into the warm parts of me.

I woke up at a bar scene
fifteen years forward, you,
you stood the same way you stand
today and I recognized the back of your
figure the way I recognize the back
of my hand and
I wasn’t sure if the room around me froze
or I just simply froze myself, spilling
drinks like love and love like drinks
you wore the same shade of hypocrisy you
wore that day, that last day
I thought you were dead
I told myself you were dead
it went as imagined, you stumbled
over slurred words and wooden
stools and I remembered exactly why
our lines crossed quickly,
why fate didn’t keep us close for long
why I labeled you as ‘toxic’ and shelved
you in the back of my mind, for years
upon years upon years it’s been
almost 15

fleeting
the sound of my breath on the inner parts of your mind,
the back of your neck
the bruises of your ankles
the depth of your emotion
flat roofs, vacant hospitals, the wilting petals
of the mourner, Tuesday morning.
you awake,
screaming someone else's name
dismal ache, the gap for a heart
that you just had to fill

something snapped. i couldn't tell
whether it was my psyche or my conscious, my mouth or my
throat, my heart or my head, where is my home?
something between the degree of you and the oil i drop under my tongue to love myself
something between screaming at the ceiling for answers and waiting
for you like a child at a bus stop, the kitten in the window, the things we said we wouldn't let drop until
they did
they broke, it all went
to hell, sifting through old cut up love i found the
you's and the but's and the and's and the if's and
the birthday card you gave me on my fifteenth birthday,
the scribbled letters, the paraphernalia of the love i strangled to death
with my own bare hands and the
regretting of it a year later.