You were losing your ****
Over some stupid homework
("No, not homework, study!
You need to study too!")

You were unaware
That I had been sulking
About a body
Not matching a mind

I was paralysed in my bed
And you were helpfully telling me
All about my laziness
All about my life
Or there lack of

Well, I haven't been motivated
To do much lately
Other than ransack my room
For possible compressors

But in the end
You only wanted
To compress my mind
My "mindset"

You say that you love me
And you believe yourself
But do I?
Oh, of course I do

But I can not tell you
How good it feels
To hear them say my name
And mean it

It rolls off of his tongue
Skips out of her lips
And I feel at peace
I feel at home

Funny how I feel the least at home
With family
But what's a family without love?
Unconditional love?

If you love me
Let me go
I promise that I will return
As long as you let me blossom

You see
You fell in love with a caterpillar
Mistook it for a worm
I'm tired of being so pink
It's time to set me free

Cacoons can not be paused
They're created with a purpose
I'm afraid that this time
The changes are irreversible

Yes, I am going to change
But when that butterfly appears
Before your tear-filled eyes
You must realise
That it's still me

missing u is like rebuilding my childhood home after it has been destroyed by bombs instead of relief—my clothes that you sent back to me are still sitting on my doorstep, they probably still smell like you—please come back and get them and while you're here let yourself inside and come to the wine cellar and tell me you never stopped loving me

do you ever wonder
about the difference between
looking at something
and the hallucination created
when looking past it?
if you look at your hand
it's all you can see
but if you look past your hand
there are now two of them
sometimes it's hard for me
to remember which is real
it gets me thinking
about how my father
used to wake me up
in the morning by rubbing
his stubble across my face
i spent my 11th birthday
under the assumption
that he might come back
if i drank his aftershave
like maybe if i could turn blue
if i could be his favorite color
on our bathroom floor
he would forget why he left
the paramedics were all sobing
as they pumped memories
out of my stomach
i coughed up the day the post-it note with your new address on it
burned a hole in our refrigerator
coughed up the day
the divorce papers came
and my mother
took a baseball bat to the mailbox
i've been choking on the splinters
for 17 years
it's been 17 years
since the last dinner plate
exploded on our dining room wall
17 years since my mother
started accidentally setting your place at the dinner table
17 years since italian night
at the restaurant on the corner
where the juke box
spat tired music
and like so many other things
it stopped working when you left
i guess it's no coincidence
since the juke box went quiet
that the cds in my car
only skip on "i miss you"
i've been hemorrhaging memories
for so long
and now that i'm looking back
i can no longer tell
the mirage from the truth
sometimes i swear
you showed up to my graduation
and last time
i was at your apartment
i can't remember
if the imprints of my hands
are in clay hanging on your wall
or if they were left in the mud
the day god had the audacity
to let it rain
or maybe it's like the time
i saw someone crying on a bridge
now that i think about it
i can't remember if it was me

ground zero
i become aware of boundaries
i am a dog chasing cars
i sing your voicemail to sleep
there are no surgeon general warnings
to tell me that
the objects in the mirror
are more depressed than they appear
so how do i tell you
that there are parts of my life
that move slower
without you in them?
or that i look for you every day
in emails & unanswered calls
in the sunrises
i didn't choose to be awake to watch
that i sometimes still stare at doorways hoping you would walk through them
   *stage 1 you tell your new lover you've got a splinter and they pull the sound of your body falling asleep on mine out of your fingertip
   stage 2 your new lover says something at dinner that makes you choke so they call 911 & the paramedics do the hymleich not knowing you would ***** our promises all over the the restaurant
   stage 3 your new lover surprises you by cleaning the house & washes the shirt you kept next to the bed, not knowing it was the last thing you had that smelled like me
after
people always ask
what was loving her like?
after a really long silence
i just say
"it must be nice"
but i never say
it's watching paint dry
i never say
it's a window seat in hell
i don't tell anyone
about the dreams
where i am reading you
bedtime stories
each one is a different way you die
& every time i can never save you
dreams where what i think
are angels in my bedroom
are just homeless versions
of myself you never loved
i have dreams
where i pay someone to shoot me
just to see if you would cry
just to see
if you would cradle my body
i don't tell people
that loving you is like
playing piano
for someone who can't hear
that it's hitting repeat
on my favorite song
& forgetting the words
every time it starts over
that it's finding out
there's no milk after you already
poured yourself a bowl of cereal
it's getting locked in the dark
& being told to
look on the bright side
that loving you is like
being reminded of what it felt like
the first time
you accidentally let go
of a balloon as a child
it's drowning without the water
it's the feeling you get
when you start to dance
& the song ends

The only words you hear are hushed voices in separate rooms and calls are being declined, I know because my grandmothers hands shake and my grandfather stops speaking out loud, my eyes are never dry during these seasons but you never see or ask why—the poison sitting inside of the orange bottles he gave you blur your vision—you wonder why I hate taking medicine, maybe this is the reason, I refuse to let poison take the sanity out of my body like it has done to yours—there are no more 2x6 boards and nails holding you together, you are free, is this how you always wanted it to be like? Tell me why you become filled with anger when they don’t ask you how you’re doing—is there something that you have left unsaid? Tell me why you never stopped loving me even when I left you to drown, searching for the bottom of the bottle.