Ribs close
breathe
heave
and between the spaces lie pieces of others,
memories you cling on to and never wish to let float away for fear that you will never find them with another
that these memories will be the last you have of this nature with this person who knows your ribs,
can feel their fragility and light weight,
who sees the cracks that others have caused and wants nothing more than to crawl in between your heart and make a home, safe, where you know you can always go
but over time they become restless and struggle to break out of the cage,
they have willingly pushed themselves in the cage but now,
oh now, suddenly,
they want out
and they push past your lungs and puncture them
and bruise your heart on the way out until they
lift out of you, squeeze out, breathe someone else’s air
and for a long time you are crumpled on the floor,
a mass of bones and muscle that don’t connect,
that are no longer one but are just a heap of sadness and guilt and pity
and people walk by your bones and kick them and trample them and get dirt on your muscles and spit on your organs and laugh at your disconnected, dismembered body because
they have picked up their bones and muscle or maybe,
if they were really lucky,
they never had to
they could stay together and breathe in each other’s air and have another person live beneath their skin and inhabit their thoughts and be the main feature of their dreams and the hero of their nightmares
but you are not them
you are
bones and muscle and ***** and
discarded, scattered thoughts on the floor who gasps for air and begs for structure and yearns for fusion of her being together,
wants nothing more than to return to being one, to become a solid again
because why should one person push their way out
and walk on two feet
and kiss girls
and wear banana hammocks
and dye their hair red and blonde and brown
and then somehow, so slowly and so unexpectedly and so amicably and so generously
slice back into your skin until it almost smells like him again
until it oozes with his promises
and his words
and his laughter
and his voice
and its almost as if even when apart,
in separate beds, on different sheets,
you are together
and you feel his skin on yours and you can feel yourself
slowly
but then all at once
melting into him
fading back into his breath
fading into his hands
you place every word into his palms with the promise to hold them like eggshells,
“don’t break them”
and he sets his thoughts into your scrambled mind,
words he’d never utter out loud any other time except now, with you
and
does he miss you like you’ve missed him?
he says he’s lonely but he doesn’t realize you’ve never had anyone between your sheets
or
in your bathroom
or
in your kitchen
but you have inhabited those spaces in his
it might be a different place now,
a new air and smell
but he has probably had her there,
not you,
her,
and you think all of the time of what it is –
full of garbage and clothes and his guitar and exactly $100 worth of groceries
and you want to inhabit that space so badly it consumes you
you want to rub your smell all over so no matter where he is, he will think of you
and you want to lie in his bed with no clothes on and just make him stare at you,
watch you
and you want to write notes and place them in unexpected places
like in his couch
and
underneath his sink
or in his leather jacket
notes that say:
“you inhabit me”
and
“I dreamt of you last night”
and
“I love you my first love I love you I love you I love you”
repeated
and he will find them when you are not there,
maybe not in the near future,
maybe months from now he will see the repetition
and it will rattle his brain
and he will wonder why he ever pushed,
prodded,
and pulled his way out of you
and into the arms of another