you are eighteen and you're in love
with a boy who hates his birthday.
you don't know it yet,
but the world gets so much bigger than the back of his car.
you think he needs you to be happy and so does he
but both of you are wrong.
it'll take you almost a year to stop crying.
and then you don't talk for another three
and when you finally do,
he thinks he still knows you,
but your heart is heavier than it was then.
and you **** him because you're lonely
but it isn't the same.
neither of you can fake love.
at least he still makes you laugh.
you'll pretend it's enough
because at least he's a body.
at least you're not by yourself.
at least you're alive
and you're good at *******.
because bodies are distractions
from the things we hide inside them.
you have him inside you
and he wants to gut you of your ugly, your sad.
he scrambles for an excuse not to stay the night
and you laugh.
you know what this is and how it goes
and you both love someone else.
you swear you won't **** him again
but you do anyway because you're still lonely
and you like the way his hands fit around your neck.
you **** him because it's good for your art
and you get bored of your own hands on your body
and you're fine with letting him feel useful.
and you think about when you were sixteen
and how *** was supposed to be special
and it makes you cry
because you're not who you wanted to be.
it makes you cry, because the world got so much bigger
after you left the backseat of his car.
the world is so big and you don't know
how it ended up on your shoulders.
you would have died for him.
you have been ready to die for every person you have ever loved.
you have dreams where he dies
and you can't save him.
you have dreams where people die
and you can't save them
and you're the one who tied your hands.
your mangled heart and all its bleeding.
nobody asked you to die.
what good is all the love in your chest
if you don't leave any for yourself?

- m.f.

My hands are pressed gently into his palms. His fingers are running over the gaps between my knuckles and are folding down and along each crease like a little boy bent over a desk in the back of the classroom concentrating on making a paper airplane out of yesterday’s homework. I half-expect someone to tap my shoulder and say, “Are you paying attention?” No, not really. I am focused on the way his lips are moving a fraction of a second out of time with the faint country song we hear playing from outside. I begin to sing too. Half way into the second verse, his eyes meet mine again. He takes my aircraft hands and leads me to the middle of the living room. The overhead fan gazes at us. I feel the paper airplanes inside of my chest swirl. We are swaying. My arms are draped over his tired shoulders and his are encircling my lower back. I see that his shoelace is untied. I am leaning my weight against his chest, balancing on my tiptoes. I do not tell him I can feel his heart beating. I look up at him again. He is already staring. I notice a subtle pink in his cheeks. I do not realize until now that my lips are only inches from his, the gap between them begging to be closed. So we close it. I fold into him like creased paper waiting to be flown. Someone opens the door. She says, “The song stopped playing. Are you even paying attention?” I speak up and say, “No, not really.”

There’s a strong sense of intoxication in every conversation I waste on lost translations,
and every word you speak floats in to the air without consolation for all the love it lacks,
and the lackluster thieves that stole your love from me began to latch onto dreams and all I tried to do was to believe that nothing was so broken.
No one was cut open and bleeding out the wounds we’d caused,
and I was just a piece of mindless emotion and you were devotion.
A simple notion to keep holding a loose grip on reality
and to keep trying to keep something with all finality
that it was lost in the normality and brutality of it all.
And I wrestled with my god to help me forgive those, for they know not what they do.
But I’m sorry I did when I kept lying to and hurting you.
It’s not about what we saw but what we knew, and we knew the end was coming soon
and tried to run from it but tripped on our tongues
and resisted the temptation to pray for compensation.
An empty sense of motivation to find a definite destination
of which windows weren’t shattered and the faucet didn’t leak.
But with every word you speak I hear a distant gunshot and my God did I bleed.
But after procrastinating the act of purification and without a clear manifestation we referred to suffer the damage of the storm.
And the roof caved in during a torrential downpour.
So this is how a forever withers, and how a love slips through shaky fingers.
And I still don’t know any sense of realness or a piece of sanity,
but I found amity within the stitches of our tragedy.
I hope that’s enough for now, or I guess until another window breaks.
Whichever comes first.