I woke up with sweaty palms this morning.
They were enveloped in yours,
Oven warm and stiff fingered,
Your drool was on my pillowcase.

I wanted to kiss your closed eyelids this morning.
Instead, I snuck my fingers out through yours,
Laid your hand down soft on the beat blue couch,
In your dream you were smiling,
I didn’t want you to realize I wasn’t.

Staring back at my reflection in cold coffee,
Standing on a back porch and
Thinking about your open lips,
Your limbs spread like vines over my own,
April 11, 2017
This is the last month we will share a twin mattress.

Some morning in the future,
It will be someone else’s sweaty palms.
I hope she never wipes them,
And that when she washes her pillowcase,
She smiles at the stains of drool.

I hope she wakes you with laughter,
I hope she kisses you on your open lips,
I hope she makes you happy out of your dreams,
This coffee tastes like goodbyes.

I know there is a claw through the tip of my tongue,
I can taste the red hot
Orange rust
Bicycle wheels
Pooling in the cavern of my gums,
I think the cat must have gotten it (He’s
Been chasing it for a while now, I
See splinters in his paws, I
Admire his effort)
And it is far too hard to speak.

If I could speak, I’d tell you I love you.

It would fall from my lips like flower petals
Stripped of their thorny stems
And land in your pink palms,
Pressed to your lips
It would melt down your throat
Butter soft and bright (You
Told me yellow was your favorite color, I
See it when I hear your name, you
Egg-Yolk-Sunshine Sweet of mine)
And it would taste like champagne.

If I could speak, I’d tell you you’re beautiful.

The words would slip out like teardrops
And burst into halls of mirrors
Blue eyes
Exotic oceans
Without the warp of reflection,
No depth has ever seemed so warm (I
Am reminded of a statue from a book, you
Tell me you hate religious metaphor but, you
Are the Christ of the Abyss)
And I would strip my scuba gear to feel you.

If I could speak, I’d tell you I need you.

Like a thousand drums the words would tumble
Unimaginable clamoring
Cacophony defined
A hurricane of broken brass to your feet,
But for some reason
It would sound like a symphony (You
Showed me music I thought I’d hate, You
Told me what was beautiful about it, I
Found your excitement the most beautiful part)
And the critics would cry at it’s delicacy.

If I could speak, I’d tell you not to leave me.

The words would slide between us
Like the heavy top of a glass table
Blurred bodies
Shaking with a fear
That tastes like every kiss they’ve ever shared,
And there would be no claw through my tongue (You
Don’t want to hear me say it, I
Always hate to cause you pain but, we
Should have never had to say goodbye)
And the cat would run away with his tail between his legs.

She was always scared of moths when she was younger.
It wasn't their weak fluttering wings,
Or their lack of color,
Or the way they swarmed the porch light
Like pirates to it's gold glow.
It was the way that
When you crushed them,
There was no blood,
No sign of pain.
Only the thin film of dust sitting heavy on your palm,
Speaking in a dull whisper
Of the life you took,
And she was scared by that.
Because she never understood how easily a living thing could turn to nothing.
Until that day.
Until that boy,
Who took her between his palms,
Turning her to dust
And sweeping her under the rug.
Something,
And then nothing.
She was always drawn to light.
That's how she found the boy because
To her he seemed warm,
To her he seemed trustworthy,
To her he seemed like a friend.
There was no white van,
No stranger danger.
He didn't lure her in with lies of a lost dog,
Like her parents promised would happen
If she dared leave the front porch step.
Her parents,
They always thought that she'd become a butterfly,
But she was always too colorless,
Too careless,
Too trusting in a light that she never knew was artificial
Until she saw it leave his eyes,
Black
And staring down at her,
Ready to turn her to nothing.
She was too weak to fly away.
He made sure she knew that,
Just like he made sure she was properly wiped away,
No gray mark and no reminder,
No evidence of what had happened because her silence was ensured.
Is still ensured.
But I can see it in her,
Her desire to step out from the rug,
Into the light,
To spread her wings like the butterfly,
The woman,
Her parents would have wanted her to be.
She is not a statistic and
She will not let herself be another tally mark on a page
Or the dust on his palms,
She will not let herself become nothing.
Sometimes,
Things are drawn to light because the same thing is burning deep inside of them,
Nothing,
And then something again.

I don’t much know what she looks like.
I couldn’t tell you the color of her hair
Or the shape of her eyes
And if you put me in a crowd next to her I could spend years searching for her face
And never realize she was standing right next to me.
Because I don’t know who she was,
And her name is blank in my memory but
I know she had one because
What else would my father call her on those late nights my mom spent calling him,
Only for the 30 second condolences left by the voicemail recording,
No.
I don’t much know what she looks like,
But that doesn’t stop her from walking into my memory,
My mother’s memory,
All wide smiles and dark shadows and long fingers interlocked in his,
Interlocked in my childhood because
The other woman,
She doesn’t need a face to haunt me.
All she needed was four months and suddenly
She was lurking behind my closet door,
Under my bed,
The places in my head where the dark things hid,
She made a home behind my eyelids,
So that not even nightlights could protect me.
The other woman was a parasite,
And I watched as she wormed her way between them
Spreading sickness Redbull ***** could never seem to cure,
******* the love and then the life and then leaving them for dead.
Sometimes I hope that when she closes her eyes and lays down her head,
She can still taste it on her tongue,
The bitterness she created when she decided to become
The other woman.
She had hands like hammers and I never knew a home could be as fragile as china,
But watched as shards of porcelain fell at my feet,
Glowing red and blue.
Watched as my mother tried to pick up the pieces,
Her shaking hands always carrying more than she could hold.
Watched as my father, the artist,
Handed the paintbrush to the other woman,
Her masterpiece,
Our destruction.
Watched as the other woman became the only woman
Who could rip my heart out of my chest and still remain unknown.
Recently I met a girl in love.
Even with his wife and kids.
And I recognized the other woman in her smile, her laugh,
In her eyes which glowed happy.
Happiness I could never achieve because
I was the kid whose father stopped tucking her in
When he found a better pair of lips to kiss goodnight.
The tightness in my chest wouldn’t go away because
She told me I should try it.
But broken homes aren’t ice cream flavors.
Empty beds aren’t party drugs.
You don’t take a ruined life for a test drive and
I know now that other women exist,
But I could never hold a match to a family just to start a fire in my heart.
I don’t much know what she looks like,
But I know she’ll never look like me.

My body is doing frightening things
And I am not scared enough yet to fix them.
When I was little my parents called it baby ****
Because it is little and gross and irritating,
Much like a baby,
I think.
But then, it was rare when I was little,
And far less rare now,
Seeing as for the past two weeks
I have baby barfed at least eight times a day,
Often on the sidewalk,
Often the food I had just finished eating.
It is gross.
I should probably call a doctor,
Because my mango smoothie tasted much better
When I wasn’t spitting it up
Into an empty coffee cup in my art history class.
But instead of calling a doctor I wretch and shrug,
As though that is helping.
WebMD isn’t much help when it comes to frequent baby ****,
Either.

When we met, we were happy.
Days passed in blue skies and Marb Lights,
And hollow nights filled with conversation
That could easily fill novels
Both fantasy, and reality.
I can't think of a moment when your fingers weren't interlocked with mine,
A contract of our closeness
More binding than black print.
You were in love with me once,
With every part down to my skeleton,
With my spine that shivered even though your eyes were forever warm
And the dark spaces that my father left in the caverns of my heart
Where your words sparked passionate fires.

Then something shifted.
And I watched with trembling hands
As your eyes turned grey and cold in an echo of the sky.
All at once the gaps started forming,
The unwelcome emptiness creeping into our love
Where cracks turned to chasms
And split first our conversations, then our hands.
You looked at me differently.
I noticed but never spoke,
Not even when I smelled her perfume hanging on your clothes
And I realized that everything you said
Was slowly choking my heart in ash.

Now you’re smoking Parliaments
They’re her brand and they seem to hang softer from your lips,
As you talk with a fluent sort of excitement
Never tainted by the silence
That haunted us like ghosts in the night.
We haven’t held hands in a while
But I still remember how they felt,
Almost as steady and warm as the pen I now grip for security
While you’re out somewhere gripping her.
And I’m happy for you,
Almost unbelieveably so
But I still find myself longing for the warm glow
You used to cast inside of me,
And wonder if you’ll ever come back
To stoke the fire.

You never could forgive me.
He had lips like sandpaper and your tongue was like a cherry but you never could forgive me for taking a taste.
We never made any promises.
Any vows of commitment remained unspoken and under the sheets, solemn and sweet and so easily broken, I never asked you to be devoted.
And you didn't ask me either, so I hoped you'd understand that when my hands landed in his hair, they never felt as tangled as they would in our conversations, in our words which bound my wrists like barbed wire but made me love the sting.
******* for thinking forgiveness makes you weak.
******* for fearing and for fighting something you can't understand.
You've always been too quick to raise a fist, but you don't have to break a heart to be a man.

Your eyes were brown.
Brown like the rings of coffee left on the kitchen counter,
Because we wanted to keep the marble clean
But couldn’t find the strength to wipe away the one mess we had control over.
Brown like the floors in the living room,
Worn by our feet that twirled in circles
When we still loved each other enough to dance our worries away.
Brown like the butts of so many cigars
That I found half tucked under the bushes in the front yard,
You said you quit,
You promised,
But I guess bad habits and heavy hearts go hand in hand,
And our hearts forgot how to live lightly
When the light started to fade from our eyes.
I had this idea before I met you,
Before I fell for you wholly and completely,
That blue eyes meant danger.
They always looked so cold and menacing,
Like icicles that could hurt you so easily
And not leave a trace.
But you had brown eyes,
And I can hardly breathe through the pain I get when I realize
The only trace of you exists in the rings of coffee left on the kitchen counter,
You know,
The ones we should have just wiped away.

When I was little
I used to trail my finger through the dust on the TV screen,
Creating pictures on the darkness,
For no reason other than boredom.
I wonder if that’s why you trailed your fingers along my cheekbone.
Boredom.
Is that why you held on so long?
Is that why you only really saw me when I couldn’t see you,
And why it was only in my weakest moments that you could tell me
You didn’t like what you saw?
Or did you hang on because you meant what you said,
Because every time you said those three words
They sounded more and more warped to me
Like
You were choking on the barbs of a fenced in promise.
I remember that day that we sat on the sea wall by my house.
I chain smoked cigarettes and you tried not to look,
It made you scared to see me killing myself.
That’s what you said.
But I don’t think that was it,
I think you couldn’t look because with every exhale,
You watched an ugly part of me become even more consuming,
And you didn’t want to hate me, not really.
Because you loved me so much once.
That time in the park,
The first time under the tree and next to the pond,
When I smeared nutella on your nose,
And we were both too scared to admit how beautiful we found each others lips,
Or
In the dark of that RV,
Seeing each other clearly for the first time,
You loved me then, right?
I wish I knew when it changed.
I wish I could hunt down the exact moment that our hearts stopped exploding,
Our eyes stopped widening,
Our love stopped breathing,
So that maybe just maybe I could stop the dull pounding in my chest
That starts to echo your name every time the lights go out.
I sleep next to another boy now.
He’s an artist too, and his hands trail over me with intrigue,
Without boredom or hesitation.
But they don't hold mine like yours did
Or make my spine shiver like I’m shedding the old me over and over again.
Only yours could do that.
But
Yours are gone.

Tonight,
Like the feathers on the water,
We’re floating until our strands get
The same way my body gets
Under the sheets.
Why do you always have dirt under your fingernails?
I want to chew them
Between my bones
And taste them on my swollen pink tongue.
I imagine your tongue on my cheek.
It makes me tingle
I think saliva is disgusting.

The water looks good from where we’re sitting
And you just cut your hair
And left it in the snow
Why were so many people there?
I watched my dog shed for years.
Batting eyelashes over layers and layers of body
Sounds silly to me
And hardly seems worth the effort
When there are so many productive things to do
Like curling up in bed
And letting sleep touch you like a lover would.

If I spit into this river
Would it sink or stay
Long enough to hear you scold me,
Yes I’m unladylike
And the river doesn’t need a shoeshine today.
New York is a scary place because there are so many people willing to make your shoes look pretty while simultaneously aching to watch you hate your reflection
If you’re one of the living.
God knows how the undead
Flock to the cities for a 9 to 5.
You cough and your skin erupts in goosebumps
Maybe the wind is better in bed than I am.