I hate leaving home on days like these:
when I can hear your ghost in the kitchen
washing the same dish 6 times because
you won’t be able to sleep with ketchup
staining your second favorite dish in the
cupboard.

You told me that if you were a tree you
would want to be a maple, because in
Autumn they leave red finger prints on
sidewalks like ****** clues left behind
at the scene of the crime.

I hate leaving home on days like these:
when I see your ghost sitting on top of
the cushioned window seat so you can
count the rain droplets running across
the glass outside, one finger tracing a
path or water and one finger twisting
your hair again and again.

I told you that if I was a tree I would be
a willow, my arms reaching down to the
ground you stood on, roots reaching out
for the sidewalks you walked on, trunk
reaching up to the clouds you loved
more than you loved me.

I hate leaving home on days like these:
when I am a willow constantly weeping.

the reason you love science
is really just poetry
because you love the moment
someone stands up suddenly,
their fingers buzzing, their heart
a Morse code message of discovery
more than the discovery itself.
When you left me with a fish bowl
and an otherwise very empty apartment
I would try to recreate the way you
hung up my jacket when we came inside
with the cuffs rolled up and the collar tucked in
(I used to think I could see your energy
radiating from the blue material as you touched it)
but even when I thought I might have finally
got it right, my heart would ache because
yours wasn’t hanging up next to it.
I try to make new discoveries daily now
because I think that you might still be able to hear
my sharp intake of breath charged by new knowledge
like the energy of my discovery
will cross states and walls and cities
and all the girls you’ve loved since me
and all the way I ****** up in the first place
to find you and remind you
of all the poetry
you’ve missed out on by leaving.

Hold on to my hips
like I’m an anchor.
Forgive my aversion
to unhappy endings
and addiction to
chocolate and caramel.
Let me discover
every single freckle
hidden on your body,
so I can kiss them
each individually.
Draw trees on to
my kneecaps and
flowers on the
crooks of my elbows.
Discover something
with me, a valley
or a song or possibly
just each other.

To put it bluntly,
your poems smell like rose colored sheets
patterned with nightmares and sweet dreams and midnight ***
To put it bluntly,
your poems are the empty beer bottles on the sidewalk
and the broken glass splashing light like a disco ball
There's a collection of shells sitting on the floor of my bathroom
and your poems are the sand left inside each one
Your poems are the goosebumps that raise on
pale flesh in the dim movie theater light
Your poems are the only things I know about you
and I'm not sure if they are enough to make me love you
But they are enough to make me
lay awake last night and wonder
who you are under your rain cloud of words
that filled up my bed room and drowned me
Your poems wrapped my legs up like seaweed
Your poems tried to swallow me whole like the tide on a full moon
Your poems won't spit me out on shore
and I am bobbing in a storm in the middle of sea
coughing up the lines that made my breath catch up to my brain
To put it bluntly,
your poems might just be killing me,
and I am not complaining.