they're saying "all you do is drink and cry", "I think you're bad for everyone" and you're not saying anything and I'm saying I love you,
I ******* love you
And maybe I needed something to bring me back to reality maybe these bathtubs are always a little too deep for me but I fit so perfectly in small spaces because I learned when I was 14 that i was never gonna grow into a butterfly
but my aunt still calls me hers and I'd still flutter my eyelashes on yours while the earth turned to ash because I like things ending so softly
and you are a ******* miracle if I've ever seen one I want to sleep with you so badly, on a trampoline in the summer and I want to watch you do bad things and smile so sweetly at you and you'll know that I don't give a **** what you do as long as you're still loving me while you're doing it because baby we've got this one life and I've been loving you as long as I have known what love is and I know it's in the way you whisper and I know it's in the way you say you're my world and if the world stopped turning tomorrow we'd be the only things still moving with excitement you make me so nervous and calm and nervous and calm and deep breath you make me nervous I bet you'll make me nervous when we're older and I'm making you pancakes and I feel your eyes on me and I burn my fingers but you always kiss them better baby
you're an alleyway and the kitten that sleeps there
you're the rain on the windowpane and the water breaking the levee
I'm drowning in everything I have ever said to you so if I say one last thing one last thing,
while you're not saying anything,
I love you,
I ******* love you

This is what I remember:
the rasp of your callouses against my hips,
and the way your eyelashes would settle
like snowflakes on my cheekbones
if you brought your face close enough.
This is what I remember:
the whir of the air conditioner
struggling against the afternoon heat.
Too short shorts.
Vinyl diner seats sticking to my thighs,
pulling uncomfortably at the skin.
Blueberry cobbler and coffee left too long in the ***.
I don't know if it was me
or you
or me with you-
the way I would bruise pretty and quick
beneath your fingertips,
like a summer peach just shy of overripe.
This is what I remember:
filling myself with you and dime-book poetry,
both worn by time and the carelessness of others.
My wet hair on your pillowcase.
Your eyes.
Your eyes.
Your eyes;
irreverent and devoted.
There was religion in you-
divine words written in the spaces between your ribs.
You took whiskey like holy communion.
And me too.
Your bedroom faced the East.
Mornings were molasses and sugarcane and dragging feet.
This is what I remember:
ruined shoes and over-stretched T-shirts.  
The smell of lake water.
Mud between my toes.
Changing leaves floating down around me.
Cold doesn't come here like other places.
Snow gathers on trees and in hair and melts easy.
This is what I remember:
warming my hands in your coat pockets,
then with cups of tea-
Earl Grey brewed so strong it made my head ache.
I am more used to night terrors than I ever was to you.
This is what I remember:
feeling.
The flu in September,
then again in December.
You felt more like a fever dream than anything else-
blurry;
fantastical;
difficult to recall.
You left me sixteen voice mails;
sixteen unheard messages;
sixteen times I pressed nine to delete.
This is what I remember:
me,
stronger.

The end of the start of something
erupts,
off the cuff;
no whims,
just ordered fall,
to the floor.

September is the beginning of something, and August is the end
in April we learn to love, February we pretend
March is the slow muddy month, May is exuberant joy
January revives the world, December worlds destroy
June is the month of freedom, July the month of age
November freezes you locked in time, October turns the page.

I've never felt quite so clean as when I woke up at dawn with bugs and sweat all over me after not showering for three days and I took a bath in a waterfall. I've never felt quite so clean as when the dust filled my eyes as I spun the loves of my life in circles. I've never felt quite so clean as when I kicked my shoes off and walked through the mud. I've never felt quite so clean as when I brushed my teeth in a room full of mold, body hair, and strange fluids. I've never felt quite so clean as when the smell of mildew seemed permanently embedded in my nostrils. I've never felt quite so clean as when I chose to sit in the ice cold and I wasn't sure I could do it but my friends, my friends, the truest friends I've ever had, knew my favorite song and they knew I needed help so they sang it I smiled and opened my eyes to a halo of light and darkness and love and isolation. I've never felt quite so clean as when my throat was raw from shouting and my skin was covered in charcoal and ash and the sweat dripped down my back as I was surrounded by pumping fists and bodies and spit from screams and I knew I was a leader then, I knew I belonged then. I've never felt quite so clean as when I stared up at the Milky Way, completely naked in the middle of the forest on a dirt road, walking next to a girl whose soul I dirtied and she looked at me and I knew I was forgiven and she sang to me a song that she shouldn't have. I've never felt quite so clean as when two of the dirtiest people that have ever existed, in two completely different ways, pulled together in the only light that shone through the cool new darkness of that night, while the whole of our worlds watched and we danced, we danced and they all laughed because they could see, and it wasn't what or who we were supposed to be, but in that moment it was the most clean that I have ever felt.

things start to make sense as soon as you start feeling like background music instead of the main character in your own life and you'll start staring down at your shoes a lot and watching your phone die without making the effort to charge it again.
you'll feel lonely but never intend on making the effort to speak to anyone and you'll start looking for love in drunk encounters and every corner you can find it but it's not really love it's fake smiles and cold showers afterwards. you'll start to listen to songs that sound like all the apologies you want to tell them and watch sunrises that look like forgiveness.
you start spending a lot of time in busy coffee shops but at empty tables and in bed but never asleep.
and you'll start to realize that they haven't missed you in weeks and your hands started to shake more after they stopped holding them.
you'll begin closing yourself off again and silently apologizing to the next person that tries to love you.
you'll start drinking whenever you're around friends because if you don't they'll ask you why you're so quiet and silence is so much worse than slurred speech filling every gap and unfitting laughs every two minutes. then you realize you're just as needy as you were when you were three and someone had to rub your back to get you to fall asleep and all they had to do was tell you they love you for everything to make sense.