it has been
five days
since we had that big fight,
since you told me you didn't
love me anymore it has been
five nights of me dialing your
number but not pressing call
listening to songs that i did not share
with you to send me to sleep
it has been
five days
since you told me that i was unrealistic,
a dreamer in the worst way possible,
all hung up and angry at what i cant change
and i have spent
four of those days chasing away my sobriety
once because my friends told me that
i needed you out of my head
once because i sat in the middle of the grass
and closed my eyes and took what was
handed to me because i told myself i
needed you out of my head
once because it was late and i didn't
want to keep dialing your number without
pressing call
once because i wanted to drown you in
the poetry but my hands still shook
too hard to make sense of the words i had
left it has been
five days
since you told me you didn't
love me anymore and i'm not checking up
on you, i'm not asking how you're doing no
matter how much i wonder and if you ever
asked i'm sure the words would come
spilling out of me no
matter how many days have passed
or how many times i reason with my chest
i am not sure
i am really ready to do this the rest of my life

im calling to tell you that this is the last time i will call
you until i call you again and repeat it like an automated voice message.
im calling to tell you that i hope i get your answering machine because
i know its that stupid preset recording and
i want to touch you but i dont think
i could stomach the sound of your voice.
im calling to tell you that i dont know what to do with my hands
and i keep picking up the phone to tell you i hate you but
it dissolves and drips down my throat as i wait for the beep instead and
im calling to tell you *sorry, in advance, about the poems.
i just wanted to stop calling.

the last time a boy told me he didnt love me anymore
it had been barreling towards me for miles.
falling in and out of holes of communication,
we dont talk anymore but i still love you,
you wont say goodnight but i still love you,
im not even sure you remember im alive but i still love you,
because i didn't know any better.
because i was never taught whats enough and whats too much
the line between compliance and forgiveness is a lack of strength
and im not sure which direction it points to.
the last time a boy told me he didnt love me anymore
it was seven in the morning, it was dreary bright like
all early summer mornings are. i kept repeating,
i know you dont want to hear this but i still love you,
i know its late but i still love you,
i dont know what im doing but i still love you,
because i never learned how to stop. i never
knew what i could give and what i could take back,
which parts of me were okay to lose and which parts
i would stay awake until seven in the morning wishing i still had
all to myself.
the last time i told a boy i didnt love him anymore it
was to shut myself up. to tell myself enough. to teach myself to stop.
a simple compliance without forgiveness, separating the pieces
of my body i wanted to stack in suitcases and send across the country
with the pieces of my body i wanted to hold in my hands and
apologize to.
the last time i told a boy i didnt love him anymore it rolled off of my lips like honey and it fell onto the floor in scraps, all shaky and rehearsed.
the last time a boy told me he didnt love me anymore he didnt even
have to say it. he leaned in close and he picked up all the pieces that
belonged to him and told me:
*you beautiful, terrible, stupid thing. you couldnt stop; even if you tried.

just let that girl be wild, let her
convince herself not to miss you, let
her stay headstrong and fearless,
standing in her own rain soaking wet,
let her dry herself off. let her run through
the woods all muddy and face-first to the
treetops. let her swing into rivers and scrape
her knees, let her break her wrist and cut her
hair, let her erase who she was when you touched
her last. just let that girl watch the deluge and
thunderstorms in the spring, let her wash away
who she was when you last said her name,
let her point to the sky and tell you *that came from
my chest, that came from my fingertips, that came
from everything you left, and it doesn't need you to
be real

i’m so sad that it doesn’t even feel like you anymore. it’s
vein deep and in the pit of my stomach, it’s
all around me and when i lie down it
clings to me like blankets in the summertime. and it
used to be you, you mouth, your hands, your words,
all wrapped up and ticking like a time bomb, but now it
is just me without you, my own mouth that feels like it’s
been scraped raw on the inside, my own hands that
never stop shaking when it rains or when it’s
too quiet or too dark, my own words that i haven’t
been able to collect back, all scattered on the floor
of your bedroom and underneath a mix of your clothes
and mine that neither of us have touched.
this used to be poetry about how it felt when you left me
but now it’s just poetry about how it felt when i
was not enough to make you stay.

and i am sorry, oh
god i am so sorry that
i cannot apologize for the
things that have made my love
hard. i cannot take blame for
the way other fingertips have burned
my skin, i cannot atone for the bite-marks
on my wrists, or the start and
finish lines, the races that have been run
down my thighs and to my ankles.
i cannot pardon the graveyard of past
love that vandalizes my body like an oil portrait,
i have always looked like a museum exhibit
for the art of leaving. i am carved out by
the stained glass of all of my goodbyes
and it has taken my love by the throat,
it has rubbed my mouth raw, it has made
gasps of air between the breaks of kisses
hurt my teeth. i am sorry that i cannot
excuse the people that have
made me flinch, made me distrust, made me
carry myself gentler when it rains. all i can do is
give you a paintbrush and tell you that
i will still be art when you are finished with me.

isnt it sweet?
how much the human heart is able to bare,
the lines between support and manipulations that
past-lovers have drawn for you,
isnt it sweet? how much you will
carry for the people who arent quite yet
past-lovers, how you will draw boundaries
and cross lines just to touch, just to feel, just to
create some sort of tangible memory for when you
sit with only their names left in your mouth, isnt the
line between sweet and naive based on experience?
isnt it naive? how far you will go to love people into
boxes, how you will let yourself fall apart and
you will watch them spit you out onto the floor and still
you have so much faith in every single rushed kiss and
almost-memory that one of these people you let touch you
with the lights off, one of these people you will drink
into your poetry will be more than just a past-lover?