each day
i fall in love
with someone new--
but it seems
i'm only falling
for different versions
of you.

take me back to the days when the night sky was our only blanket; when it felt like planets colliding every time we kissed. i want to feel the way i did when you told the ocean how much it looked like me: deep and mysterious and always changing, always moving. wild enough to strengthen a storm, calm enough to sing you to sleep. you said you always wanted to drown in my abyss. nowadays, all i can think about is whether the shoreline remembers the imprint of our bodies sprawled upon it. i wonder if it misses our warmth the way i miss yours. sometimes i think about you with her: how it must feel like sunlight streaming through your veins every time you touch. i just hope, even sometimes, you still miss the rain.

lately it's been a mix of cold hellos and trying to drown out the unnerving voices inside my head telling me it's the perfect day to ******* and die. mostly, it's the latter. my teacher taught me that every 10 years our skeletal system regenerates itself and we, in the literal sense, become new people again. it's been eleven since you left and i still can't get the scent of you off my skin. how long does it take for a person to forget someone who made them feel like the neon lights that led to home? the answer is twenty bottles of ***** and a stranger's body to kiss, maybe even to hold afterwards. breakup ***, makeup ***, **** me til i pass out ***, it doesn't even feel the same without you ***, just come back i miss you so much i don't know who this person is please come back ***. my hands are weak and my body is shaking as if the tremors that quaked california five days ago were suddenly reincarnating as the sobs in my head. twenty bottles, eleven years, i'm still counting, still counting, still counting, still counting. i don't know what i'm waiting for.

another name added
to the list,
another life taken
by hands that
forget to look
before they forget
to stop.

"he was a monster"
you say.
"he was a ****"
you say,
as if you've
known him
for years and years
instead of seconds,
as if you've spent
more moments with him
than the time between
you aiming the blow
and his heart stopping.

everyone knows
you can take away a life
with a gun and your hands
but no one talks about
how you've already
killed a human being
when you treat them
less than human.