shock. denial.* it didn't feel real. somewhere in my head, you were still a very much real part of me and even though i knew we had "broken up", my heart did not know it, my body did not know it, my fingertips still searched for you just as much as my eyes did. i lived in a numbness, denying the permanence of the situation and even though i knew we weren't getting back together, i knew nothing at all. we had to end up together. we always ended up together. and there were days where i'd reject advances from other boys telling them i still had a boyfriend. there were days something great would happen and i would run to the phone to tell you. there were days my soul was crushed under the weight of the world and i would run to tell you. my phone lit up and i always saw your name despite the fact that you seized to call. every voice sounded like yours. every face mirrored yours. for weeks, i went through life believing nothing had changed; even though, objectively, nothing was the same.

pain. guilt. do you recognize the panic of waking up in the middle of the night with no air in your lungs and your body covered in beads of sweat? do you recognize the pain in your chest when you realize he isn't lying next to you and that you've made a big big mistake? you play back all the times it was your fault and somehow it seems like everytime was your fault and you're on your knees begging God please bring him back to me but it's too late? do you know what it's like to be willing to sell your mind body and soul just for one more night with him alone? you're considering a variety of drugs because this is too much and the pain in your head behind your eyes makes you feel like you'll die? your body is raw and your throat feels like someone has grated it? your limbs fall to their sides and there is nothing left besides pain. chaos. guilt. the deep guilt of never being enough, perhaps if i'd done this differently, perhaps if i'd done that differently, perhaps...

anger. bargaining. i hate him i hate him i hate him i hate everyone i hate myself i hate you and this and i just want to get out of here. i hate. i am so full of ******* hate i want to break...myself and others, there is this rage i cannot get out it still stuck in my body and i want to shout i am stuck in this hell and i'm falling can't you see? i'll rip him into pieces, how could he leave me? and God, God, how could you put me through this? no human can handle this alone but ****, it doesn't get more alone than this. wasn't i good enough? am i not good enough? was it my fault for never being enough or was it his for never wanting me enough? he never loved me enough. he's a monster. he's a narcissist. a womanizer. a cheater. a liar. a fraud. (i'd take back all those words if he just came back to me). (what can i do to make you come back to me?)

depression. reflection. loneliness. i can't get out of bed.
i know he's never coming back. i know we weren't meant to be. but i can't go on. i can't just...forget. i can't get out of bed.

reconstruction. working through. i'm waking up and cleaning my room. the world doesn't have the same kind of light and my eyes will never be as bright, but that's okay. i'm waking up and realizing that maybe the best part of me has been taken away, but there's always a new day and all i have to do is just...one step at a time. you know? one step at a time and sure, he'll never be mine but people come and people go and he has a part of me that he will never know, but i cannot hold on to hurt, i cannot hold on to pain and i would be in vain if i told myself that there was more to this, but maybe this is the end. my fingers will bleed from the journal entries. my tissue box is empty and wet. my friends have heard endlessly about what you mean(t) to me and sometimes, i still wish i was dead. but the sun still shines and i see that you are no longer mine. i love you, still, but one step at a time and perhaps one day, in the distant future, i will be fine.

acceptance. hope. he is gone. he is going to walk down the alter with someone else one day. he will hold her and kiss her and her children will have his name. he will carry her to bed and she will wake him up with breakfast in bed. he is hers. she is his. she will be his bride. his wife. his widow. i am his widow- of a relationship that barely lasted a few years- i am his widow, too. but just as new flowers grew in that patch of dirt so long ago, i will grow too. one day i will find someone who will hold my hand and take me to new lands and one day i will find happiness too. not today, not tomorrow, but one day. and being across the world from the one i once knew, i know someday, he'll stop thinking of me too.

*and in between there stages of grief will come those days when i can't leave my bed or talk or walk or move my little finger there will be days when i crawl into a hole and know that there is no getting out. there is always another day but sometimes it won't feel that way. emotional outbursts and pain feel like they're here to stay. but that's okay. one day, it won't feel that way. one day, it'll start to fade away and maybe the memory of him will always be at the tip of your tongue- but soon, you will learn, the world is full of new flavors for which one day, you will yearn.

//

The definition of thot [that ** over there], via Urban Dictionary

A woman who pretends to be the type of valuable female commodity who rightfully earns male commitment—until the man discovers that she’s just a cheap imitation of a “good girl” who is good for nothing, and definitely not for relationships or respect.

If women are products, then thots are cheap goods. More than that, they’re knockoffs: low-quality merchandise that attempts to masquerade as luxury items.

They generally dress in cheap clothing, try to act like they're better than they really are, or think they're not ****** but high class when they're nothing close to classy. They demand respect, money, gifts, dates but do nothing to deserve any of it because they have no self-respect, no manners, low self esteem, little education and on top of all that they are thots because they have no self worth.

//

he called me a thot.
the same blood-boy nightmare who bragged about his ******* and double cup. too cheap to buy actavis generics, so he drank himself into a stupor on walgreens brand dye-free cough syrup. he acted black, said words white boys shouldn't have near their mouths. his friends were ableist at the best, and misogynist at worst.

he called other girls thots too.
but i was different. stick-and-poke told trans king who told american spirit who told blood-boy what i confided in a friend. a story that ends and begins with my tears, tears from gagging, tears from telling my mother about the worst three minutes of my life and how my knees and heart hurt afterwards.

i embodied thot.
left my family for friends, joked about the pain until it hurt even more. i found myself crying in bathroom stalls, looking down at my body in the bathtub as i learned to breathe water. the girls said i was thick, i didn't know if they meant it in a good way. the boys said worse. i wore camouflage pants, comme de garçons tops, air force ones. i jumped on trends like a wild cat stalking prey. but i could never catch anything worthwhile with my soft, clawed paws.

he smiled like he was better than me.
after blood-boy stunned summers and winters alike, burned spring and fall, and for what? to call me a thot? i knew what i was to him. but he didn’t define me anymore.

he called me a thot.
and this time i fought back with my eyes, didn’t just sit there and feel words welling up inside.
because even thots are queens.
because i used to be deciduous, but now i’m evergreen.


//

You think you are the sun divine
I look at you and you multiply
I’m hungry but I can’t eat
Give me those eyes will you

My best friend, I was so afraid
Lay beside you, your body like a warm sandy beach
My body like washed up **** trying to get free

I was looking for salvation in the rock pools
Little snails and ***** would cling and pick at me
Til I finally gave in
You turned me evergreen

How long til the moon pulls you away
Leaves me to rest again, dehydrates me into a skeleton serene
How long til your silky arms stretch out again
And tickle me into an object of a lust, desires obscene

I feel you close
Like echoes in a tunnel seeming to whisper in your ear
But you’ve a long way yet to grow
And know just what this strange **** craves

It isn’t simple as giving orders, or showering me with delight
The heart of the matter lies in the murky deep,
The root causes the illness I wear from head to feet

Dissolve me in heavy salt and weightless oil
Purify me on mountaneous rock
Shake me in the willows endless, indifferent sorrow
Throw me away to make sure I’m for keeps

And maybe then after years of struggle
Summers burnt and winters melted,
I will still play my vengeful game and give you eyes that say
“I’m better, you will never win.”

i want to make
a movie out of your
skin, the way you
move like ivy vines,

a movie-ode
to your ode-begging
face.

if i could,
i'd enter us
into a film festival
we could be a sundance
winner, a student
film phenomenon.

i bet you it would
go something
like this,
enter a blank screen,
fade into a shot of you skin,
pan out to show your face, or
body.

all skin.
all skin.

you are beautiful for
a split second,
until my voice cracks the
silence
i tell you that we could be
no one, and nothing.
and you ask me.

for what?
so we make the movie anyways.

woke the woman at 7:00am Sabbath morning to save my life for overnight,  my body had ripped ribbed crack’d apart,
no spider web sized stains but cracks of crater size on both legs heading up northwards, gut and muscle revealing, spreading,
renting apart my chest and head and forecasting that
my twin two’s, eyes ears arms and nostrils,
destined half to the east and half to the west,
leaving the leftovers for the basement temple altar furnace burning
for the divorce division so rapid, death’s relief nearby

begging her to hold me despite my body
unwashed and face three day unshaven,
my body stink-stanking stench decaying,
so parched my chords, my eyes my beseechers,
for a stammering pus yellowed whisper barely could I issue

if she held me tight perhaps
the spreadsheet cataloguing my cracks divisible
would cease expanding, halting my perishment inevitable

summoned surgeons three but were so excited to see my
own red sea splitting and my ultimatum of egyptian drowning fast approaching, spellbound and helpless, all they did
was take cell phone videos to show on the doctor **** channel for $12.99

and she said,

*holding you now too late, the man flesh-eating disease
can be defeated if you know the cause;
all night I hear you pace and tread the boundaries of our
tiny shelter, needing the resting that comes when you note the hour, the sign of writ and done, for all I hear is you
struggle-seeking to release the words disordered,
hurricane hail haunting the caverns of you,
depositories of misrouted, mis-sorted sounds and the thunderous cracking now is their sound of their desperation
at your failure to form them, all they seek is the wholeness of formation and are force fleeing your leaking containership
through the cracks of their desperation

I will pack your body in ice, lay upon it all day, melting the water
into every orifice new and old, hydraulic hydrating then sealing
the apertures and lead you to your own promised land,
to thy Jerusalem capitol, where you may sing new songs,
teaching the Kohanim and the Levites new prayers

promise you the sleep of exhaustion with the sounds of
Canon in D to soothe, and when the night-frights
have passed, will feed you with writing utensils,
to teach that inspiration comes even by daylight, even to you

your best dreams of dying will be your best writing schemes,
when you awake, the sky cracks of inspiration come unfiltered lean,
and for heaven’s sake, for our sake, for your words sake,
then, chest will freely open and fully formed, thy poems will emerge
content and complete

and when you hear them sing:

“And I find it kind of funny
I find it kind of sad
The dreams in which I'm dying are the best I've ever had”^

you will knowingly, be laughing, unafraid