She told my dad he was “kind of an *******”
the first time we had dinner with him,
at this place called The Pear Room
but she was disappointed that there were not only
no pear decorations, but that there was not a single dish
with a pear included. She ordered a dry martini
with three olives on a skewer,
but she never took one sip. She gulped.

She came at me like an avalanche in jean mini skirt.
I tried to run ahead of her, but she picked up speed
and tossed me right into her path with scratch marks
on my back to prove it. You’d never know it
by the way she twirls her hair into a bun at the top of her head
just to take her make-up off, how she laughs
instead of getting ******, or how she sometimes
orders her dessert before her meal, but she’s just a girl
who puts on her toughness in the morning like a slip.
She folds

her dollar bills into fourths before she puts them in her wallet,
and she strings herself like paper chains
against the sun every day as she drives to a job she hates.
She listens to Miles Davis on her record player,
asks me to dance at half past eleven on nights I need to sleep,
but I get up anyway. I pour us both a glass of Coke
and try to capture the reflection she doesn’t see of herself,
mirror it in my eyes, just so she knows that she
is not just another item on the menu.

The ***** of my eyelids fall,
delicately dripping onto my cheekbones,
powdered, ripe with a pink flush,
matching the creamy pigment I smooth
between my lips before a cacophony
of laughter runs up my throat and out
my mouth. My lashes, black, have been curled
neatly in a spiral that follows my green irises,
my gaze landing on your hands—
but that’s not it.

Just know, I am more than a pretty face.
I am more than the picture you have in your head
of the clothes peeling off my body
like a cocoon—watch me morph—
in the dead of your blackness, calling sweetness
to the surface. I am more than this exaltation.
I am more than the late night phone calls
or the kisses on your cheek.
I am in the breath you lost when I smiled, and I

am in the scratches on your back, the fickle
end of the lock you latched. I am in the noise
that fuzzes in your head, the empty space
haunting you in your bed. I am more
than what you expected—
but that’s not it.

I am also the beat behind these words, the puddle
that gathers from the spill on the floor. I am the mind
that molds. I am the truth that finds. I am the beginning
of every bitter end. I am more than a pretty face.
I am the exhale at the end of the race. Here I am.
I am the kind of hurt that’s still sore, and one day
I am going to be so much more.

It doesn't matter what color you'd bleed if you'd cut yourself.
It doesn't matter what you did last Friday or what you've already got planned
for the weekend after that,
how much rage you're going to make with the best
of so called buddies,
or even how many times you came "this close" to almost dying.

But I fell for that **** because it was scary and because
it was everything I taught myself to never want in anything
that meant it could fill me
but I used you to feel full and not so empty and tempted
to engage myself in something that would worry my mother if she knew all the secrets.

It doesn't matter what you've done before and how good that makes you now
at what you tricked me into doing.
It doesn't matter how fast you talk or how many people
you can choose to falsely idolize because of a stereotype or a media buildup.

No one was ever crowned king because of self proclamation.
You have to earn a rule like that.

It doesn't matter, to you, who you hurt as long as you gain something when you get there.
And that was me, sadly, who you got in between some bad timing
and a little self loathing.
I just wanted to feel good and you let me do that in the most wrong,
disgusting, abusive way.
And it doesn't matter what people say to you in the morning,
how many high five's you get or how long it'll be remembered.

All that matters
is that when you're drunk at the creek on another "turnt up" night
of losing yourself in illusions your insecurities lead you to believe
you're thinking of me.
You're thinking of how good something so real like me could be
if you only gave up your blinded trust for one second so you could see
what you're turning into and what I guess I thought
you always could be.

We sweat out the holy stuff.
You used my ribs like one uses
the rough side of a matchbox
striking up your fingertips
to light the rest of my skin on fire.

I'm glad I was just another burnt tip
in your collection.
I'm glad it was an easy discard.

I took a mental photograph
of you in that moment--
Bare chest, pulling down your boxers,
holding my face like one molds a statue,
bite marks on my jaw line.

I smoldered in your sheets,
you kicked me out of bed.
This must be what Pompeii  looked like
after all the ashes cleared.

I'm glad I was just another pretty girl
you liked to watch go up in flames.

I'm glad you didn't ask me to stay.

I’ve been wrestling this since last fall,
peeling my socks off around 2a.m.
and crawling into my nightmares
like a child on her hands and knees.
I’ve tossed my hair in the towel,
examined the scratches on my back
or the bite mark on my shoulder,
juxtaposing them to my flaws,
prying myself open and watching
the little memories flood
from my arteries like insects.
I’ve ******

the energy from my cheeks and given it
to my bones so they may carry
the weight of last year into this year,
the heavy balance between leaving your room
and sitting myself against the frame,
legs to my chest, listening to the unheard voices
telling me to stop loving you.
I’ve cut

you out like bruises on a strawberry,
throwing the bad parts into the black hole
to be grinded and deposited as to be rightfully
grown into something new. But this time,

after we made love on your floor
and counted the stars that left my mouth
every time you touched me like that,

I let myself cling to the light.
I stuffed the empty parts with your remnants,
and latched onto the goodbye kiss.
I’ve been wrestling with you

our bodies so close

since the summer ended and we rejoined
the feelings we spared just to pretend
that we didn’t hear the kettle roar
when we were finished.

My apartment still smells like cigarettes from Saturday
when a couple girls with crop-top ambitions
drank themselves through flip cups and through guys’ eyes
who purposely landed on their belly-buttons.
I might have stood on the couch to sing that song,
but I’ve fallen for you all wrong. After another remix,
everyone left and we played footsies while leaning
in the doorway of my bathroom, the wood trim chipping
but your smile brightening in the yellow overhead light.
And I promised I wouldn’t find myself
come Monday morning sitting here with my knees knocking,
and knocking, and knocking themselves back into my brain
that keeps reminding my heart that we expired last season,
and that it’s just too **** late.
I promised myself I wouldn’t wipe my tears on my sweatshirt sleeves,
or run my toes on the tile, or breathe in another toxic pack
of what I essentially believe is you. You are the *** I pour myself into.
You are the chance I keep giving myself seconds of.

I know I shouldn’t have separated myself that quickly, or without notice,
but honestly I didn’t know how to attach myself to someone
unless it was delicate and barb-wired together. I’m sorry I ******* it up,
back then, before the mess, wherever you’d like to pinpoint
the blame on our timeline
but you are the only chance I keep giving myself seconds of.
So I’ll distance myself between my body and this frame,
cut out text-message screen shots and paste them to my frown
so maybe I can remember what it was like to smile
without ******* cigarette smoke between my teeth.

It was May, but we drove out to the shore
anyway in my big sweater and purple
cotton scarf wrapped around my neck,
holding it up to my chin as we waited
for the heat to start up in the car. My breath
looked like a cloud when I laughed, my lips
two inches from yours as I pulled
you by the strings of your black sweatshirt.
I grabbed two bags of sour patch kids, trying
to throw them sideways into your mouth
as you drove, a scattered trail of neon green
and yellow left on the foot mat under
the wheel, two our three
stuck between the crease in your seat.
I know it wasn't sunny, but I swear it tried
to peak through the overcast, or maybe the gray
sheen of it off the pavement is what made
your face shine. Your black hair looked so cool
on your pale skin, yelling at me to get
my ***** red sneakers off the dashboard. I tried
to write a little poem on your hand
with my fingers as it traced your bones
like a maze while you let it rest on the console.
We played that CD from that band I didn't know
you loved, and I promise I ******* up all the words,
but I just like to hear your try to sing over me.

I made you swear not to splash me
when we tried to let the ocean kiss
our toes, a salty welcome to the love affair
I had with the way you made me bite
my lip when I almost smiled too much
at the way your eyes moved when you talked
about one of your favorite things or about
how big the ocean was and how small
you were, even if you never said it just
like that. I could tell what you meant.
You did it anyway. The water was so cold
on my cheeks, my ribs clashing into one
another like a song my head hadn't had
the time to learn yet. You held them
in place while holding me. You kissed
the summer from my lips and asked
the sun to come out just for a moment
while I made tiny castles out of pink shells
and faded driftwood pieces leftover
from the winter. We ran out of iced tea
so we drank each other in, in layers,
on the sand with our jeans rolled
up to our ankles, letting the mask
of almost blue skies envelope us
in a Saturday afternoon spent
figuring out little things like old
memories or each other's favorite movies.

Two blondes.
One bouncing in the red cushion window seat,
bowl cut, light-up sneakers, making engine sounds
as his small hands hold the body of the airplane
flying it through the October air.
The other sitting on brown hardwood,
soft curls, pink sparkle dress, stumbling over words
as she reads aloud Goodnight Moon in the afternoon.

Grandma's in the kitchen,
smoking out the window over the sink,
telling them that daddy will be home in just a minute.

Daddy walks in, screen door flinging shut, with muddy work boots,
torn jeans, and black hands.
The boy directs his plane right into his daddy's arms
spit spurting from his noisemaker lips.
The little girl jumps into Daddy's other side, resting on his hip.
Daddy kisses her soft cheek before he sets them both down.
They grab their backpacks and strap their sneakers.
Daddy's thanking grandma who put her cigarette out as she heard him walk in.
She coughs and says not to mention it again.
She'll see him tomorrow.

Daddy buckles his kids in the back seat,
listening to the boy ramble on about his day,
the little girl trying to interrupt.
Daddy nods and smiles,
fixes the rearview mirror and drives through the yard
careful not to rip the grass up
as he turns on the main road.
They both fall asleep before he makes it home.

My mom wakes up in a sweat,
calls me on the phone when I'm asleep
telling me all about her marvelous dream
about Daddy and my kids.
Tells me this wouldn't be the first time
she's saw him and I make it to the end.
I tell her this wouldn't be the first time
I believed it either.

Sometimes I would go out to my grandma's
and bring her lunch.
She didn't like cooking for just one.
We'd eat hoagies from Vito's market,
bag of Lay's chips between the two of us,
and sweet tea she had in her fridge
using only the plastic cups
because we couldn't have glass around the pool.

She'd point to necklaces and cashmere sweaters
from the new JCrew catalog,
dog earring all the pages she loved
her tan hands steady on the corners
with several silver rings on her fingers,
big diamond on the left one.

I hated to leave her with only the sound
of the Pennsylvania state flag flapping
against the pole,
or her neighbor's lawn being mowed.
But she smiled something huge when I waved goodbye
from the sidewalk
slowly closing the catalog,
a sympathy wind chime scoring her steps,
walking back inside
to no one sitting in the arm chair
and the TV on mute.

Your tears on my shoulder sleeve, your footsteps
pacing in the kitchen where I know
you’re making a cheese sandwich underneath
the refrigerator light, and cussing to yourself
because you forgot to buy mayonnaise at the store.
Your makeup, your purse, the thousand receipts
in your glove compartment where I know
you stash a carton of Marlboro cigarettes
to indulge yourself in during afternoon traffic,
while blaring James Blunt from an old acrylic CD.
Your mornings, your coffee creamer, your head.
Please, come back to bed.

I’ve watched you balance jelly beans with boulders,
gorgeous dresses with your sweats, and your idea of love
with everything your mother has ever said. I know,
by the way you tense your arms around my rib cage
or how your toes curl against my shin, that your nightmares
are only apparitions of childlike separation. Your fears

clarify moments like this, my hand tucking hair behind your ear
while kisses trail your collarbone like a dotted line
you dare not sign. You see a reflection of damage in my eyes.
Your bags, your memory, the rain that gathers in speckles
on your windshield every day. I’ve tried to lighten
the black in your life, but things have scratched at your soul
and now it’s dead. Please, baby, come back to bed.

I knew it the moment you looked at her.
The tender slip in your jaw line
fall faint with a smile
showing teeth like secret treasures
in your worn leather chest.

Her hawaiian hello tasted sweet on your lips.
Hot pink tank top ribbed in rings
around her tiny waist,
flat, tan stomach peeking between
her top and dark short, short jeans.

She followed you to the parking lot
after you passed her on the curb.
Her tip toes visible underneath
the lift of a 2014 model truck between tires,
rise and fall,
leaning back into her heels when you set her down
shadows behind tinted windows.
I saw it all.

In my dreams, I pretend I made it up.
Cuddle next to an empty side
trace the moon's sideways outlines
on the sheets.
Breakeven.
I knew it the moment you looked at her.

He was cute. His baby face cheeks
were highlighted in the soft yellow glow
of the stage lights before the performance began.
He had on a blue sweater, almost too blue,
with khaki’s I’m sure his mom bought him.
But he smiled at me, constantly, before the lights dropped
while I was pretending to read my program.

Across the theater, he blushed, biting his lips
when he realized I caught him. He was cute.
I think I’ve said that already.
But he was no you.

And can you imagine how guilty, no
how stupid I felt in that moment?
Can you imagine how my heart
must have looked sitting between my heels
on the linoleum floor? Imagine all the pieces
trying to force themselves back together enough
just to smile back at this boy across the aisles.

I’m so done feeling like I’m cheating on someone
who isn’t even answering my calls. I’m done
begging myself to stop cuddling with that bear
you gave me last Valentine’s Day. Can you imagine
the actor I’ve become? Fixing myself up in eyeliner
and turtleneck sweaters that hug me a little too tight
just to seem like I still have it together. I’m just like
those dancers in Cabaret. I’m putting on a show,
smiling at the boy across the aisles, hoping you’re
in the audience, watching me shine.

If I painted a picture of you
I think I’d call it Daniel and his Favorite Cigarette
and I’d delay passing the sugar
because you couldn’t wait four more seconds
for your daughter to finish her story.
I would buy all of the newspapers in town
with the crummy headline Fauster & Brown
Up in Sales for 3rd Week Straight and burn them
all the way through to the sports section
just to watch your favorite team’s numbers
go up in flames. I would rewrite
all those Father’s Day cards, remove the empty seat
in the third row on the left from my poetry reading
that I had reserved, stop putting new batteries
in the remote when you complains. But of course

I won’t. I’ll just make a scene at Sunday brunch
after we finish saying prayers to my dead big brother
at his grave, that dash like a tattoo on my bones—
Yes, Dad, I could have worn a tie
but I like the fact that I still smell like yesterday
cause I know my brother will never know
the scent of tomorrow. I will only curse
between sips of coffee and I’ll stroke my sisters hair
so she knows at least someone has been listening
these past ten years.

You made me stop believing
in who I was.
You slapped my *** with your shower caddy--
blamed it on invisibility
with a smirk and a wink in my direction.
I saw your reflection
in the hall mirror from the corner of my eye.
Your body was full and half-clothed,
your imagination molding me
as I stood there innocent
trying to view myself
the way you saw me.

It was a dark shadow you cast.
I bathed in your deception.
I saw my own reflection--
in my bedroom mirror at midnight
with your hands on the nape of my neck
and your fingers cradling my skull,
flattening my spine into
what you would fit into your figure.
There was your lips on my ear and I heard
a backwards whisper of a promise you swore,
you swore was true.
It wasn't--
and didn't like who I saw.

He holds the corners of my smile with his thumbs
like the way he balances his self-worth on top of how much I believe
he can hold on the surface of his heart without caving.
And I know that maybe the inside of his dreams
have been filled with wallpaper reminders of a dad gone missing
or fixing cars on Saturday’s, but his hands
are callused just enough to know they’re real, and they cover
me with their warmth at night as he loves on my body,
folding in my ribs until I’m weak.

Sometimes I watch him while he sleeps, tucking
my whispers behind his ear and taking off the blanket
from his legs cause I know he’s too hot, but he always
makes sure the goosebumps on my body come from his touch
and not the way the winter breathes.

I like to think we met let letters do,
in a 2 a.m. sentence or a delusional poem
that seeps from the cracks in worried souls and fingers.  
Our outlines, the ***** of his side and the bumps of my hips
fit together like cursive and I could write him for a lifetime.

Sometimes it was as if she sipped chlorine
from little bottle caps with yellow nails,
tilting her skeletal neck back,
balancing it on a vertebrae that popped
through the top of her pastel blouse.
Really though, she ate media on sandwich bread;
believed anything in bold with twin quotations.
She was a hint of a woman, blue eyes. Translucent,
fair, a suggestion haunted by her own demons
that she dreampt about after I stayed up, waiting
for the sleeping pills to kick
in. After the baby came she obsessed
over her thickness, was confused and destroyed
as she called it by the miracle I laid in the crib
every night. Old photographs weren’t memories,
just reminders of how she used to look.
She would scream, explode with frustration,
when the baby wouldn’t stop crying, begged
Why doesn’t she like me? But it’s hard to hold
onto a ghost, sweetie. So she swore,
and she swore that tomorrow would be better,
she would get better. But I know
that once again I’ll make her a breakfast she’ll never eat,
rock the baby back to sleep,
and loop myself around another sunrise
just to feel warm again.

I heard them rummaging through your drawers,
the click of the stopper
pulling them all the way out
searching under shin guard socks and boxer briefs
for the warm companions
of the beer cans they saw you throw
from your dorm room window.

I heard you knocking on your neighbors door,
begging them to hide your bottle of ***
in exchange for something
you'd think of later.
A slurred IOU.
A "pretty, pretty please."
Dear god, how could this be me?
I heard you exhale through your smile
after I kissed you
on the other side of your closed door
stealing my heart
weeks before you got caught.
I heard my cotton t-shirt move against my skin
as you rubbed your hand up and down my back
smoothing out the knots
and pulling me closer.

I heard my phone ring after security left
your room. I watched your name glow
on my screen through sleepy eyes.

But you didn't hear me answer it,
and you didn't hear me ask you to stay,
and you didn't hear me ask you anything.
I didn't ask you for anything.
All you heard was what you wanted to hear.
I'm really done listening.

I would have loved to have kissed you through
your polo shirt, to have felt your leather chest
on the palms of my hand, get my tongue caught
in the feeling of yours. I bet you would have held
my face, one of those guys, who cradles cheekbones
like pottery. I imagined us, feet tangling in sheets
as we wrestle each other in a small bed
pinning arms against the headboard, pulling ribs
closer to the other so they can connect
in their respective grooves. I would have loved
to have played catch with your smile, circle
your eyes with my own, nibble your shoulder
as we collide. I would have loved to,

but I'm still being haunted by ghosts in good underwear
who gave me more than just a body
for a month or two. By boys who swore
that the time wasn't right now, but it was coming
as fast as it could. I've been sliced open
by flea market promise rings with crooked diamonds,
and I would have loved to have used
you to stitch me back together. But you
are just a boy with your parents wallet,
sweetness baked into tight khaki's
and some really cool vans. You are not
the remedy I attempt to find in Bacardi bottles
or a blank document or even cups of tea.
You are too good for this part of me.
I'm sorry for teasing you with my jeans
and the bit of skin I let peak between
my belt and the rest of my blouse.
Imagine what that would have felt like
on your belly while the November breeze
crept through your open window?
I would have loved to.

Don't tell me I have your attention when I don't.
Captivated you in a church dress with the hole in the stockings,
eating salted tomatoes between two slices of bread
feet touching mine under the table
on a Sunday after my Confirmation ceremony.

Don't tell me how naughty a catholic school girl can be
with your hand on my thigh and a thumb on my cheek.
Kissing me hard and heavy, leaving a bite on my lip with a grunt
smiling while you whip your hair back from your tan skin and brown eyes.

Don't tell me you love the way I look when you don't know me yet.
Cigarette drag me out
breathing smoke behind my ears as you lay your hand
out the window beside your bed,
while my mama's sleeping and doesn't know where I am
and my white blouse is on the chair
hanging next to my purity.

Don't tell me how unholy I've been when you don't know faith.
How it's not worth praying for something I don't have any more,
lost in my own disillusions that you created out of words you swear you left unsaid,
with a tear pressed against the part of me that felt like it was falling in love.

Don't tell me that it's all my fault.

Don't call me your lady
when all I ever wanted was for you
to settle down with me like a safety,
anchor your trust in my belly
made to keep my body warm, but your icy cold.

Don't rip or tear or strike out your own mistakes on my body.

Don't tell me how ****** up innocence is
when all I was before you came was a Mary Jane
shoe with some of the leather worn on the sole from walking
too far to find someone to caress my hair.

Don't leave me open and dry
when all this ever was, was an advantage you took too easily
on an infatuated girl who was too young
and didn't know the difference.

You were never meant for this
Grocery cart, bags of bones, pillow case
Dunking your head in the paper bags of letdown
Side street, gray walk, go’s and stops
Ticks and tocks
You were never meant for this
Fingerless gloves, holes in jeans, newspaper blankets
With words of people far more successful
Building money with their hands
Like a distorted counterfeit where it’s the priority
Above all that is breathing
You stare at their smudged pictures,
Their smiles full of cash, the green leaking between their teeth
Their suits all straight with hands out shaking
They stand around
The numbers increase
The excitement booms
That was supposed to be you
Who you once were
On Wall Street, drinking the coffee of accomplishment
Out of silver mugs with silver spoons
But you lost it all didn’t you?
The greed overtook you like a drug
Messing with your brain and judgment
Now look at you,
Vagabond, penny cup, ghost air
You were never meant for this,
You were supposed to be like those men in the paper
Those men on the streets
With their Bluetooth and briefcases
Stepping on cracks
You were never meant for this,
But you crashed
Got caught up in the money, the games, the race
Now look at you
Grocery cart, bag of bones, pillow case
Just jumping in defeat between the space
You were never meant for this.
Now look at you.

I fall in love with every backwards hat, the way a boy holds
a Natural Light, his scarred knuckles stretching over the aluminum,
an *** in a great pair of khaki’s, how he bobs his head to the perfect
pre-game song. I fall in love with every you’re so gorgeous, or body scan,
or even when the drunken façade has faded and we are left
hanging onto window curtains and thin sheets, talking
about our dads or how he broke his arm in the 6th grade.
The way he balances his eyes on my shoulder blades, stares
at my lips like he just can’t wait until I stop talking so we can kiss.
I fall for every nightly temptation, every Tuesday morning regret,
every hug around my waist. I fall for every circle drawn with a thumb
around my hip bones, over and over again, until my skin is numb
and my expectation collides with this temporary high. And if you could collect
all the lover’s I left on slips of paper, I bet their sparks would glow purple,
neon confetti in the night air, just like stars. Because they fell,
whether momentarily or not, in love with me somewhere between
the ******* and the kissing and the tongue gracing the corner of my mouth
when he’s trying to pick me up at the party, or how I let my hand sit
in the loop of my jeans, how I take no ******* moonslide line
for bald truth. I just use it to get to people like you, because the fraction
of time in which I live begs for the short-term. It thrives on the idea
that one night and one small shatter is better than a committed sever
of someone you just got too ******* close to. Because I can’t want
to fall for your pride, your integrity, the way you picture your kids
using your old baseball glove. My generation needs fire just to feel a burn.
I can’t want to love you honestly, with dinner date plates, with a door
held open just a little longer, without the liquor. I’m just doll
living in the freelance design of a good time. My bedroom is your heart,
and I wear the lace high up on my thighs, just waiting for someone to play with me.

You pulled long wings from my back to my ribs-
deep passion inscriptions and hieroglyphs
with your nails as I whispered unholy
prayers into your ears with your mouth closed.
I tripped into your superstition that started with a kiss
outside your door after midnight,
pressing my shoulder blades into the palm of your hands.
You said you didn't try any games.
I said I didn't like to play.

Be careful, supernova, you'll burn out.

I attacked you right from the start.
"Shut up, would ya!" you'd say with a smile,
laughing when I'd scream back at the television commercials
when they'd ask me stupid questions.
I drove you insane.
But when you'd fall asleep I'd trace your eyelids
like crop circles with my fingertips,
making a thin bridge over your nose
connecting pinpoints like constellations.
Sometimes I'd ask you to read the stories
that you wrote on my skin.
You'd pass the message along through your lips
gently against mine the way a shadow sits
on a figure.
I'd sigh when your hands skipped over
the space between my thighs.

Be careful, supernova, you'll burn out.

I took a chance on you.
You didn't bid on me.
I guess it's true that some things
burn too bright.

Sometimes when you’re sleeping, you smash
your nightmares into my pillow with your head,
which is why I think your hair sticks up sideways
when you roll over to me in our mornings
and kiss the back of my neck until the sound
of my own laughter wakes me up. I know you’re colorblind,
but you color me like a book, ignoring all the lines. I glow
in the contour your eyes make of me when you’re listening
to me frame the story I’m spitting at you before 2a.m.
You admire the shape it takes above my head, suspsendig
over the two of us like a mobile that rocks us, safely,
back to sleep. I love thinking about how you take your coffee,
how you put your sweatpants on in the morning, or the feel
of your lips nibbling at my palm as I trace your cheekbones
with my fingers like you’re a charcoal drawing
I never finish because I just don’t want
us to end. And I know that sometimes I like to skip some pages,
but come on, I just like to get to the good part. And I know
I’ve bottled up your sweetness for whatever reason
I had back at the time, and I know that I drive slow,
that I kiss you too long at the door, that I never
let you fall asleep before midnight, but I’ve always been your biggest fan.
I’ve always sort of loved you, even if it was in pieces.
I just got stuck. I just couldn’t find my way there again.
But I drew the curtain a tiny bit this morning so the sun
could highlight your sleepy face before I woke you,
and I covered your belly with the blanket so you wouldn’t be cold,
and I know our chemistry is a little old, but
you’re my favorite thing to hold,
or so I’ve been told.

You didn't hit me, but you might as well have
because silently crying
on the other side of your turned back,
holding my breath so the sobs
would kamikaze themselves into my ribs
hurts almost as much.
And maybe I should have red-flagged
the skipped goodnight kisses,
or even made you apologize
for leaving me alone in the library,
waiting at an empty table with two red apples
because I figured you skipped dinner
but by the time you got there,
I was just a core.

But I stayed in it, and I let you **** me
in the way I thought meant I love you
even though you never said it,
and in the way that meant
I'd be alone, again, waiting for you
to deliver yet another polished excuse
and a look that swears volumes, punches me,
guilts me into solidly believing
that it's my fault after all, because
space is just as important as answering your calls,
because independence outweighs how attached
I'd became to your lust and ten cent compliments.

Now, I've become rust in my hometown,
afraid to ask because I know the answer
and bitter, frozen and bitter,
because honestly I should have known.
I just should have known.

The amount of people that I’ve scoped
through my own lenses, mirrored with optimism
weighed against the reality of who people are
beneath their cotton t-shirts is immeasurable.
I want everyone in my picture frame,
and I’ll twist the moral ladder to get there,
because I’ve been taught, ever since I was a little girl
in ballet shoes with my hair coiled neatly at my neck,
that there is far more beneath the glitter. That the light
can be blinding and it takes more than a promising silhouette
to bring people back into the good. I’ve slept with molted men
who’ve slithered into my bed on a nice compliment
and an “original” idea, and I’ve kissed their sore parts
hoping that the sweetness would pour from the cracks
in my lips and be absorbed by their scales. I’ve taken
triple chances on people who said I’ll do better,
and that they’d be better if only I could blush their cheeks
with my own electricity. I’ve harvested the sliver of memories
from each relationship I’ve kindled and melted them
into a ***, letting people sip the potion for themselves
and find a special, solemn rebirth in the wake of my aftermath.
I don’t know how
to have a conversation without saying thank you, or really,
you’re being too kind, when really I’m the one who’s flicked kindness
from my fingers like leftover water. I’m the one
who’s branded her own version of band-aids, who's healed
those who I could fit in a tiny shoebox back to their own
self-proclaimed hugeness. I’ve beaten myself down to ***** clay,
and that’s why you

have found it so easy to mold me. It’s why I lay your socks out in the morning,
why I drive my mind back and forth in my sleep, why I’ve always been able to rock
your pretty little heart back to me. You captured the remaining ember
left drowning in the wax and made a model of who I used to be
before I let everyone else wear me down.

I stopped pulling you towards me two pieces ago,
when you sliced my vision and ****** out the nectar,
tied the rope around my neck and dropped your anchor.
I tangled the nightmare of you in the wire of my mattress,
and punished your memory with a solid glass of wine
in my closet at two in the afternoon after I had to see you
push in the lock with her laughter on the other side of the door.
I’ve ignored you from the crowd, designed your ****** in my salad bowl,
had to kiss you through chocolate box comforts and a movie.
So, forgive me, if I don’t wrap myself around your infatuation (again)
all because you’ve taken an insomnia interest in me— excuse me,
my body. I don’t want to sound whiny in the form of a line,
but working you through my words and glazing
the misshapen mold I have of you with a poem or two
is the only solace I’ve found in these months of looking down when you pass
and cursing myself in the shower when I think my roommates are asleep.
This felt like falling in love until you had to blacken me
with your own corrupt expectations, until you took me
like a vile little shot and burned me all the way down.

But here I am, freshly rinsed and freshly pried open
from the loneliness, ready to accept your sins like a rotten Eucharist.
No matter the distance or the self-promising or the wasted
advice written on this paper every single night—

I’ll let you skip to the ending. I promise to wear my boots
back to my room and carry my jacket like the heart
you always give back when you’re finished.

You eat a lot of things from tuber ware containers with a ***** fork
you haven't washed in weeks.
You pile mounds of ketchup on anything
literally everything you eat,
and you hold your utensils like a sandbox shovel
just stuffing the food in your mouth, filling your cheeks like a chipmunk,
yet somehow you still think you have the ability to talk.
You wash everything down with beer.
One kind of beer- nothing else.
I always ask for a sip and you just pull it away while pulling me in.
Your lips are warm and taste like venison, and the yellow light
of the kitchen makes your complexion look a little off
but your eyes are bluer than they've ever been.
You should see yourself stand there at the counter
trying to tell me some story I can't understand about what happened to you that day,
or that night, or maybe it was last week.
Your timeline's never been quite accurate, your memory skewed.
Sometimes I'll look at you in moments like this and mumble, "you're so ******* weird"
but truth is I love all the things you do.

It's bits like this that I miss when you're not there.
Like how you sleep with your elbows under the pillow, snoring so loud
I can't hear myself dreaming.
How you think just because you've memorized every movie ever
that means I have too,
and why it is I just laugh when you quote something I've never seen.
Especially, those times you look at me with this quizzical look
a great idea just sitting on your tongue, expecting something
when really it's just some silly thing you've thought about all day
just didn't know how to say.
I tell you constantly that I can't stand how you wait until the very last clean shirt
before you do the laundry,
how those loads and loads are a ***** to fold
but truth is I love how worn everything is.
I even love the way you sing in the shower, or in the car, or in after dark, or all the time.
I love the way you moan as the sunlight peaks through the window in the morning.
I love when you rustle up my hair after I just did it.
I love how you smear my make-up.
I love you all the time, when you're smart, a *******, rude.
And even though I'll say 100 times in a day that you drive me crazy.
I love all the things you do.

Disconnected by the root, wasting
our time between sheets instead
of between conversations You kept
yourself in backwards hats and vague
excuses to the questions I was asking.
I lit myself on fire, extinguished the flame
in the shower after we finished, cursing
at the droplets sliding down the curtain.
***** this! and ***** that after you ******* me
into the enjambment that was your free space—
your convenience. I fit only if you push, I matter
only if it’s after midnight and the world
outside your door and bed frame
doesn’t have to know. In the daylight,
I’m a ghost that you always see. I’m the ruby
spotted from the corner of your eyes, the shine
that hurts to look at, but no one can know.
Of course. No one can know the way your mouth
rests between sighs or how your eyes lock
into mine when your bruising the inside of my thighs.

I’m the extra beer in your back pocket.
I’m the ***** in the towel who’s promising
her better self that she won’t go again,
that she won’t allow herself to try to patch
the promise from too long ago. The relationship,
shattered early, that mended itself crooked,
that became a book thrown at the wall
and a sweet, dissipated call. I’m the secret solemnly kept
at night when you’re drunk and ugly and begging
for some beauty to curl up next to. I’m the last line
in the best country song, the whisper
you scream for when I’m gone.

I ran my hands down the crisp sides
of your baby blue pin-striped
Ralph Lauren button down.
The lines leading straight to your hip bones.
I wrapped my arms around your waist,
pressing my head against the chest pocket
as you smoothed my blonde hair
with your big hands
kissing the top of my head
slowly
as I breathed in your body wash
with eyes closed
saving this moment
in my kaleidoscope.

Sometimes I'll sit on the edge of your bed
and watch you fix your hair in the mirror
in just your cargo shorts.
Sometimes when you're sleeping,
I'll write stories on your chest and draw
little circles around your eyelids
or trace the curves your lips make.
Sometimes you'll wake up,
roll over, and kiss me silently
before you're back asleep again.
Sometimes I'll shout,
"Wake up!"
because you're so cute and I don't want
to be done playing yet.

I know you've seen my demons
follow me like a bad shadow,
but you've proved
that sometimes you need cracks
to let the light shine through
And guess what.
I really like you.

It’s like you’re a pair of headphones—
coming in two different ears, and I’m bouncing
between one beat and the words that fall from my mouth
like ransom. I swear to god, if you’d just let me fall into you
the wreckage would be small, you’d just have to cradle me
like you do all the other bits that land in your lap
during the so called “suffocation” of your busy schedule.
I get that I’m too big to fit onto a calendar.
I get that sometimes I wear green just because it’s your favorite color.
But picture us together, and not with my clothes in a puddle
on the tile floor while the shower runs. Not with your hand
playing itsy-bitsy spider on my legs as you let your tongue
linger on the dips in my neck. Picture us on the sidewalk
with a lucky penny between our shoes, and how beautiful
our reflections would look even in that tiny surface area. Then,
imagine me in the stands with your over-sized t-shirt
and you could pick me out among the crowd. How about
our hands? Just picture them tangling together, your thick knuckles
knocking against my mother’s old ring. Or even take those circles you draw
on my hipbones and practice them on my palms.
I promise you it’s a lot prettier.
I promise you I know the route, I’ve been around that elliptical
that is your I’m sorry laced with every interpretation that is
YOU JUST DON’T FIT. I know I don’t fit,
and that you think we’re just too misshapen, but do you ever remember,
in that tipsy mind of yours, how slender my body fits into yours
like we’re two half-moons just making a sliver? I just wish you thought of me,
if at all, a little bigger.

You fell in love with me I guess for who I was then
or so I'd like to think.
Because I breathed innocence and thought everything was holy enough
to be sacred and thought no black secrets
could be hidden under so many precious things.
You liked that I wasn't trying to grow up so fast,
that I was naive and simple.
It gave you clarity when you were dizzy
about who you were and who you wanted to be.
That's why you liked me.
Because I made you into the person you wanted to be.

But now I'm different.
I know that pretty things don't always sparkle and I understand
that just because you put guards up doesn't mean someone won't try to knock them down
and that doesn't mean you won't get hurt in the end.
I don't like Peter Pan even though we watched it 13 times because I've realized
how ****** the animation is and I don't appreciate
fairytales anymore.
I like to put my trust in other things than pixie dust.
But I didn't used to and you liked that about me,
it made you feel like you were living the childhood you never had or something
stupid and poetic that I would have said like that
when you were kissing my nose and holding my  hand
on your couch before 11 and stalling
on driving me home.

I don't like sitting in the passenger seat anymore because it reminds me
of how you'd look over at me like I was one of those
special girls in the stories or the epic loves that gods have that
can never be touched.
I used to think people could never be sick if they were happy enough,
but that's just not how things are.
Because here you are
lying in a hospital bed with pet scans and x rays that lit up like Christmas trees
and the doctors tests have told you terminal things
but you're expecting me to think it's okay.

It's not okay.
Here I am with mascara dried eyes and a cafeteria snack pack
and you're just smiling
stupidly at me because this is scary
and I've always been that fearless thing for you.
You're going to die and you're expecting me to just fill you up
with some fantasy,
seriously ignore reality,
and fly you away to a neverland that's only pretend.
You really expect me to just make believe so you can feel better?

Well I'm not that person anymore.
I don't weigh my life out in laughter and I don't bend backwards just to feel good
anymore.
I can't just sit here and tell you about what I had for breakfast
because that doesn't even amount to the fact
that maybe you won't even be here for that tomorrow.
I can't fill you with color just because you ask me that.
You're draining and you're losing and I've got nothing.
I've got nothing because I don't believe in all those childish things
you fell in love with me for
anymore.

I can't make you better just because I loved you once
and just because I'm here and it matters.
You're just in denial and yeah I'm not the same.
It's called change.

Apparently, they met at some gas station
and she had a little oil on her cheek
so he had to tell her, whether out of humbleness
or kindness or the Tender, Love, I’ll always keep
wrapped around my promise ring. Apparently,
she’s ****** and told some half-bent story of her aura
being changed and how she convinced a homeless man
to take her extra two slices of pizza. I guess she possess
some sort of sleepy attitude that compliments the simple beauty
in the mole on her upper lip or the way her hair
tangles itself in pretty little coils with her blooming wild.
Apparently, it’s not that hard to find time to ****
cause I always believe
the “business meeting” pitch and she knows where
we keep the key. And I guess my sensible heart
never thought twice about how the bed never matched up
quite the way I made it the morning, or how we were always
just one coffee mug short at the end of the week. Apparently,
I’ve been wearing her clothes and I’ve been sleeping
in her skin, or at least the shadow of it, left on his arms
when he pulls me in like a dance at the end of the evening.
Not even a shower could rinse her off.
Apparently, he still loves me.
But I swear the way I swung that curtain shut
should have hit him hard enough to spit up
some sort of confession that wasn’t soaked in a good front,
or bruised with prudence. I watched his apology drip
like paint from a handmade brush. Apparently,
time is just destructive and even when you’ve smoothed
out all the bubbles before you fire it
things eventually still blow up.

It was just the five of us
sitting there by your pool at 3am.
Feet in the water, jeans rolled up to our knees
beers in our right hand and each other to our left
singing old Tom Petty at the top of our lungs.

There was your best friend
who was drunk and singing a goodbye song,
long, slurred laments about
how you were his brother, like a missing tooth
that was pulled to early and left a gap
that your tongue runs over 100 times in a day
until you realize something's missing.
Something's no longer there.
And he'll say things like that
because that's who he is and he'll go to bed real early
because he's sad and tired and you
don't know how to feel that much yet.

There was your cousin in the jacket he stole from you
two weeks ago when he was sleeping on the ground
at a party you dragged him too.
He never learned to whisper and can't keep a secret,
but he made that night feel like it would last forever
and he held your hand through a lot of the bad times
in the trailer before your mom got home.
He'll laugh something stupid with his eyes squinted and you'll hug him
because you can feel he's alive and you want to start living.

There was your weekend warrior
who looked real tough and tan and Italian and
is afraid of who he is
but always knows who you are.

And then there was me.
And then there was you.

You were leaving in a couple weeks
and none of us really knew how to handle that yet.
So we made fun of your baby pictures
that were put into your slideshow and ate all your food
at 1 and then 2 and then 3.
I helped the other boys *** off your railing,
took pictures of your glassy-eyed buddies
trying to hook and capture the memory.

We were tearing down Wyoming,
praying it rained and flooded away
so you'd have nowhere to go and you'd have to stay.

This ain't nothing.
This ain't nothing but people who love you,
washing down their sorrows with a cold glass and a good cheer
to the one we see before he leaves.

And then there was me,
kissing you when your eyes would close
I'll miss you the most.

We slept in your bed alone
no clothes, just my body against yours
clinging to the time we had before morning.
We made love and I mean the real kind of love.
Not the high the five of us had
lying in your grass pretending
we could blow out the stars with a deep "hell yeah!"
But the love where you tell me how important I am to you.
What I've waiting and dying and trying to hear.

Your hand on my hip, you pulled me aside
to let me know you loved me, but just with your eyes.
Some dumb, young kids and real good kiss goodbye.

My aunt is 40 years old and she was coloring
with crayons on the bathroom floor after a bad spell.
We kept them in the cabinet under the sink
so she could pull them out to calm her down,
or pull her out,
of the dream she was having over glazed eyes that weren't sleeping.
She would talk to us about silly things
that happened to her or how she met
her husband after the war in his pretty,
neat, and navy blue military jacket.

She really met my uncle
on the train to Chicago in 1977,
but we don't tell her that because it doesn't make a difference
and it won't make her feel any better.
The truth never really does that
I've learned.

That's the thing about the rest of your life.
When you're sixteen and beautiful with
a cute brown bob and eyes to match
you think you can do anything
and when you picture
the rest of your life it doesn't include
lying in a bath robe talking to your niece
about something you never did or never had
with spit on your chin and hands that need washed
coloring a picture in a book meant for kids.

You never thought you'd be stuck
being a kid
sometimes.
Out of control,
shaky,
twisted
and a little bit beautiful
through things.
You never thought you'd be missing some parts,
or you'd be spacey
or empty
in bad, bad moments like this.

But that's how it is and that's how it was
for my aunt as she tried to formulate her thoughts
into something she was dying and dying to tell me.

I didn't know what she wanted or how to
fix
all the things I didn't quite understand were happening.
All I know is that she
is a child
and children need attention, to be played with, and to be loved.
So I picked up a crayon and starting coloring
around the edges she had missed
trying to fill her in.

I was in a real bad place this time last year.
I felt *****
all the time.
And all I wanted was to be with someone
who could make me feel even worse.

So I threw myself over people that could make me
feel a little right and hell of a lot wrong.
I poisoned the revival that was my passioned split,
and I kept binding myself to nights that had
no definite ending and put me in spacey places,
tripped me back to the things I wanted to forget,
always winding up in a grass bed with a body
that wouldn't recognize me in the sunlight but felt good.
Good in the way that made me feel wrecked,
empty, wretched, and sterilized
like a bad blood wound.

I was in a real bad place and I want you to know you put me there.
Not because I want you to feel guilty, not because its my own
sick revenge on the things you tore within me.
But I want you to know because I'm trying to explain to you,
why it is I did those things and I why it is I couldn't talk to you
when you begged me for answers, or for reasons, or if I was okay.
I want you to know I wasn't okay.
Not because I want you to apologize or tell me it wasn't my fault.
But I want you to know because I'm trying to explain to you,
how I could feel so terribly and how that could feel so good.

The pain was better, yes better, because it was easier.
I clothed myself in darkness, painted my world without the color
I always believed you gave me.
I was in a real bad place and I want you to know I might still be there.
Because you're holding me now and it would be unfair if I didn't let you in
on the secrets I kept about how I dealt with the pieces after you.
Not because I expect us to be together, not because I want
everything to go back to the way it was before you left.
But I want you to know because I'm trying to explain to you,
that I don't ever want us to feel this way again.
I don't ever want to see you mask your happiness
or think you don't deserve more safety than you have,
more love than your given
more laughs than you create.

I might still be there, but you don't have to be.
You don't have to comfort me,
for the wrong or even the right reasons.
You don't have to tell me that I'm alright or that I'm beautiful.
I feel ugly all the time and I'm still trying to figure out how that could be,
and I want you to know
you don't have to stick around for me.

She hides her Bible underneath the ****** box
because he doesn't want to have kids,
but she still prays
for his keep
every night
after he pulls long wings
from her back to her ribs—
deep passion inscriptions and hieroglyphs
with his nails as she whispers fake, unholy phrases.

She tripped into his superstition
watching him fashion his weapon—
a rosary noose
to choke blessings and psalms
out of her throat.
He rarely remembers to say goodnight,
but she traces his eyelids once he's asleep

like crop circles
making a thin bridge over his nose
connecting pinpoint constellations.
She kisses his neck and chest
over and over again,
secretly hoping
he wakes up and puts his arm around her.

She paints in the basement
with an old light bulb
listening to the hum of the space heater,
gagging on the acrylic fumes,
because he thinks all art
is useless
and all power is manmade confidence,
and the stars are just coincidence,
and he only married her
so they could ****,
finally.
Sometimes he doesn't come home,

but she makes the bacon the way he likes it,
and she presses all of his shirts twice.

Some guy's picture on the inside of a book sleeve
told me that he could help me write something other
than the worthless crap I'd been spewing for the past couple months.
Takes ten steps-
normal stuff
like
1. Clear your mind (which means you have to have a mind to begin with).
2. Don't be afraid
3.
4.
5.
Poetry is like this.. writing a poem is like that..

6. Pick a subject that means something

I mean all the real stuff you need to know
you should know by now, right?
Well I didn't **** anyone. My innocence didn't die when I was fifteen.
In fact, I still pretend two water drops are racing each other
when the fall down my car window-
and like a real contest I take bets.
I bet on a lot of things
like how long it will take me to get to the point-
the point
so how am I supposed to write beautifully about tragic things
I never experienced?
Worst thing that happened to me this week
was I put too much mayonnaise on my sandwich, making it mushy
and no one wants to read about that.

So the book then tells me, once I've scraped tediously through chapter 7,
that I should use bizarre words in real conversations
to spark my "withheld creativity"
because I'm "too scared" to let it show.
Here's a tip the book doesn't tell you-
don't ask your two best friends for help
because they'll come up with things like
"sparkling parachute pants"
or even "scented paraffin"
and who the hell knows what a paraffin is.
Then they'll start calling themselves your "muse"
and you'll never hear the end of it.
But they'll buy you drinks to make you feel better about
how ****** you feel and the ten blank word documents you have at home.
So I guess you probably should ask your friends after all.

Chapter 10 is when it gets really weird,
because it starts wondering which side of the brain writes what-
telling me to start writing things with my left hand
because it's "neurologically different" then what your right hand would do.
But last time I checked, I didn't write poetry with my right hand
because it surged some hidden message onto the page.
I did it because I'm right handed.
I advise you just completely skip chapter 10
unless you're a shrink and need some Sunday pleasure reading.

The final chapter becomes really inspirational-
reminding my tired heart how much originality I possess
and there's still lyrical words "hidden up my sleeve."
(they use a lot of clichés like that).
It will tell you how every great writer has been there.
How they all started just like you.
How "hero's get remembered, but legends never die"
Wait sorry, that's something else.
See what these books will do to you?
They'll make you crazy
you'll start drinking things like chai tea and reading soap opera magazines.
You'll stop going to the bathroom entirely-
and they'll tell you to do stupid **** like that
because they understand that right now
you're so desperate to write something
ANYTHING
that you'll start romancing about the stuffed animal in the corner
or the piece of lint you just know is under your bed.
Before you know it you'll start listening to Norah Jones on the weekends,
not shaving,
wearing glasses
snapping
the whole bit,
because that's how empty you feel
because writing
is like breathing
and when you stop writing
you stop breathing-
it's that easy.

But I advise you to finish the book.
It'll be worth it.
However, you won't start writing a **** thing
until you laugh at all the prose sections in a book
meant to tell you how to write poetry,
but here's the secret they don't tell you.
No one can tell you how to write poetry.
You just have to do it.
You just have to **** for a good while before you start writing
something better than "seasons farewell" or the other Robert Frost snippets
you've been scratching on pages lately.

What I learned
after 398 pages of poorly constructed criticism and self help
is that the reason you aren't writing
isn't because you're scared you won't get published
you can't pick a subject
or you don't have any time.
"Don't try to dissect the moment, or it'll be gone."
The reason you can't write right now
is because you won't let yourself ****.
Be bad, have a beer, and eat a lot
it'll make you feel better
than writing something flawless the first time through.

I mean you already know everything you need to know by now.
So just write
and **** at it-
it'll be worth it.
Trust me.

I want to blow your mind

kissing you just because you're cute

and just because I want to.

I want to shock you

with the heat in my hands

that warm your cold arms

because it's after midnight

and you've just got a white t-shirt on

drinking stuff

even though it's too strong.

I want to knock the wind out of you,

take your breath away,

with the simple way I look at you.

I want you to push me down

just so you can catch me right before I fall,

and I know what they say about you

that you're flimsy and don't have any real feelings

other the one's you feel in your pants,

but I want to hold you because  I shouldn't

I want to kiss you because I can't

I want to be with you

because I know I never could be.

I miss your skin,
thermal t-shirts
two buttons at the top
I miss your fingers in your hair
pushing it behind then back again
without even thinking
I miss your logic of this mess we wrapped ourselves in
telling me it was perfect
because we had waited so long
just to look at each other the way we do
it didn't matter how fast it went
it didn't matter what complications got in the way
you were in this if I was in this
and I'm in this
deeper than I think either of us ever intended
that's why I miss your healing hands
and heartstring cords that sang me songs
of trust in every smile
I miss your skin,
because it was the most tangible way
I could feel you
and now that time has past
and my memories of you have faded
into delicate blurs of almost was
I can't feel you anymore
I can't feel anything

I grew up in the same house, same town, same place
my entire life.
Big brick house with a cinnamon smelling winter and lavender summer,
tiny garden around the corner edge filled with baby red tomatoes and daddy's carrots.
I used to splash around in the puddles the cracks in our sidewalk made
after a huge storm until mommy yelled for getting my dress all muddy.
Always warm, filled with fire, hope, and being together
with someone known that one is never going to lose.
I used to fit behind the sofa in the living room during hide and seek,
but then I grew too big and everyone started to find me-
no more secrets.
I grew up in the comfortable security of a real home,
consistent with the idea of family and love behind circumstance.

Then I met you,
shaggy hair, grey sweatshirt innocence
with loose jeans and a smile that felt safe when directed at me.
You took me,
to your fourth house by now,
after some time.
I walked in to the aroma of wet dirt mixed with grass and beer,
cigarette smoke smells sunk deep into the brown couch
with puffy yellow stuffing popping out of the seams.
Wood walls left uncovered, rusty nails sticking out
living underneath the minimal television light.
I could hear your dad outside chopping word,
his wife coughing over the sound of doing the dishes
and whatever program she wasn't pretending to listen to.
You told me you used to stick your clothing tags underneath the coffee table,
but you had to leave it behind when you moved.
There's a stain on the carpet and dog hair stuck on my jeans.
You told me you used to collect bottle caps from holes you dug in the ground,
until your dad told you to fill them all back up
as quickly as you could.
It was cold in there, but someone
I felt warm.
And I realized that no matter where I was,
if I was laying in your strong arms wrapped around me
pool blue eyes tracing my smile when I laughed,
then I was home.
I had something to crash into after the disaster of the day,
complaining about things that don't really matter
until you shut me up the way you know I love you to.

I realized,
the pencil height measure walls, the hush-hush closet hideouts
aren't what makes it feel like home.
The *** and pan rock bands, the albums on the shelf
don't really matter,
if you have no one to call your own.
You
are my home.
Somewhere I feel safe, secure, never left alone.
Somewhere with you,
even if the future is left unknown
if I'm in your arms,
I know I'm home.

We don't look at each other anymore.
The hurting is its own kind of sad
that I've framed with the words you never told me.
And you'd think because I gave you
so much of my own self-requited happiness and help,
that because I did pull you up from the trash can facade
you threw yourself in
covering your skin in your own garbage and alcohol rain
that you'd see me.
You'd think because I loved you that things would be different.

No, I didn't ******* in the back bedroom
like that sophomore did the weekend before.
But I did clean up the beer you spilt that you couldn't afford
on the night you shouldn't have been drinking.
I did let you hold me when you looked around the crowded room
of people you didn't know
realizing you were alone.

No, I didn't laugh when you smashed your hand
through that window on a dare.
But I did wash the blood from your cuts with a gentle cloth
when you weren't looking so it wouldn't hurt.
I did call your brother to tell him you were alright
when you were supposed to be home an hour ago and he couldn't find you.
I took a lot of your pain away.
In different ways than the beer bottles in you back pockets
or the empty body you left lying on the bed.
I did talk you through a long night when you didn't know what to do-
I did that for you.
I did help you pack away the parts of you you didn't like-
I'll always do that for you.

And you'd think that'd make you look my way.
Because all the things I did do
should outweigh the things I didn't.
You'd think because I loved you that things would be different.

But you don't even look at me anymore,
it's like I'm some broken angel on your shoulder you can't see.
I just always thought I was more important
than the things I couldn't be.

I let your lips touch mine like church wine.
Just a taste,
my legs around your waist
you led me to the bed.
I saw our silhouettes reflect in the mirror,
you standing there
hands upon my face
running softly along my hair
you laid me down just so you could stare
at how bare my body was and how beautiful
it looked in the hold your eyes had on this moment
where you could trace your fingers along my edges
just to feel how soft it was when you pressed upon it.

It's not always like this.
Sometimes I hate you when don't respond
to something so honest,
but the way you lay your head into my neck
and just breathe
without using your eyes
our bodies
our own little infinity
that I can't even fathom beyond being there.

This was our goodbye.
This was you saying
"I don't want you to wait around for me,
because I want these next four years to be you
doing everything
you've always told me you wanted to do."
This was because of me loving you.

A year made a circumference around my brain
when I was baring myself naked to you
it lapped my skin and touched my lips until I was frightened
from speech and just kept breathing
seven heavy sighs of separation
until I convinced myself that's what it would take
for me to get back to you.

I've been here so many times but not like this.
Not like this where there's no more chances.
Just the shower running and my head on your chest,
just you pushing my hand down when I resist.
But you were slow and gentle and made it feel alright,
and I shouldn't have been crying
but it was so beautiful and this was so beautiful and you
are so beautiful

This was our final moment
one last night,
here we go,
I loved you always
goodbye.

This was our goodbye and let's face it,
a big part of me knows
that it won't just be a year until I see you.
You're never coming back, heart attack
against the realization that once you're gone "for now"
you're gone for good.
So I kissed you like our lips were magnetized and would stay together
even 1,619.9 miles away.
I kissed you to erase the picture of the map in my head,
from point A to point B
and from the start of a journey to its end.

The morning when you leave for the airport and I'm getting dressed alone,
won't be our goodbye
not even when you leave the key and drive
not even when you kiss my forehead
or promise to call
or I'm falling to my knees.

This is our goodbye.
This is our
I believe in you
I'll love you always
goodbye.

I write you letters on yellow notepads,
tear them out and use the other side,
my ****** cursive slanting the entire page,
adding things in the margins,
drawing hearts in the corners,
ending with our special
"See you then"
instead of a goodbye,
or a sincerely yours,
or an "I love you always."
That line said it all.

I didn't have an address to send them to
because you just moved and stamps cost a lot
for a broke college student who's just trying
to keep in touch.

You told me not to call you.
Not to ask you how you'd been.
So I didn't even bother asking for some place
to write on the outside of my envelopes.
I just kept writing them.

I get why you didn't want to come see me
before you left
because it would just make it harder to say goodbye
all over again,
and I get
why it's hard to talk to me
because you're busy and because you're two hours behind
and because this and because that.
They're just excuses.
You don't really want to talk to me.

And I,
I get that you're halfway across the country.
Don't you think I've memorized the distance by now?
I know exactly how far it is between your dot and mine
on a map.
I get that it's going to be hard and that it's probably not even worth trying,
but what you don't get
that I do
is that it's worth it.

I've kept bullshitting with you since I met you.
I've kept you around this long.

I'm not going to tell you how many times I sat up crying
about something you said to me, or something you didn't say
that I knew you felt
because it will just push you away.
You've known since the beginning
of whatever this is
that you're no good for me.
You're not good enough for me.
That's fair.

But what you don't get,
that I do
is that I don't care.

You're the best thing in my life
because everything that I do is only because of you,
only because of you believing that I can have it
all
if I try hard enough.

You told me I was the strongest person you knew.
That I was tough.
That I was going to be fine.

I am only those things because I have you
in my life
in one way or an even more complicated other.
So you can't just give up on me.
You can't just expect
to tell me you're done
you never started
and leave.
Because that's not okay with me.

I won't buy a plane ticket.
I won't talk to you every chance I get
(more likely every chance you get)
and I won't keep myself behind this line
because I'm saving myself for you.

But you have to stay with me, okay?
You have to at least try
to understand where I'm coming from
and you have to,
you have to
keep believing in me.

Because I'm not the strongest person you know,
you are.
I'm not tough,
you are.
I'm not always going to be fine,
but you are.

So I'll see you then.

I still wear your t-shirt that I stole
from the backseat of your truck,
underneath some brown paper bags,
few spare cables, and and a crushed beer box.
There was dirt on both sleeves, but we just made love
for the second time, in your best friends bed.
I left without waking you. Just like you left,

farther and faster than I did, with a ****** parting line:
you’ll be fine.
And yeah, I guess I was fine if fine counts as holding
myself together with two pieces of tissue paper
and prayers that started with “Dear God,”
always ending in “why bother.” But I wear

your t-shirt. Have you ever had to weigh
the idea that you haven’t heard my voice
in over a year with all the faces you meet
in the bar, under cheap white Christmas lights,
or any of the girls you send home before breakfast?
Because I have. They’re heavy. Your world

has become so separated

and I’ve found a way to wear my heels to work
even though I walk thirty blocks, and I’ve learned
to sip my coffee before taking a gulp, to reach for things
instead of just expecting them to arrive, but I still wear

your t-shirt. *You’re the strongest person I know.

Over there, I sat in my jeans and white blouse
with the long bell sleeves and the olive stitching
just to watch you do your math at the table next to me.
Reading, for the fourth time, the second chapter
of Outliers because it was the only part
of my life I wasn’t making up.
There were no eyes that glanced, fliratiously,
from seat to seat, just your broad shoulders
to my face. My face,

as I stared at pages of statistics
being the only one who knew that numbers
were **** compared to the way you could scuff me
like heels on the linoleum back to what wild
nights of believing that your hands
on my hip bones were really your hands
holding onto my heart.

Over there, with my hair tucked strangely
behind my ears, I cried. Not out loud,
but like I had been for weeks, through my smiles,
through my forgiveness, through your *******—
I kept going. I kept hanging onto the thread
you pulled loose from the end and caught blaze
to yours. I drank my tea

and everybody stared at me, because they knew.
They knew! And you’d think that would make me
finally get up, leaving my heart in the trash can
beside your knee, but please
try to understand that I didn’t.
Instead I

drew palm tree reflections on the back of my notebook pages,
and I swallowed
every breath that I couldn’t find
hoping that you’d notice the lipstick on my cup
or how I only ever wanted you to be mine.

A lot can happen in four years
I whispered while your fingers were in my hair.
The night was calling us together, time threw us in a moment
where neither of us had an answer to why you called
or why I came
to find myself in your single bed with feet that hang off the end
letting you pull my clothes off with those hands
that always know how to hold me
slipping your fingers right between the space of my ribs.
I paint words on your neck with my lips
that envelop how beautiful I know you are.
You don't think you'll come back?
I tried to walk around the world enough times
in that moment, in my mind
to tell you something you'd want to hear
but all I got were ***** soles and a steamy kiss
to cradle the shake in your spine-
Not even for me?
whiskey, whiskey, whiskey
I don't even know what will happen to me.
So I just hold you enough times until the truth settles,
until the realization has become a manifestation
of tossing and turning together in your bed
wrapping around the heart-shaped symbol of love in our heads.

A lot can happen in four years
I weaved around the promise in your brain.
You retraced the curves of my neck with your hands,
pulling me in so we wouldn't feel so lonely.
And even though we can't admit in the denial
that we were spreading around each other
in a pretty suspension of how we wish
things could eventually work out,
we understand how hard it will be to take
waiting for the other after all that time.
Not even for me?
whiskey, whiskey, whiskey
we just healed the break with a kiss
as we spent another night trying to forget we were real,
masking on our own graduating fears
A lot can happen in four years.

My heart’s over here
you said, lying on your back,
with my head on the hard part of your shoulder,
making circles around your chest plate
like I was trying to drill into your bones
just to find the rose nectar that swam
in your blood so I could finally taste something
that wasn’t late and sour and mustered out of pity.
You misheard me. I was just making sure
my heavy head with all these thoughts
magnetizing themselves to others weren’t causing
your arm to manifest a maze of pins and needles.
I just wanted to make sure you were okay. *My heart’s over here
you whispered as we cradled ourselves in the shadows
my comforter made when caught against
the lamppost light creeping in from my window.
But I wondered, even if I screamed it, would you be able to hear
where the knocking was coming from? You look at me
but sometimes, I swear, you think it’s just a combination
of alphabet letters that I’m not expecting you to remember.
You look at me, but here I am
cramming myself into your framework and painting myself red
so maybe I’ll stand out against all the other kaleidoscope bits
that fall around you. You look at me, but my heart’s over here.
My heart’s over here! I let it drip from my mouth when you’re asleep
so I know you won’t hear it, because even though I know
you don’t really care, I’d never ask you to leave.