I won't have you
always busy
not even evening calls
I remember the name of your sister
I've got no pride to exclaim us
I assume you to care less
you're heavier than tomorrow
I submit the same paper
professing how my skin went with you
you move away from me with a sword behind you
what are you so afraid of
believing
you're good
how can you bare to admit it?

i drank all
this
whiskey
to
forget about you;

there isn't a
sip
that does not
burn or
give me goosebumps

just like you

& now i'm so,
completely
*******

i get that change is meant to hurt, to push
and pull at all of those bits that need it
i understand that i made the choices i had to,
that i'm strong, and that i live life for myself-
but the truth remains, none of this feels like love

i wake up cold and sweating, the echoes of you
bouncing around the room

sometimes i wish that folding was as easy as it seemed,
that we could climb back into my princess bed
and fight the chills with our body heat, that you
would wake me with kisses on my eyelids before
you caught the early bus to work, that you'd
hold my waist and dance barefoot with me as i
whispered old crooner songs to you in my kitchen

instead my backbone bends, but somehow the
weight of this loss doesn't break it

i know you go on living, but it's hard to define
what you're doing as life, i worry always that
the unknown number is someone calling to tell
that you've finally lost your physical self,
just as you lost your spirit so long ago

my strength isn't made for two, just me,
even though i lent it to you each and every
time your eyes became glued to the floor and
your body shook so much you lost your sense of self

i know now that i'm no jesus, that lover isn't
synonym for savior, that i did everything i could

there is no reassurance in reinvention, you see,
this time around i already know who i am,
the decision was long and labored, but came
about without question or hesitation

comfort doesn't come just because i could
see the fissure coming, instead the pain
is slow and deliberate, a dull ache in my bones

"I kissed a feminist once",
he says, face flushed blotchy, something heavy resting on his shoulders
maybe
“I kissed a feminist once,”
and everybody laughs
“she was cold as ice,” he says
and he doesn’t mention how I turned
warm beneath his fingers,
heated up like embers
and reduced his bed to flame and ashes
“God was she mean,” he says
but he hasn’t forgotten the time
I told him to be kind to himself, to
purge the poison from his veins and
scrape the smoke from his lungs
“I love you I love you I love you”
I said,
“please love yourself too”
“I kissed a feminist once,”
he says, to loud guffaws,
an elbow in his side
and he doesn’t say “her lips
were the softest thing to ever brush
my collar bone”
he doesn’t say “she made playlists in my mind”
or “she covered me like a blanket”
or “her teeth on my earlobe ripped me open and scattered me across the sheets of her twin bed”
he doesn’t say “I loved that
storm of a girl,
I loved her heavy at 4am I loved
her like pennies
at the bottom of a fountain
like memorized freckles
I loved her like depth perception
like opposable thumbs
I loved her I loved her I loved her”
and instead he shrugs
that heavy thing off his shoulders
and shrugs the feel of my lips
off his chest and he says,
“she was a crazy ***** anyway”
- Lily Cigale

A thousand words won't **** this hurt,
A million sorry's won't bring you back.
You own my heart,
My love,
My soul.
You own this tattoo body,
And every imperfection,
The ones I've made and the ones of from God.
You saved this soul, for as long as you could.
Even minds have an expiration date.
When I lost him my shelf life,
Was cut in a quarter, and now I'm at number 24.
I only need to be a little older,
Then I'll have the courage to settle the score.