There are emergency vehicles screeching
down the inner city streets of me
sirens blaring, civilians cramming their
cars along the curb in a polite form
of avoidance
and you are speeding through the yellow-
lighted intersections of my broken heart
busy with the thought of rescue
because all the aching parts of me have convinced you that it is necessary
and you are my only hope.

It's got me wondering how many
more times I'll have to fall apart
before all the pieces of me are gone

why is it that every single day
I am stuck in this catastrophe
of missing you
and the thought of me is one
that never bothers to cross your mind

I want to ask how you're doing
and while I'm at it I think I'd also like
to ask how the hell you think
you've managed to move on

the cat we never owned has had my
tongue for the past two months
but now I am volatile

irrational
with the thought of showing her the ring
you had plans of putting on my finger
just weeks before everything was
shot to ****

it shouldn't matter
and maybe it doesn't
but do you think of me?

when the sun shines through your bedroom window and catches
against the glass
throwing rainbow prisms on your wall
when you see a stray dog
or breathe a stanza of poetry
when you've been working on something
and your hands are stained with paint the way
mine always seemed to be
back when I was in love and inspired and
always had something to make for you to
look at but never see

and when you look at her
do you see me?

are you haunted by the memory
of everything you promised me?

or is it all just a messy pile of nothing
years worth of everythings that you
shoved into a day
hours of kisses that you erased
from existence
and a body beneath you that all
you had to do was replace

when you're about to fall asleep
can you ******* name on your tongue
telling you goodnight?

when you wake up
do you ever wonder where I am?
whose bed I'm sleeping in
who's kissing my neck
and taking my socks off with his teeth

do you think of me
wondering
or is it nothing more
than just a memory?

It's the kind of loss that shakes your soul
makes you miss all the things
that made a quiet home in your heart
and lived there as tight-lipped tenants
for so long that you forgot
the weight of their existence until they were gone

you, all of you -
your fingertips on my skin,
your eyelash on my cheek,
your mouth on my neck,
your hand in my own -

now you're no more than a skeleton
of recollection from the broken bones
of memory

now,
I feel the loss of you everywhere

I identify with rainy skies,
broken hearts and
sorrowed cries
loud, noisy sobs that splatter along the walls
of hospitals like paint

my heart aches for everyone
whose heart is aching
whose bones are breaking
who is doing their best at simply making
it through the day

I feel every fake smile,
every forced laugh and
every wiped away tear

all of the world's pains
are named after you, dear.

Lately I've been busy trying not to
fall in love with you
trying not to notice how undeniably right
it feels to be right here, right now
how easy it is
pretending not to know
how utterly effortless it would be
to love you

So instead I force the thought
of the inevitable end
the part where you can't even look me
in the eye as you're leaving
you don't even say goodbye
and almost just as my heart managed
to stitch itself back up
it breaks all over again
the deja vu is sickening

While you're busy falling in love with me
I'm busy not even noticing
the newness of it all
because I am hopelessly stuck in the past
yet constantly fearing for the future

You're busy kissing my neck
and I am busy picturing your lips
saying someone else's name
tasting the goodbye hidden in the
it's not you, it's me on your tongue

Your fingertips trace over the valley
of my side as if there is braille
etched into my skin
and you can't get enough of it
you look at me like I'm the last thing
you're ever going to see
you kiss me with urgency
and say my name as if it's the
sweetest thing to ever fill your mouth

You are busy falling in love with me
and I am busy failing miserably

busy
falling in love
with you.

You are the light among my
existential darkness
The song that people sing
when they are in love
What better way to analogize you
than with the words that pass between
the lips of two humans
whose hearts have sewn
themselves together
for eternity

I look at you and see nothing but
possibility
I see hope hiding behind your eyes
and happiness holding tight to your teeth
when you smile

And what could possibly be better
than this?
This moment where we are alone with
each other and the world

My pillows know all of our secrets
and my sheets smell like your skin
You kiss my face and leave half moons
on your favorite parts of my neck
One hand lost in the ocean of my hair
the other exploring the dips of my spine
Our bodied tied together like a knot
that no amount of time could hope
to untie

And while we're talking about time
no stretch of it could ever
be enough with you

You are a church that never closes,
a sun that doesn't set,
a wall clock beautifully frozen

Let me worship you

You are a forest fire
and I
am but a single match
envying the ferocity
of your flame

And time is the greatest tease of all
I am wrist deep inside your chest
working away at the gears
that move the hands of time
Begging them to stop

Wishing on every single shooting star,
every birthday candle,
every penny,
That when we're alone with each other
and the world,
and the walls of my bedroom
are eavesdropping on our
moonlit pillow talk

The night decides to stretch on into infinity
and the sun never bothers to rise

It's an itch I won't allow myself to scratch
A scar that's begun to scab
and I must hit the top of my own hand
every time my fingers start to wander towards it again
I've placed that horribly depressing doggie
cone of silence around myself
Thankfully,
it's mostly invisible to everyone except me
I've built brick walls around my home,
I'm not quite sure what purpose they serve anymore,
all I know is that when I first started building,
it was meant to keep myself
from going back to you
Now that all too familiar urge has fizzled out and died along with the rest of them
That desire to hear you say my name again
The longing to feel your fingers dance over my skin
in all the places you knew made me cringe
with something much hotter than happiness
Yes, I won't lie
Those walls were meant to keep me from acting solely on impulsive
reaching for you again simply out of habit
loving you out of routine
forgiving you
because it was easier
than letting you go
But now
the walls are there to keep you the **** away
Don't ever come back for me
Don't you ******* dare
Don't come to my home
Don't show up here with a fist full of roses and a throat full of apologies,
wearing I'm Sorry's like body armor against the fire you know is sure to spit out from the mouth you used to love to kiss
And do you even recognize my hands?
The ones that tidied everything despite my undeniable messiness,
the ones that folded things neatly so only to please you, because we both know that I couldn't have gave a **** if that blanket was here or there or anywhere, I didn't care if it was folded or not, I didn't give a ****, dear, but I folded that ****** for you,
the ones that wrote poems you never even pretended to read,
the ones that created masterpieces your eyes only glanced at, never allowing yourself the time necessary to absorb their true beauty because who the hell had time for that? Hello? There were video games to play, babe.
These hands that would have moved mountains for you,
these pacifistic hands that would have killed for you,
fought wars for you,
burned themselves on the stove tops for you,
picked up all the pieces of myself that you single handedly destroyed for you,
and then, like a child, handed them right back to you.
Do you recognize these hands, love?
These hands that built brick walls so high,
I only stopped because they kissed the sky.
Don't stop me if you see me,
Don't look me in the eye,
you packed your bags and left,
you don't get to say goodbye.

They say it's been weeks
And by they
I mean all the calenders
constantly reminding me of your,
although undeniably different,
no longer painful absence
The goodbye I never actually received
reminds me of a slow growing tumor
that hugs to your bones
It quite literally grows on you
and while I never saw it
and most certainly never heard it
I felt it in my marrow
And now I feel it's presence so strongly
that I can almost begin to convince myself
you said it
I can almost hear the words
readying for attack,
hiding in the Trojan horse of your heart
that I so foolishly believed
was an unreturnable entity
of the timeless love that you promised me
forever with
It's been weeks
but has it really?
I'm already beginning to forget the sound of your voice, the color of your eyes, the weight of your hands in my own
And while this is a shame for the sake of memory,
I cannot say with honesty that I wish
I could remember
I don't even recognize you anymore
Your innocence has since been replaced with malice
You are no longer the same boy
that I fell so irrevocably in love with
at an age so young
you have to wonder
if we ever really even knew what love meant
at all
If anyone asks,
I won't deny the space you occupied in my heart for so long
I won't lie about the way you made my stomach turn with something I dare say resembled butterflies,
I won't pretend that you never made me smile so hard it felt as if my face was about to tear in two, and that I wouldn't have complained if it had
I won't excuse the existence of the love we shared
for the sake of your ******* conscious
But with the same token of truth,
if anyone ever asks me about that password I never quite got around to changing;
how my fingers fly over the keyboard with equal parts ease and elegance;
typing time and time again that same string of letters and numbers that served as our initials and the date I'll never be able to ******* forget; they will stop me and say,
"That must be significant. What does it mean?"
I will turn to them and say that I have absolutely no idea
It's all just nonsense, really
I've practiced saying it so often
that surely it must be true by now
as the words are dancing off of my tongue
buzzing like children with sheer excitement at the possibility of getting caught in a lie
I may pause for a small moment
and remember my favorite parts of you
hands, lips, neck
candy laughter and sunset eyes
But you aren't that boy anymore
and I couldn't love you again if I tried.