south carolina and ohio and the blurred lines of love and something else. something worse. dangerous. all this talk of coming home. you imagine she means your heart instead of your house. she is held captive by the bounds of her past. all romance and regret. pink wine never tasted good anyway. then again nothing tastes quite like her smile. you could get drunk on her drink of choice every single night and still wake up each morning with a hangover from hell and an empty heart and aching hands. you have got to stop punching those walls. what is it with you. you and hurting things that only exist to protect you. tell us about that night you got so drunk you swore you were speaking to god. tell us how he listened. how you spoke about her candy eyes and her gum drop lips and golden skin. to look at her was to gaze upon the heavens. he understands. you analogize love making to walking into a church and getting to know each and every pew by name. he takes no offense to this. you ask him if south carolina is better for having her in its bounds. you can't quite explain it but ohio feels a lot less like home now that she's gone. you feel like a drifter. she says there are white sand beaches and sunsets you can't even imagine and entire neighborhoods swallowed up by trees. you want to tell her this broken heart of yours is beginning to ache again. as if it ever stopped. you and god share a laugh at this one. you think no one is listening but you are wrong. all this talk of being in love. she says you are in love with the idea of love but she is wrong and she knows it. so what. the million dollar question. what does it all mean and why. god, why. why her, why this, why here, why now, why. but he only shakes his head. in this he says that the answers are nestled in all the moments you mumble his name. when she is moaning yours, when you are scared, when you are happy, when you are relieved. how every moment with her feels like a culmination of each of these. you understand. you do.

one day everything falls apart. your hands and her promises and you heart. loving her turns into not sleeping. ever. that one day six months later when you finally saw her again and choking on not saying I love you before she left because you can't stand the thought of her not saying it back. the possibility. this ache. someone asks you what happened between the two of you and you say that even the continents came apart. they don't get it. you don't either. something breaks inside of you every time the wind blows and you smell her perfume. something harder than glass. they call this something hope. she knows where you live and she knows you never leave but she isn't coming back. make no mistake. there will be no surprise visits. no knock on your door at five a.m, no tear streaked hello's and no heartfelt I missed you's. no happy ending. no ending at all. just a belly full of whiskey and the last time she told you she loved you. her words feel like plagiarism in your ear. you wonder how her mother would feel about this. you wonder if her mother saw this coming a mile away. you wonder if her mother will always be right. you take another drink and wonder how this glass would sound as it breaks against your wall. the moment it leaves your hand you regret it. what a mess. all liquor and love sick and four a.m. the rorschach stains on this carpet from back when you were practicing for ava or evelyn or aiden. she picked the names. all the carpet cleaner in the world won't erase the memory. you wouldn't try even if it would. the empty chair theory doesn't soothe this broken heart of yours. nothing does. you pull another glass from the cupboard and see her lipstick stain on the edge. you imagine being small enough to jump from the top and landing hard enough to **** yourself but softly enough to not leave a stain. they would look at you and say, "I think this one was an accident." and they are wrong.

it's really something
how quickly things can change
how one poem ago
you were back
in my bed
in my heart
how one poem ago
you accidentally called me honey
in the middle
of a flirtatious conversation
and every time after that
was on purpose
if you ask me
there are no such thing
as accidents
I would tell you there is no
such thing
as coincidence
that you are only setting yourself
up
for failure
by choosing to believe
in miracles
if you asked me
I would tell you
a long time ago
many
many poems ago
I believed in love
at first sight
and
soul mates
and fate
but the truth is
these beliefs are built
on a quicksand foundation
of lust
and naivety
and sheer
stupidity
love
is the hardest part
of living
the deadliest war
to sign up for
your heart
is not a soldier
you
are not
a battleground
this love
is guerrilla warfare
that wink
this grin
those hands on my hips
these lips
on my neck
your breath
in my ear
my name
on your tongue
this
is
war
one poem ago
we were asleep
like lazy lovers
on a sunday afternoon
one poem ago
the sound of you
moaning my name
has seared itself
back into
my brain
one poem ago
I love you so
much that I say
I will never
let you go
and this morning
you are severing
your own arms
just to escape from
my grasp

so you came back
            so what
            so now every poem
                          every love letter
                          every "this is not a poem but"
                          every "this is not a love letter but"
                          every "okay, so this is definitely a poem and that is certainly a love letter"
they're all irrelevant now
every night I spent at the bottom
of the mariana trench holding
my breath waiting for you to
take it again
every morning I woke up with
a pillow wetter than niagara falls
and a chest so empty
                for so long
it has still not adjusted to this life
without your heart tucked away
under my ribs
but now that you're here again
and I've got you so close that I can
feel your heartbeat through
my back
your arms wrapped around me
surrounded by the peacefulness
of sleep
and innocence
I find myself constantly touching you
counting your fingers or staring at you
for so long that it begins to get weird
but you don't get it
you've been gone for so long that these
details have somehow escaped
my memory
how soft your hair is
and
how perfectly your hands fit into mine
how tall you are
how long I could hug you
and how
I would never need to let go
or come up for air
             so what
             so you're back now and it isn't fair
for me to hold onto this sadness
             so it's time for me to forgive
                                           and forget
only how am I supposed to forget
this feeling
or
this lack thereof
how am I supposed to forgive you
for nearly killing me
for throwing me over board
for ignoring the SOS of my silence
for forcing me to spend my nights alone
on the ocean floor
you knew I was afraid of drowning
and you tied these cinder blocks
of empty promises to my feet
but you know
and you knew I would be powerless in this
war of holding grudges
        of pride
you know and you knew that when
it comes to you I am always left waiting
with open arms and a hopeful heart
             so what
             so now that we're here again in your bed
and I feel your heartbeat through
my back
your arms wrapped around me
like a straitjacket I never want
to be freed from
every poem
every love letter
now
the clock
resets
to zero
and the score
is settled
again

today. do you know what day it is. has the thought yet to cross your mind or are you still too busy divorcing my memories, pretending your hands aren't ***** from burying the past. have you wiped your palms clean of these sins or are we still entertaining the idea of holiness here. when was the last time you stepped foot inside of a church. threading my fingers through your own as if in silent prayer to never forget this feeling. can you feel it yet. the confessional booth of your bedroom and all the times we sinned so hard that hell started to sound like a happily ever after. do you think about that day as much as I do. you down on one knee presenting me with a diamond ring brighter than god's teeth. the beginning of the end. who do I apologize to for never making it past the preamble. whose house is this church we call a home. all I know is that I would come to you every sunday morning for the rest of eternity if you'd just open up your ******* doors. tell me how to love again, tell me to repent. command me seven hail mary's and watch me taste your name through every single one. your name. honeysuckle and rosemary. the day we buried the children we never had, the day I carved their names into the tombstone of my heart. every day there is a new funeral. voicemails and memories and all things not tangible enough to warrant a casket but still tangible enough to line the graveyard of my mind. *hail mary full of grace, please let me forget his face.

you are both my Friday night and Saturday morning. when most people read that sentence they likely picture the two of us in the same bed, falling asleep together and then waking the next morning tangled up in each others arms like weeds that refuse to stop growing. they are wrong. what I mean by this is that I am up until four in the morning with this ache in my chest that wears your name. what I mean is that I woke up to sports center on my television and for the smallest fraction of a second it felt like waking up in your bedroom. what I mean is that it has been 165 days, 3,960 hours, 237,600 minutes, 14,256,000 seconds since I've seen the sun, smelled the roses, brewed the coffee, made the bed, held your heart, lost my breath. I have been empty for this five month 13 day eternity.

it has been one hundred and forty one days since I've seen you
since the day I decided to break all the rules
          the day that wasn't even supposed
     to happen
but I happened to find myself standing in your basement
staring at you for the first time in what felt like centuries but was only weeks
shaking like the ground had begun to quake beneath my feet
hoping
like a fool
that the desperate look in my eye
                                           or my trembling lips
               or the urgency in my voice
would be enough
to pull you back out from this person you've become
like a twisted form of reincarnation
that I do not even believe in

one hundred and forty one days later
and now
you only use me for ***
there are prettier ways of saying it
but there's nothing pretty about this
so I can't decide which is worse
the fact that you are using me for ***
or the fact that I am letting you
because it's been so long since anyone
has felt this close to me
since I've seen these beads of sweat condensating on your brow
the look in your eye
when you lose control
when you reach for my hand in hopes to
bring you back to this moment you
have lost yourself in
  you lost yourself in me
and see
a long time ago I lost myself in you
except the difference is
I'm not forming search parties
you can keep the pieces because I don't want them back

one hundred and forty one days later
I would much rather believe
that eventually
we can share them
again