I'm lost in the land of whiskey and lies
trying to refamiliarize my hands with your skin
its been months
maybe years
since we've touched
each shot makes it that much harder
to remember
the freckle on your wrist
the creases in your palms
I can't seem to recall
and I was never a fan of alcohol
but forgetting for a night was never as bad
as remembering the next morning
waking to an empty bed and aching heart
breaking bones and throwing stones
didn't even come close
to the relentless pain
washing me away
with the january rain
that made a home inside your veins
and in a way
this makes me miss you more

Before you find yourself gasping
for breath at 3:27 in the morning
In the conformity of your makeshift
bed sheet fortress that you've built up
like the barriers that stand around your heart
Wondering how it is possible to
drown without water
Remember that as you run your
fingers over a photograph
That this changes nothing
That staring at a torn and
many times too folded map of the world
Serves about as much purpose
as it did when you stared into his eyes
and hoped to see yourself in there
Or when he slept and you cried
and half of you did not
want to wake him
but the other half desperately
wanted some part of his soul
to know despite his current state
of consciousness that
you were dying inside
But this changes nothing
Because that was then and
this is now,
and the world doesn't wait for anyone.

It's almost been two weeks
and it's safe to say that if clocks didn't exist
this would feel more like two years

I sleep on the left side of the bed
just in case you decide to come back
in the middle of the night
I close the front door behind me but I
always leave it unlocked
incase you need to let yourself in
I keep the key to my heart under
the doormat of my soul
You step on it
and I say thank you
I keep all my belongings in my pockets
leaving my hands free for the off chance
that you come up behind me
and reach for one

You cracked open my chest asking
for your heart back
and I handed you the hammer
You didn't even say thank you,
you must have forgotten your manners
somewhere along the way;
somewhere between loving me and becoming enemies

I can't seem to sleep without you singing
me goodnight
The memories race through my mind like
an old tape that only plays on repeat,
I can't decide if it's broken or not.

You were good at fixing things
with your hands,
all hammers and nails and tape measures,
I wonder how long we'd have to pull
on either end before you gave up
and let go

I tell myself it's all just temporary insanity.
That one day you'll come back to me
with a red tool box in your hand ready
to fix the ******* mess you've made
It's a little like trying to treat
a stab wound
with a bandaid

It's a little like telling myself
that you still love me,
because pretending is easier
than facing the truth
and the truth is that
we haven't spoken in months;
the right side of my bed stays cold;
my hands are always empty;
and the front door never opened
again.

I can't help it
whenever I see photographs
I can't help but to say that they
would be better with you in them
your smile screams a hundred thousand sunsets and nights spent kissing somewhere
we shouldn't have been
there was something so twistedly romantic about hands touching among secrecy,
hearts racing that shouldn't be

I couldn't help but to love you
but I know
someday this will pass, too

It's like walking around with your shoes on the wrong feet.
It's like trying to write with your left hand.
It's like trying to keep your head above water when no one ever taught you how to swim.
It's like that feeling you get in the pit of your stomach when you know you've forgotten something.
It's like when you were in school, and the teacher told you to take notes, but you thought you'd be able to remember without them, and you were wrong.
It's like the advice your mother used to give you, but you never listened to.
It's like you were always aware of the possibility, you just never accepted the thought that it could ever become a reality.

As a child I always covered my ears
whenever I started to hear my
parents fighting about whose weekend it was
And I hated that term
Whose weekend it was
Like they owned me

As if I was nothing more than some
quarrelsome barter being habitually swapped between living quarters at the end of every week
Sometimes I wished nothing more than to be
invisable, camouflaged along the wall
of dusty old antiques
Because the only ones you ever saw
fighting over them were old people who smelled
of pastries and lilacs

But I got tired of waiting for that
And I got more tired of the *******
small talk and forced awkward smiles
and when push came to shove,
At eight years old I was tired
of being handled with kid gloves

I grew up feeling like a token of fair trade
And in school I learned that fair trade
really wasn't fair at all
Some were taught to run while others
are forced to crawl to cross the finish line
but even that can't buy you time

Because at the end of the day
I still find myself coming back to that
original thought of the antiques along the
wall of items that nobody bought
And when you see that your only
company is dust and stale air,
life finds another way to remind you
that nothing is fair.

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.

It's a special sort of twisted, really - my subconscious forcing me to endure this hell even in my sleep. I can't seem to seek refuge anywhere now; you occupy every corner of my mind, as if you didn't every day before. And can I ask, how do your hands make it through the day? How do your fingers pass the time, do your palms ever cry wondering where mine have been? It's been so long since I've touched your soul, and I'm just now beginning to realize that that is very different than simply touching your skin. But there was nothing simple about it. There was nothing mundane, ordinary, or casual about our love - and unfortunately for you these are the truths that quite frankly just cannot be denied. You can try all you want, use all your might to pretend that this love never happened between the two of us. You may be able to fool them; hell, you may even be able to fool yourself every now and again, but when you're alone in the deepest parts of yourself, I like to believe that you'll feel me there the most - feel my hair tickle your arm or my fingers drag over your spine or my lips brush against your neck - these are the places you will feel me most, and I will feel you everywhere, forever.

When you are here
The quiet feels so soothing
Peaceful
The sounds of a long day filled with laughter, love and storytelling are finally coming to an end
Where we lay our heads down on a bed that feels like the finish line from the race
Of the best day of my life
Tranquil
And when you are gone
The quiet feels so heavy
Overwhelming with thoughts that race through my mind like Olympic sprinters
Chasing down the next conversation I get with you
Filling the silent air with all the things I wish I could tell you now, in this moment
The bed feels different now, each night I lay down in this marathon of missing you
Wishing I could sit with you in silence
Smiling in the darkness as the conversation holds us
The only words we say, I love you, I love you, I love you

maybe I should have expected this
all along
for him to stop while he was ahead
and cut his losses
by desperately searching for the hold button
two and a half weeks before our lives were supposed
to start changing

maybe I rushed this part
this part where we were supposed to grow together
as if we hadn't been doing just that
for the past three years of our lives

but I'd still close my eyes every afternoon
and snuggle into the cotton of your t shirt
the warm glow of the setting sun washing over your walls
feeling like the luckiest girl alive
just to be able to be sitting there
smelling the fabric softener of your bed sheets
lilacs and lavender
feeling like if it weren't for the weight of your hand on my chest
that maybe
I could float away from all of this

two and a half weeks before our lives were supposed to start changing
I realize that
all I really need
is now

It's a strange way to live
watching what feels like everyone
around me be in love
and have their lover
at arms length

I couldn't tell you where mine is right now

I come home and watch my parents
hardly say two words to each other
and think
what I wouldn't give to be able to say
just two words to you
right now

It surely is strange
to feel myself forgetting
your face
your smile
your voice

I force feed myself memories of
the phone calls,
the car rides,
the nights we sat in the bathtub and talked
about anything
the nights we drank ourselves into
oblivion

I missed you so much today that
I called your phone
just to give myself that false hope
for the ten seconds it rang
that you may actually pick up
you didn't pick up

It's been too long
and the cloud of uncertainty hanging over my head
does not allow me to estimate
when it will be
that I am able to do any of these things
again

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.

take a crowbar
to my ribcage
use the scar
as a book mark
and let the dark
remind you
of the time
you said
you would find

better

one night
many moons ago
I laid face down in the middle
of the street
spilling secrets to the concrete
and hoped
the stars would listen
your name poured
out of my mouth
like I was drawing a bath tub
full of doubt
and never stopping
to pull the plug
I'd let the water spill
over the edge and flood
the bathroom floor
forming a hurricane of
memories
where I swore
you loved me
more

I miss the way you'd grind your teeth
in your sleep
driving me to the near brink of insanity
every night
as you crushed all your words into
a fine powder of white noise
and as my eyes adjusted to the darkness
of our black hole bedroom
that exists in our own small infinity
of the universe
I'd find myself staring at you
marveling at your stillness
wondering
where your mind
might have drifted off to
I'd press my body against yours
in a futile attempt to feel every inch of your skin
wanting so desperately to envelope myself in the warmth of your slumber
zipping our fingers together under the ocean of covers
anchoring your body to mine

I am in love with a boy
Who was born blind
In his left eye
I had no idea until one day
His grandmother decided
To fill me in
And I almost laughed because
I saw no tell-tale signs
of this affliction
And like a small child
Acting on a prediction
I covered your eye with
My hands and asked,
"So you can't see me?"
Our noses nearly touching
But our souls feeling far
"No," he replied
"But I  don't need to
To know how beautiful you are."

they told us boys weren't
supposed to be beautiful.
that girls don't get *****
and every single scraped knee
was worthy of a band aid,
and somehow no one made
it okay quite like your mother could.
boys weren't supposed to be beautiful,
but I don't think they ever saw
your eyes like I did.
and something about your smile
made me forget about skinned knees
and broken bones
and your laughter made me not worry
about sticks and stones.
boys weren't supposed to be beautiful,
but you were.
god, you were.

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.

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.

perhaps many years from this day
I will stumble across you
not the actual you,
the you with eyes as brown as mine and
hands that reminded me how to feel

but some other form of you

a ticket stub from that one movie we saw
a couple of months ago
we sat in the back so that no one would know
we spent our time sharing kisses
instead of watching the movie
that we evidently paid eight dollars
and fifty cents each
to go see

or a password on the computer
I never bothered to change
our initials and the date
I couldn't forget if I tried
are still the only combination
of letters and numbers
that have ever completely made sense to me

perhaps many years from this day
I will stumble across you
yes, you, the actual you
with some other girl under your arm
gleaming up at your brown eyes
your hands laced together
as if it had only been her
all along

I will stumble across you
on a busy city street
you are with her
and I am alone

but I will stumble across you
and I will smile.

I've been subconsciously stumbling over the memories for quite awhile now
the remembrances are few and far between
lacing across the insides of my eyelids in a near instantaneous fashion
the creases on your palms
the wrinkle in your shirt
your exhale on my neck
it isn't enough to make sense of it all
quite yet
to put the pieces of us back together
to fully comprehend
the vague recollection of your mass atop of me,
the kiss you plant behind my ear,
the words I speak but cannot hear
it's killing me
knotting my knuckles up with dry wall and
melting into the cotton of your old t-shirt
my bed sheets will whisper his name in the moments among dusk and dawn,
and my fingers still ache for hands that I know
are lifetimes too far gone

I cried taking my
birth control today
because I don't know the next time
I'll even see your face
let alone
feel your body
between my legs

Concept.
I am stopping in a parking lot to pick up a penny - heads up - and wishing that you, wherever you are now, are happy; that you are safe. I stopped wishing for you to be thinking of me too many moons ago to count successfully. You are scrambling through the empty pockets of eternity fishing for loose change.

Concept.
You are thinking of me. I am taking an afternoon nap and you are thinking of me. You aren't exactly sure about how long it's been since we last spoke but something about the swirl of your fingerprints says it's been a while. You think of me once, just this once, and I laugh in my sleep; as if the thought of you isn't something that consumes me every cognizant moment of the day.

Concept.
We are still together, only we're different people now. My head rests in your lap and your fingers ballroom dance through my hair. We are laying on a couch in a room that is much too plain to belong to either of us. You are watching something on TV, and I am watching you. I was always watching you.

Concept.
Everything is different, but nothing's really changed. Your hands have always been a bit too big to belong to my own. My heart was always the one getting sucker punched. I was always a *******. And you always loved to see me bleed.

Concept.
I say that always is a big word, and you say it isn't big enough.

I lie awake wondering if
on your restless nights
You're lying there
Thinking of me too
I haven't cried in weeks
I haven't heard from you in months
And tonight
I'm lying here
Imagining all the places on my body that you've touched
How my own fingertips do not feel like yours
Despite my best efforts
I cannot fool myself into thinking
For even one tired moment
That you are here with me again
Why tonight of all nights
Am I lying here crying?
I have to imagine of course
That this all comes back to you
That surely you're somewhere
On the other side of the world
Thinking of me so strongly that I felt it
All the way back here
And so to that I say
I feel you
You are here with me
You are always here with me
This love we share
Will never leave

And maybe it hasn't hit me yet
but part of me feels like this
is all just a dream
a bad joke,
a cosmic punch line in the waiting
I'll go home tonight
and lay down in our bed
if I can even convince myself
to first leave the couch
where we last kissed
and I will pass the pile of clothes
on the floor of your side of
the bed
and it will feel like someone stole every last breath in my lungs
but I will get it together and regroup
crawling into my side of the bed
feeling tears well up in my eyes as I catch your scent lingering on the pillow
but I will quickly revert my attention to the clothes on the floor
taking comfort in their presence
as if they are saying "im coming right back for these
to put them away"
as if this morning
when you left
was any other morning
and I will wonder
how long I can leave them lying there
before the sight of them brings me to tears
so maybe it hasn't hit me yet
that so many months now stand between us
that the seasons will change
I will turn another year older
the days will get hard
the nights will be long
and you will be gone
and I know there will be days
where I fall to my knees
drowning in tears
and anxiety
and the weight of it all
and all I will want
is to call you
and I know that this is no longer a luxury
we will be given
so maybe it hasn't hit me yet
but god
help me when it does

May
the first day
of a new month
how
appropriate

May
you used to be my favorite month
the weather turns warm
and the rain subsides
my birthday
graduations
and just a general sense
that things
are getting
better

May
today it is pouring down rain
literally
and metaphorically
I cried for the first time last night
in months
a flood of emotions
that have failed
to remain
repressed

May
although if you asked
I would swear to you
that I am still stuck
in January
how have 5 months passed already
where has the time gone
and when will the rest of it go
when

May
nothing good will come of you
this year

I guess
all I ever really wanted
was to be symbolic of something
equal parts happiness and freedom
like the way your flesh lept as your heartbeat slowed inside your chest
as you held her hand
and how my blood turned thick
and cold at the sight of her lips
on your cheek and her smile at
your laughter

I want to tell her that
on the second of September
I kissed you so hard I swore
my lips would have fallen off
had it not been for the way
your voice seemed
to stitch up all the breaking
parts of me

and I wonder if shes seen
the inside of your bedroom yet
where the walls watched us talk and
the windows saw us whisper
midnight secrets

I bet she doesn't even write poetry
about the way you blink when you think
of something good to say or how your shirt wrinkles as you breathe and if she doesn't count your heartbeats before you fall asleep I don't know how I'll live with myself knowing that I lost you to someone who symbolizes happiness with inanimate objects like dog houses and swing sets or white picket  fences and NOT THE WAY YOUR LIPS MOVE WHEN YOU SAY I LOVE YOU OR HOW YOUR VOICE CRACKS AS YOU APOLOGIZE

I don't know how to end this without crying and trying to tell myself that happiness does not only exist
in your kisses
and this is
the closest I'll ever come
to saying I love you
again

its 4 am and I'm drunk off the very thought of you and I'm looking at the moon thinking about the first time we ever kissed and how the sun peeked over your shoulders and for a very brief moment my lips touched yours and your soul touched mine but now I'm alone at 4 in the morning and my blood is cold and slow and I'm staring at the moon wondering if its staring back at me from outer space as I'm forming galaxies of thoughts in my head imagining who invented things like semi colons and sentences and punctuation and I want to break every single grammar rule in existance by telling you that I am the human form of a run on sentence and that I love you more than any string of words could ever hope to say

how great it is to realize
that without you now,
there is nothing keeping me here
here in this town,
in this state,
with these people

how great it is to realize
that now I am alone
and free
free to find love and myself and
love within myself
away from you

how awful it is to realize
that these things aren't great at all
standing here without you now,
I can't help but feel so small
the world is big and our love was great,
but it was great and that was all.

how great it is to realize
that I can stand without you now
and that I will not fall.

I guess I don't know why coming here brings me peace. The obvious answer would be, it's the beach, what isn't peaceful about that? But it isn't the calming slosh of the shoreline or the gentle breeze through my hair or the warm sand between my toes. It isn't even my new tan I'm sporting from coming here for hours upon hours nearly every day.
It's the thought. The possibility. I look out over the waves onto the horizon of the endless sea of blue. And I think of you. Part of me finds it unbelievably frustrating that I have absolutely no idea where you are in this world, but when I'm here, I am free to imagine that you're here, too, just outside of my reach.
And it's okay to be lonely here. There are plenty of people here by themselves. Reading a book, taking a nap, or simply doing nothing. That's the thing; no one looks at you strangely when you show up to the beach in a military town toting your bookbag and your flip flops in hand. Everyone is missing someone here.
And it was here that I decided I wanted a sailboat. Someday. With you. Someday when we would be able to use it. Both of us. Whenever we wanted. No sea schedule or training or deployment stopping us from waking up one morning and deciding that today, we're sailing away from here for a little while.
But that day is many, many days away, and today, I'm simply sitting at the beach, alone.

Isn't it something? How everything lines up just so. Their car and your car. You never stop to think how miraculous an eight-sided piece of red metal is until it could have turned back the hands of time. We would have stopped. They would have gone straight. no police cars, no ambulances, no fire trucks. No crying mothers and no worried lovers. No blood. No bruises. No nothing. And somehow, this reminds you of him. Somehow, years later, everything still reminds you of him. Loose change or a rainy day or a slow song. The collision of everything. So what. So you are sitting on the side of an unfamiliar country road six feet deep in a cornfield. The windshield is shattered. You don't remember the air bags going off, but they did. Everyone says there are signs. As many sleepless nights you spent trying to go back and find them you always come away empty handed. The officers are asking, at what point did you know you were going to hit their car? you feel your heart tugging at your chest, reminding you of the night you asked him when it was that he fell out of love with you. The officer doesn't understand. Nobody understands. All anyone wants is an answer. As if it's ever that simple. Back to this stop sign. How a handful of seconds could have prevented everything. How a little more love could have saved us. How I loved you until there was nothing left but bones and skin and how it still wasn't enough. How I stretched myself thin and how I still couldn't reach you. I cannot remember the moment of impact. I do not know why you stopped loving me. all I know, is that it happened.

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.

I could never quite understand why you wanted me
why you chose me when you could have had her, or her, or even her
it perplexed me to think that you
genuinely loved me,
because I had yet to learn to love myself
but it warmed my heart to say
that you were the best story sitting on my bookcase,                  
that you made me feel like the sun was something you had built for me
or to remember all those tear stained nights when you had begged me to stay
and I have finally figured out why now,
because I had made you feel the same way

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.

"If you love someome, let them go."

Easier said than done. How am I supposed to let you go? How do I unclench my fists, how do I unhook my hands, how do I unstitch my heart? I was never good at taking things apart; I only ever knew how to keep them together.

"If they come back, they're yours..."

Coming back. This quote fails to acknowledge all the lost time in between leaving and returning. All the days that run together like a mess you don't know how to clean up, the weeks that pass agonizingly slow, the months that go by without ever hearing from you.

I know how the quote goes, I know how it ends. Saying it out loud tends to turn my stomach and squeeze my heart until it hurts. I can't handle that possibility - the possibility of you never really being mine to begin with. It's a thought I won't let my mind try to rationalize. It's a theory I refuse to accept.

You were mine. We shared four amazing years of laughter, of adventure, of love. The days went by quickly and the weeks passed with ease, each month came and went without any attention from us. Time didn't matter.
It hardly existed at all.

You were mine. I loved you beyond a reason why, beyond pride, beyond fault or mistake. I loved you regardless of circumstance and without obligation. I loved you so much it consumed me. I loved you, and you were mine to love.
You were mine,
but maybe I was never yours.

"if they don't, they never were."

Sometimes I see you in glimpses
Snapshot moments with a foggy focus
A man opening the door to our apartment building for his wife
A boy wrapping his arm around his girlfriend as they walk across a parking lot
Staring for too long,
Watching how his fingers fall through her hair
Their smiles, their laughter,
Their normal Tuesday afternoon
They do not even know I am watching
They do not even know
I exist
But today
Their lives played a vital role in our story
These candid moments bring me hope
And I feel the memory of you coming to life in my stomach
Spreading like warmth throughout my body
Until a smile forms on my lips
Oh, how I'm missing you more than ever
And this is the closest I will come
To feeling your love
For months

You told me I would fall asleep much faster if I would just put my phone down at night
Count backwards from one hundred, maybe
While thinking about little Bo peep counting her sheep
Or a cow leaping over the moon
But what you don't understand is that every night before I fall asleep
I have to look at a picture of you before I close my eyes
And if I open them again
I have to look at another picture
Because I want you to be the last thing that I see every single night before I fall asleep
And if words like these just so happen to be crawling up the back of my throat
Flying through my fingertips dying to be told
Then that they must
Because when our days are all sold and the air has turned cold
I will turn to the page that my brain somehow holds
And shout from the rooftops a love that's too old
And so off I go to sleep
As you count your sheep
And my love for you will not go untold.

I wished you happy birthday, and washed up on the island of lost love. When was it that we fell out of sync? I want to retrace each moment, pin point the exact place in time where you looked at me and saw someone else. Where you stopped opening your eyes at all when I was underneath you. I know these truths are the hard ones, but I need to know. I wished you happy birthday and I didn't say that I loved you. It was hard, like talking to a friend and noticing that they have something stuck in their teeth. Do you say something or not? I've got all of your promises stuck in my teeth. All the toothpicks in the world wouldn't help. Maybe I'm keeping them like souvenirs for when you decide you mean them again. I wished you happy birthday, and you said thank you. Why do our conversations look like two people speaking who have never even been in love? Do you remember? All the long nights, all the first times, all the last times. I don't think I could ever forget. I wished you happy birthday, and I couldn't help myself, I had to ask. "Was I first?" there's something reassuring about asking questions you already know the answers to. But I can't help hearing that children's song dancing in the back of my brain. "First is the worst, second is the best," but second isn't best. I was so consumed with being your first, you being my first, that I forgot the most prominent childhood truth. First is the worst.
I wanted to be your last.

I feel sick to my stomach when I think of you kissing anyone else
I'm sick with the torturous knowledge that none of them could ever hope to love you like
I did
I want to tell her that I held your heart in my hands for so long that it became commonplace until the day you decided you wanted it back
I want to call you a re-gifter
But I can't seem to get the bees out of my throat
Swallowing glass has to be less painful than this
Than watching you look for someone else like I haven't been standing right in front of you all this time
Yesterday was my first Thanksgiving without you in years
And I'm not sure I remember how to be thankful for anything else
I'm trying to remember the last sunset we saw together
The sky painted itself black and blue and I pretended not to identify with that
I've been writing poetry warning myself of this day for years
And taking this ring off my finger doesn't make it any less painful
or any easier to fool myself into thinking
that I haven't shoved the last 4 years of my life into a box underneath my bed
Like forgetting you is really that simple
I wonder if the ring will still fit by the time you come around again
I wonder if you'll come around again
at all
I want to tell those girls that you don't love them
I wonder if they've imagined what your bedroom looks like yet
I wonder if they know that
the valleys of your mattress are still waiting for me to come back
Waiting to transform against our weight and fill the spaces between your shoulders and my spine
I want to tell them that your walls watched us kiss so many times that it became as common as you turning the lights off
But none of that even matters anymore
and this is the saddest holiday of them all

I couldn't name the emptiness I felt
or identify exactly why the emotion
or lack thereof
was rearing its head into the cave of my chest
and making its presence known
but it was

I could no longer ignore the deafening volume of the world
and its constant reminders of my evolution into reclusion
from my father

I missed him in the deepest parts of my soul;
parts I was convinced were no longer capable
of feeling anything close to something this dangerous

missing you meant I had openly admitted defeat
in our lifelong war of silence
and surrendered to the weakness associated
with simply being human
unfortunately,
waving the white flag
just wasn't a risk either of us
were willing to take
for the sake of one another

the weight of it all was entirely too much to bear the night
I drove past the old video store we frequented
in my childhood
only to see it now,
after being abandoned for ten years,
reduced to rubble and ash
against the barren earth
where some of my fondest memories
were first formed

something unnamable was born in a part of my stomach
I hadn't previously known existed
as I realized with distinct distaste
that the world would continue to find new ways
to remind me
of the pain I thoughtlessly inflicted
upon you

*(I'm sorry, and I wish you knew.)

Lately
The days are growing longer
The sun inside of me is heavy
And tired under the weight of it all
All these days without you
The sky collapses again tonight and
I am drowned in yet another puddle
Of quiet tears that soak your pillow
In a memory so bitter sweet
I feel every muscle in my body go limp
As I force myself to remember your smile
Forgetting is easy
Easier than shrinking behind the cloud of doubt that follows me wherever I go
Sinking to the floor in a pile of broken bones
As if god himself had tossed me like a bowling ball
Making no apologies for the mess I've made of everything that was once in my path
People tell me I am honorable for "holding down the fort" while you are away and don't give it a second thought
They don't know the half of it
I want to say there's nothing honorable about holding everything together with pins and needles
Trying every day to keep myself together
Keep from falling apart at the seams
You made so many holes when you left
No number of nails could hope to hold down this fort without you
Because everything feels empty when you're gone
And you've been gone for so long
I don't even know what it feels like
to be whole anymore

you came and you went
just like that
you were here
and then you weren't
my calendar reminds me
that we spent 18 days together
but every bone in my body swears
it felt more like 18 hours

i remember seeing your face
across that enormous room
for the first time in months
and everything inside me
set itself on fire
there's really no words to explain
the way that feels
no way that makes sense to someone
who hasn't experienced it themselves

but let me try

it was a little like breathing
for the first time
in a very long time
waking up from a nightmare
and gasping for breath
the comforting realization
that it was only just a dream
it was kind of like that

it was a little like holding your breath
underwater
and finally coming up for fresh air
filling your lungs with sunshine and summer
and being happy
it's simple
it was kind of like that

you think you'll cry but you don't
there is no time for tears
you spent months crying them and
there's simply no place for them any longer
there is only room
for happiness

you'll wake up the next morning
if you ever even fall asleep
and he will startle you
because for months you slept alone
and this body feels unfamiliar and strange
but you love it
and it is home

you will try to find the right words
just as i am now
to tell people about it
how amazing it is
was
and you will fail
you will fail every time
but you try anyway

so yes,
it was a little like that
and a whole lot
like nothing
i have ever experienced
before.

but what is a broken home
when you've never known anything else?
anything beside empty chairs
and closed doors
floors that dont tell you
who's walking by the creaks
I dont recall how old I was
when I stopped peeking in your bedroom
every morning
to come crawl into bed with you
it seems so strange to me now
because we cant even seem to look
each other in the eye
and every goodbye is either prior to
or followed by
a sigh
I'm not quite sure when it started
and I don't know
that it can ever be stopped
we fought about simple things,
dinner and movies and
who'd pick up when the telephone rings
the arguments are silent now
nestled between closing doors
and awkward hello's
because we both know
I can never say for sure
when the door
will open again