I'm coming undone.
I used to see you everyday,
now, you're gone.
You're not here to eat my leftovers when I'm too full,
you're not here to keep me warm when I'm cold,
you're not here to hold me while I fall deep into the abyss of my own mind.
You are all I have.
You're leaving me here alone.
Its been less than a week,
and I feel like I'm dying without you.
Without hearing your sweet voice,
without your touch,
without your eyes studying the way I look at you.
I just need  you here with me to keep me from loosing everything.

it’s the razor's edge of winter
and kissing you smells like mustache wax.

you drive me to the hardware store to pick up galvanized wire
so that i can build miniature shadow people
that make us laugh for hours

it’s hard to find the soft parts of you to rest my head on
but it’s always the simple parts that i like best

date a boy who owns a sewing machine
and takes you to feminist modern art exhibits

date the son of a librarian
who can tell you all your favorite stories
while you fall asleep

date a boy who wears a chalkboard helmet
to ride a motorcycle to the top of the mountain
to see the city lights

date a boy who follows you up mountains
to kiss you in the wind
and run his hands through your hair

and date a boy with glasses
who pushes them up on the bridge of his nose
after he kisses you

your voice still sounds like flowers
but now your hands feel familiar

Artichokes will always make me think

of you drunk in Vermont on your 22nd birthday.

Giggling and tired from the rocks of the mountains

you spilled both our drinks and wrung your hands

in complete defiance of giving a ****.

He asks me to choke him about fifteen times a day. Fourteen times, I do, but the fifteenth, I take his throat in my hands and I kiss him everywhere he used to hurt. Somewhere along the way I lost track of what it meant to hurt. I tip toe tightrope walk across the tiniest line between good pain and bad pain and I am wearing the daintiest dress you’ve ever seen.

I wonder if a younger version of myself, even a year younger, could look me in the eyes and tell me what they thought they were doing this whole time. I wonder if I could hand that version of myself a sliver of a clock, a grain of sand from an hourglass, a tick of a kitchen timer so that she could have something to stand on, from a step stool perspective of what this year would bring.

When he grabs my wrist and pins me to the sheets like a butterfly, he uses his eyelashes to tickle my cheeks.

When he looks at me and my stomach drops, I tell him he’s handsome and he tells me he needs a haircut.

His voice is like flowers, his voice is like puddle skipping, hand-holding, his voice is almost like Thursdays and his work is to speak the words of men long dead. But I like his words best, I like his stammerings and stutterings and ums and ohs and the slip of vernacular into something more spectacular than the slip of his tongue into my mouth.

Hard Drawn
I found a hole in your ribcage

just above the hard piece of who you were

lodged in my throat

insects on my tonsils

and I found an eyelash on your cheek

just below the wire frames

beneath your perspective

I find myself in between the butterfly shoulder blades of your swan spine.

I think I might stay a while.