You were the best blanket
Now my coffee's my radiator and lover, both
I don't care to fix my shirt as it falls off my shoulder,
And sunlight bleeds over the bay
Paint splashes across the flowers in the windowbox,
Teenagers ride their bikes across the lane
Boats set off from the docks
Everything is just the same as when you left
I singed my hair with a lighter and took your picture from the wall
But you're still full of empty promises,
And I'm still sitting here, sipping coffee, waiting for you,
So nothing's really changed at all.

(at least the *** is new)

Do you remember when the light in our eyes was brighter than the light of the stars,
when we used to tell each other reasons that we didn’t believe in god?
Tonight the clouds closed their eyes, clenched their fists, and swallowed the stars.
The older I get the less the moon stays to kiss me goodnight.
Tonight I’m praying to a rhetorical question.
I used to tell you that the silence was one of the reasons I didn’t believe.
Being friends with you has taught me that the silence is the response.
I’ve learned that my prayers are selfish.

The past few months i’ve peeled you off of me like a layer of dead skin.
I left my fragile exoskeleton on the shelf next to the questions you never asked me and the ***** you never gave.
I know all the reasons you hate me.
They’re the same reasons I hate myself;
I don’t know if that makes it hurt more or less,
but I would rather rot alone
than be pluto caught in your orbit.

My jealousy is oozing out in purple ink and sloppy cursive
because my stained lungs have finally given out.
I stopped shouting at you when I realized that
no one has ever fully heard something that weren’t ready to hear.
You only ever needed one reason to believe that the sky was empty,
Because god looked back at you in every mirror you passed.
Tonight I’m praying to a perverted question
just to prove you wrong.

Sincerely,
–if you need me i’m right where you left me

I can't stop thinking about you still
Yet, i  know missing you is not the right thing to do
Not that i can help it, each time a thousand thoughts of you flock my consenting mind
But, my well nurtured hurt has become the antidote,
It sedates the uprising of memorable moments we once shared.

Now, each time I think of our happy moments,
Sadness thereby follows, and then, pain...

Free from my *******
     I despair that I am so
No longer shackled
     where will I go

I ripped myself apart
     from a beautiful wall
Now on my own
     I must relearn to crawl

Or like wet leaves
Along the bank
Of the canal
I was found;
Too late, and useless.
An organic refuse but beautiful -
Beautiful in moonlight.

So deep.
So far beneath
The topsoil
I had forgotten sunlight
I had forgotten
Sky
And all the promises you'd broken

And all I had done.
These worms
My silent neighbours
In this
Premature grave
That I had made
An unforgiving
Home of;

An unforgiving
Wife of.
A love of.
A son of.
A blanket and shroud
And my own flesh and blood of
And buried the promises.
Buried the lover.
With curses, and flowers.

And sonnets
I wrote in the bad times
When night would not end
And I drank myself foolish;
And kisses.
The kisses you owe me.
The kisses I owe you.
The debt never settled.

The truth long forgotten -
That you were mine, always.
That I was the only.
The tender, the keeper.
The jewel and the seeker
The lover
The lover
The hands still in slumber.
The head at my shoulder.

The soft breaths that bound me.
The stranger, that found me;
That fed me
And clothed me
And warmed me by winter -
And lit up the streetlamps.
And scattered the starlight.
The burden you carried
That shattered your body.

And you were so strong, then;
So valiant. So I bore
That strength like a shadow
Until you were weakened;
And buried me, too late.
Too late but still breathing.
These wet leaves in moonlight
Reflecting the skyline.

I’m not sorry we were in love,
and I’m not sorry we broke up,
but I am sorry we couldn’t stay friends.
There isn’t a mind with only happy memories,
but I find myself living in those the most.

at least now.

It took me some time to get over the anger,
and the sadness.

But now all I think about is Mac n’ cheese at 2 am.
Hockey nights, freezing my *** off so you’d feel alive.
The first time I thought,  I love this woman, while you cried in my arms.
The first time I said “I love you, my dear.” sitting across the bed from you.
Making fun of the stupid people on the bus and their “it’s called two-s-day because it is the second day of the week.”
Watching you stay upright for an entire run down the bunny hill.
Waking up in the morning to the cracking of your back,
Going to bed with your toes bundled up in socks.
Kissing your forehead, because I loved all of you, even the parts you didn’t like.
Taking your rings off just to pretend that someday I’d put a different one on.
Meeting your mom and realizing that you are the same person only 20 years younger and 30 pounds lighter
Watching the sun turn your green eyes blue, then blue to green, then green to grey.
Drinking that god awful mix you thought was *** and coke.
Showing you what an actual *** and coke should taste like, and laughing when you said “Too sweet.”
The nights you’d lure me from the controller to bed with a lack of underclothes.
The mornings I’d ease the tension the night built in your back.
Feeling you quiver and gasp for air as you reached ecstacy with me.
The first time we reached it simultaneously… while watching hockey.
Hearing you say something in a kid voice when you were being cute.
The first time you kissed me, instead of waiting for my lips.
Always feeling super lazy when you had papers for class written a week out and I hadn’t even started on.
The way you held me after the cave broke me.
The way you held me when I saw you for the first time in months.
Snowball the bunny, and his ***** stuffed ears, I’m sure he’ll hate me forever.
Watching you struggle through Spyro the Dragon and not saying anything cause you hated people to tell you what to do.
The last time we snuck out to make love holding you in my arms.
The smell of your hair against my face…
I’ll always miss those moments my entire life,
I just hope you’ll miss me too.

my lips try to hold
the lingering taste

of your
love you, love you, farewell

cactus holding water
from a rainfall

that happens only once
each year

I am thinking Arizona

when you suggest
we start seeing other horizons

tumbleweeds where words should be

sandy tongue apologies

dehydrated and hallucinating

I mistook you for an oasis

If I could freeze a moment in time,
May it be the moment I lost him.
The frame where his love and lust turned to dust
Faster than a shooting star,
And more painful than realizing for the first time
That wishes do not come true.
So I can study the look of his face
When his façade fades,
And anger becomes all too real.
So when my therapist asks how I am,
I will be able to see the face, his face,
Of unforgiving, furious forlorn
In the ink bruises blotched on the card.
Funny that my first word was “ink”
And my first love was the face frowning in the flecks of it.
Freeze the frame I lost him
For, then I will not fall for it in the future
Trying to stitch someone together
So they can simply snip the ties
That once held me in one piece.
And maybe the reason hugs feel right
Is because each is a thread
Building stronger, binding my lost pieces tight,
Back to where they belong on my body.
Freeze the frame I lost him
So he will stand beside me once more
Before I forget how his hands felt
Around my waist.
Because I only feel the burn of them
Around my throat,
Stealing my breath away
A different style than before.

Freeze the frame I lost him
Until I realize that I did not lose him-
He lost me.