Through monochrome skies
I watch the
stippled
Leaves of auburn
rot.
as time turns back
to that one autumn,
We parted through cooling ashes
leaving my heart's blood
to fall as red leaves

I kept waiting for someone to say my name
like it mattered —
like it meant something more
than the smoke curling from their mouth
or the pause before their next thought.

I kept practicing how I’d answer,
as if the right inflection
could make me worth remembering.
I kept hanging around
like a seat at a table no one was saving —
elbows off the surface, back straight,
trying not to look desperate —
taking notes in the margins of other people’s lives,
highlighting the parts I thought I belonged to.

I filled my pockets with reasons to stay
and still got left behind.
I burned through summers,
cut my teeth on promises made in passing cars.
I stood on porches barefoot, whispering,
Say it back. Please say it back.
But they never did.

I should’ve known better —
should’ve stopped twisting my ribs into ribbon,
threading my spine through the eye of a needle.
I kept breaking myself down into fractions —
a fifth of my pride, a sixth of my spine —
like if I whittled myself thin enough,
I could slip through your keyhole
and rise up like incense burning in your room.

But you were always somewhere else —
feet planted in some other city,
hands too full to catch what I kept throwing.
I was all green lights and loose laces,
always running to meet you halfway —
never noticing you weren’t moving.

I feasted on Adderall
and kept my phone on loud.
I swallowed nights whole
and called it hunger.
Or else I slept for days —
stumbled downstairs with breath like battery acid,
ate three bowls of raisin bran and no water.
My bones went soft as rotting fruit.
My dreams felt like something I could stream —
pause, rewind, resume —
binge-watching my pleading in real time,
begging the screen to glitch out a better ending.

I chewed the quiet until my teeth ached —
gnawed on the hours like stale bread.
Nights stretched thin,
a damp washcloth wrung out too many times.
I stayed up rewriting the last thing you said,
like if I shifted the punctuation
I could make it kinder.
Turned your ellipses into commas,
your cold period into a question mark.
I swore if I curved the words just right,
they’d fold into something softer —
something I could survive.

I spent that week pulling myself apart —
scrubbing my skin until it blushed raw,
stripping it like wallpaper,
scrapping your name out of my throat
like a fish hook.
I kept your words in a jar under my bed —
tight-lidded and hissing like a hornet’s nest.

I kissed the air where you should’ve been
and tasted copper and sweat.
Pressed my tongue to the place it stung
and thought,
This is what love leaves you with —
a mouth full of blood
and a story no one believes.

I kept the lights low for weeks after.
And one morning, I woke up,
swallowed the silence like a dare.
I cut my name out of the air with my teeth.
I let the hurt stick under my nails —
dark and jagged —
and I kept writing anyway.

I spit the silence out like a pit —
sharp, bitter, black.
It hit the floor and rolled,
and for the first time,
I didn’t follow it.

I let it rot where it landed.
Let the flies have their fill.
Let the maggots move in.
Let the earth swallow it whole.
Let it die twice.
Let the ground forget it ever lived.

She poetically talks about how we are two asymptotes
As we got infinitely closer
We got infinitely farther away

Or maybe we are parallel—
Maybe we never really met
But forever are bound going the same way

“If only I could make you forget.”
As if forgetting would do anything
But have me make the same mistake again

Maybe we are a tangent line
Only meeting once
Then disappearing forever

Or maybe I am i,
Imaginary, irrational, impossible—
A unicorn in the margins of your notes,
A number that doesn’t exist,
Except when the equation demands it.

You called me that once,
A unicorn,
Something too rare to be real,
Too strange to hold onto.

But even imaginary numbers have value,
So tell me, if I was never real—
Why does the math still haunt you?

Sweet little bird with stormy eyes
You are not mine
Flap away to find
One of your kind
One that loves the mountains
One that loves the darkness at night
One that loves the calmness
Of the black and white knights

Funny little bird with eyes of the sea
You are not mine to keep
Fly away you will see
That I have set you free
I may have bruised your heart
But sweetie,
I didn’t tear it apart

Strong little bird your eyes are green
They are like the grass of spring
Dry your tears
And don’t you fear
When I locked you out
It was not to make you shout
My window was not your home
You will find your own

Kind little bird your eyes are like the bark
Of the tree you found and made your mark
I must point out
You’re happy now
Can’t you see?
You are better off without me

The Starbucks was torn down
where my fantasies of us
were set apart from
tangibles that shattered
my existence-
its been five years since then
and I never wrote a metaphor
better to describe the mark
that was left on that day
or in the inevitability that
all things must change

Because I once painted
a dark haired girl
the color of my world,
it was art on its way to self-demise
overshadowed by
the comfort of
those nights that we would hide,
blending into our
chameleon moonlight,
she left me with many questions
but the answer to only one:
becoming empty enough to know
how not to love

This lesson was carved
into the stone
of that suburban parking lot,
a reflection of her
succinct goodbye
that collided with the surface of
every whisk to
breakfast and sunshine
she rejected in my room,
engulfing me in combusted lies
mixed with the scent of coffee
and fleeting perfume

I was left smoldered
on concrete
with the opus of
an imbalanced soul
that reduced me to nothing inside
except reluctant aches that
ravished in our severed ties,
and all I could do was sit there
basking in the rays
of the only time
we ever shared
morning light

Eight years of commitment
to file away-
I’ve never been good
at finishing tasks,
I fiddle my thumbs when asked
dramatizing a victimized
perception
to anyone who will listen
as if they aren’t suffering
in the dirt,
as if I'm special
when no one is special
because we are all perfection
reflected on earth

As a perfected being
it is my responsibility
to let you go,
to lay down the second arrow
and redirect this energy
into a meditative state,
yet my finger slips
on the bowstring
and the cushion stays
fluffed

Instantly my psyche
self-deprecates
and turbulent sensations
erupt, over time,
and how it was spent
leading up to this exact moment
but all that arises is
loneliness,
allowing the arrow
to fall into my chest

Telling myself over and over,
"alone doesn't have to mean
lonely,
just move forward"
until the double-edged sword
cuts this perceived loss
out of my gut
and humility bleeds through
as a reminder
that we only part to meet again,
whether in this life
or a different one

A highlight of consequence
for believing in
everlasting phenomenon,
and to show value in
unlearning resistance
to the push and pull
of ocean and moon
because acceptance
heals all pain,
but to cling only strikes odds
with gravity,
forcing the second arrow
loose

Each and every single day,
Doesn't matter what I do,
You're always here to make me pay,
For all the pain I've put you through.
A shallow shell of long lost love,
A vengeful scourge with black tar tears,
You're always here to give more of
My memories, regrets and fears.

You've cursed me, shackled me,
Forever with unyielding chains,
That won't let my heart go free.
My heart bleeds in its constraints.
It yearns for you, its own maltreater,
A masochistic kind of love,
"I don't want life. I only need her!"
It prays and begs to up above.

The chains grow spikes, the blood is pouring,
Every day, a hard fought battle,
And through it all, my heart's imploring
For one last day when it could have her.

No matter where I look,
No matter how much more I run,
Even as I write this book,
I know you'll be my only one.
And even if you've ever cursed me,
I'll accept my lonely fate,
A punishment for all my wronging,
One that I could never hate.

By now these bitter winds should have blown me apart.
This void of emptyness I carry inside is heavy.
Time no longer moves.
It twists....
                 ...  and warps... slows...
                                                    Almost stops.

This blackhole holds the light prisoner, illuminating all the wrong I've done.

You and I were the tree and the vine,
I was yours and you were mine.
I often felt that I was the tree,
for all the roots that came under me.
You were the vine, beautiful and light;
I loved you best for never clinging too tight.
You said that all along it was I who clung,
and then and there something died where I hung.
This tree of mine had changed its leaves,
and grown contempt within its eaves.
And I, the vine and parasite
was bid a prompt and cold goodnight.
By the time I fell to the forest floor,
life as I knew it was no more.