depression feels like heartbreak at sixteen  
perhaps that’s why I always think of you  
when that unyielding squeeze starts to roll  
around my stomach like a rotting stone  

it's strange to think that of all my stories  
yours is the one that always wants to be read  
we were just sketches and outlines and isn’t  
time supposed to be the great physician

it seems timing is everything Once Love and  
ours was always perfect in the worst way  
just right to wedge you between my newborn
ribs like a thistle that sticks to my bones  
  
so I chase you like salvation  
knowing you have none to give  
and I’m always running  
in dreams

did I love you first, or best or most  
only the wind knows  
  
can I track love’s course, measure  
its comings and goings in  
charts and pin marks or  
  
turn back my rotations to weigh  
all my heart’s prized indiscretions  
as if my balances weren't  
strewn with kissed fingerprints  

all I really know is that in  
those hazy dream days  
my answer was yes-  
the best youth knew how  

and when the wind tastes  
like summer honey sweat  
I still miss you

Was it love or desperation?
I can't remember the distinction.  

When you're starved
each crumb feels like grace.

Each small affection
a fervent offering
to a broken beggar.  

But at this point,  
I'll take what little
I can get.

I cannot love you but I do.  

I cannot hold you or feel you under my fingertips  

I cannot run my hand from your shoulder down your arm,  
slip my fingers into yours and clasp hands  

I cannot quench my lips with yours  
or taste you on my tongue  

I cannot feel your warmth under the sheets on winter nights  
or the cool of your breath on my neck in summer  

I cannot see you in the morning, hair tousled and sleep in your eyes  
or when you walk around the house so casually  
scant, pretending you don't know that it drives me wild  

I cannot find my world in you at the end of the day  
or quicken my heart when I hear your keys in the door  

I cannot wipe your tears or hold you when the world is broken  

I cannot share the joy and sadness in us both, as one  
who understands the scars on your arms and  
on your soul  

I cannot call your name in passion  
or for comfort in the middle of the night  
or see the promise in your eyes as the syllables tumble over my lips

I cannot hear your voice with its bubbly and sultry intonations  
whispering songs and secrets to me  
or get lost in it's sound for hours  

I cannot love you in my arms,  
So I will love you in poems and memories and dreams  
and sing a song for you in the silence

will you come to my funeral?  
I'd like to imagine that you would.
but you probably won't even know that I'm gone  
until months or years have held me underground

it would be fitting
in some morbid irony
to have our many intersections,
always crossing at bad timings or circumstance,
be punctuated with the greatest chasm of all
the last time that you see me

but at least I won't be there to **** it up
Anymore

It seems that we were always destined  
to be made up of stolen moments  
Distilled seconds filled with the universe.  

In a hallway  
In hands clasped under a desk
In twilight whispers over copper threads
that stitched us together
In pools of street light and darkness
flickering through the windows of a bus

If I could choose one moment
to stretch out into eternity
god, it would be us

But in truth the grains of sand
that measured our length and breadth
were scattered few and fleeting

Forever looking in others
for what we were always destined to lose

ships sailing;  
night sky navigating along  
divergent constellations  
that plotted our courses.  

meeting only where our stars crossed,  
or collided  
in sparks.  
sharing ports for a few years,  
a summer,  
a night.  
only to weigh anchor  
as the sky shifted,  
following after the next coordinate  
on our charts.  

it has been so long  
since I have seen your sails  
tilted and headstrong towards  
my waters,  
since the stars on our charts  
found an overlapping point.  
I wonder if we are still sailing  
under the same sky.  

or perhaps you are dry docked  
having forsaken the sea  
for shore,  
and left behind the lilt  
of the tides.  

whispers of you  
on the waves,  
as I hoist my sails  
once more.

I held myself to you,  
Desperate to fit to your curves  
And push myself into your gaps.  
I hid at your center
When you were mostly edges,  
Still filling in the spaces around you.  
All your pieces jumbled and piled together  
Waiting for you to dive into them  
And fit each fragment along your lines
Piecing together your parts.  

Each piece betraying me more.  
Calling me out as an imposter  
As I tried to hide my edges from you,  
Carve off my corners and make me round.  
Fearing as your shape emerged
You would realize I didn’t fit  
Within your borders,
Discarding me for a piece that did.  
And I i would see your puzzle  
Complete    
Without me.

I am stone  
impenetrable and rigid in my moorings  
duty bound to be -  
the foundation for feet and  
dreams that stack each brick atop me in  
false hopes that I will withstand time  

the weakness inside me mining out my ores  
each one chiseled and dug out until  
the vein is bled dry  
a cavern made by the relentless drip of everything i am not  
filing the space between my skin with nothing and  
praying that my seams will hold me together  

I am fine

I want it to stop.
not anything in particular,
as if one thing could fill me, or fix me
or glue all the cracks that are leaking me out

I want it to stop.
just everything
everything that's inside me

I feel like a void
empty and full of longing,
and a suffocating panic, knowing it will never stop
that I will never be filled and i will stay like this.
until I'm not like this.
because I am not.

so i think about being not
more than being,
and somehow that seems better
and easier, and hopeful

If only some of those comforts,
in words and arms and love,
spoken over me in memoriam
could find their way to me
while they could still find me

perhaps they wouldn't need
to be said at all