Eyes. Heartbreak is her sunlit memory barely held by a wooden clothespin. It hangs and glares before your eyes, mocking as it fades into an empty filmstrip. Heartbreak is a lost soul left to perish in her ghost-town, and warmer sunsets are lifetimes away. A wonderwall left standing, pinned polaroids, desperate scratches. You had fought hard and long, for this, but homes are made for breaking and crumbling and leaving, especially in the losing side.

Mouth. Heartbreak is a paper-tag of a goodbye caught in her lips. It is a metaphor that melts at the soft space under your tongue, a certain bittersweet taste made for drowning with a cold lager, a stranger’s whispers, and the perils of his unfiltered cigarette kiss. Heartbreak is taming a manic scream into a delicate, defeated sigh, out of sync with the way she breathed. But then sighing still hurts, and breathing still hurts because you’re alive – you’re so ******* alive for this unbuffered pain.

Chest. Heartbreak is begging your chest not to break amid a listzomaniac rush. Heartbreak is a prosaic throbbing, a treacherous ***** stuck in your ribs, begging to be held like it doesn’t hurt. Heartbreak is a site of buried lavender lithiums, asking for a eulogy; but silence is equally as oppressive. It is your body betraying you, like a city undone by its smokes. It is a quiet word – not a poem, because poems are beautiful despite the pain, and this isn’t. This isn’t.

Hands. Heartbreak is your shaky hand flipping through the last three pages of a tragedy — a heroine dies, a stray star falls, a maiden leaves on a horse-drawn carriage. There is no changing of the ending. Heartbreak is reaching for the empty space in bed, leaving your fingers in technicolored bruises. How can emptiness break one’s bones? Heartbreak is scrubbing your skin dry, raw, and untouchable where she once laid her kisses. Heartbreak is your nails digging through her letters in utter despair — for invisible ink, a promise in the postscript, an estranged lover in familiar flesh, only to find torn sheets, spilled wine, and finality.

Legs. Heartbreak is coming home to ***** laundry all over these cold, wistful floors. Heartbreak is walking in hushed tiptoes only to trip and fall down a memory lane – a kaleidoscope of all the wounds that can possibly hurt. It is catching an empty train to somewhere unloving her is possible – doable. Heartbreak is teaching your legs to run away from the chaos of her naked skin, and not to fall at her feet. But still, you fall and you fall and you break what’s left of your bones chasing after something that’s already gone – long before it has said goodbye. So turn your back and hold your heart — it breaks harder, louder, and worse before it settles down and sits as quiet aching: a forgotten filmstrip, a soundless breath, a calm poem, a serene night.

what is the percentage
that i miss you
that i reminisce us
what is the chance
that you miss me too
that you miss us
what is this feeling
that i thought of you
that i create an image of you
is this ninety-nine percent
confirming
believing
that we miss it
that we must kiss it
to close it
to end it
coz 1% is not ours
to take
to risk

xoxo

Their smile was 6:03 am.

Jarring, mostly, like an alarm set at the wrong time. But comforting when you’re looking for it, when it’s the one thing you need to bring yourself back.

You never know when you’ll wake up with her hair just brushing against your fingers,
the steady rise and fall of her chest accompanied by the light from a laptop playing a movie you know word for word.

Their smile will be the last thing your bleary eyes focus on after a night of subsisting on energy drinks and the thrill of the essay you submitted 30 seconds before the deadline.

You wonder where you are in his arms, if you’re only second place in her heart. Your gaze shifts between him smiling down at you and the neon green alarm clock on your bedside table.

It’s 6:04 am. The sun winks through the blinds. You roll out of bed like clockwork. They grasp your hand before you could get away, kiss your wrist the way they do every Thursday morning, and offer to cook you breakfast.

The smell of oolong still speaks your name. In the tea and spice shop I drift among leaves and peppercorns, petals and sugar,  I want to fade into the muted tones of flavorful hulls, curl into the scent of cinnamon and cardamom. Pulling down the iron goddess of mercy, I realize the veneer of curled baroque leaves rest on a sandbag. Shadowed abundance, a pretty lie, hollow, futile. Too much like us. The Cheshire glimmers of what we could have been. What I always wanted you to be, and what you sometimes were. A small edge, tiny supply to fill my cup, flavor fading too quickly. Replacing the jar, I realize there must have been a last day I named you mine.  The last time I called you boyfriend, partner—by our last talk, it was already finished, the last note in a fading song, off tune. I cannot recall the shape of my lips, the weight of your name, the tenor of my voice, the bend of my tongue, much less the listener. I still hear you, through the broken measures of a desperate song. You say you still love me, but perhaps I never told you, dear, I prefer coffee to tea.

making you want to stay and keep talking to me has me chewing on my tongue, filling my mouth with blood.
that is what you taste like, this is what fear tastes like.
i need you to stay.
ask me for my name goddamit.
ask me for something, anything i beg you.
there is so much blood inside my mouth





im scared you are going to see it soon.

Melt me into a thousand, reflective sighs. I ache for such sweet release — hypnotic, cathartic. I want to see myself drown once — with my life flashing in a slow-spinning liquid mirrorball. Just once in such graceful, calm, permanent surrender. Just once, and for the last time.

oh, what would i not give for you to gut open the poems — gut them out of me. what softness would i not stain? which bones would i not break? i look at my outstretched limbs — look for the parts i wouldn't hurt, but their silence has always been ominous. foreboding. anticipating. like wary, unmoving leaves. like quiet crows. like haunted dusks.

i spin among formless silhouettes. what would i taint?

what would i not?