I finally
found out
what I want to be when
I grow up.




RICH

I wanna write about you.
And I do.
You drip off the end of my pen,
Off the blinking line of my cursor,
And fill up white space
With the nebulousness of what you are to me;
Your cumulonimbus formlessness.
Enter.
Pause.
A moment of consideration.
I am constantly unsure of what this all means.
I love you.
You’re bad for me.
I might be bad for you in return.
I want you.
I don’t want anything and I burn for you,
I write for you,
I pine when I am a creature of pragmatism and action.
You don’t want me the same in return, if you do at all.
The absence of you is terrifying.
The absence of you was a relief.
With you I am elated.
With you I feel as though you slowly pull my heart apart,
As though you forcefeed me hope,
For I am unable to do anything else but wish for—
Change
—when we are together,
Though I know it is impossible,
Unlikely enough to deserve the word.
I can see the planes of your skin, feel
Them beneath my fingers
I can trace their lines with my mind’s
Tongue.
Wishing is pointless with you.
I know this and still cry for the moon.

dead air hangs heaviest on phone calls cut short
the static hummed like an ancient hornets nest in my head
deep imprints left from landline buttons on my cheek
i thought if i pressed hard enough
i could pretend plastic resembled the feeling of his face against mine
i thought if i pressed hard enough
i could pretend the static sounded like his voice in my ear

he told me once that he liked my skin
but what he meant is that he liked it better on the floor
i would have never guessed how quickly hungry hands could eat me alive
but i wanted their starvation to be my salvation
i always knew i was a better window than a wall
but I didn’t know how easy it was to see through me

seven syllables like bee stings
my throat began to swell like his words themselves were anaphylactic
and as i began to see stars i pretended i was in shock
he left me like a bullet exits a body and i guess that’s what i get for loving a loaded gun
but I’ve always been known to be the first to pull the trigger
roulette was just a way to pass the time between waking and sleeping

i was a phantom of longing and lament
i missed his hands even when they were around my neck
i wasn’t a woman
i was shades of blue and violet and unwarrented violence

the perverse pleasure of pain
left like a malady in my mind that spread across my nervous system
and seeped its way into my bone marrow
the only chemo i could find were empty beds and dark rooms
indiscriminately i handed myself to the radiation of sterile hands and nameless faces
i wanted them to rearrange my molecules
or at least help me shed the skin he had liked so much

etched into my eyelids in glowing persistence were the words he left me with
i hung onto them, i gripped them tightly, white knuckled desperation i clung to the sound of your voice rattling like a chain link fence in my mind
“you will never be enough”
i wanted so badly for you to be the cure i made myself love-sick
**** and limerence felt like love even when the landline went dead
i realized that corpses have a funny way of staying just alive enough to get through the day