it’s the way a random song comes on
and I can feel the flicker of your hand
wrapping around my waist

Tucking a thumb into my jeans
an echo of a laugh
bouncing off the skin

leaving me
breathless with a button half undone
the wind taken away
with those echoes and grins

god I hate feeling again

it’s staring at the text
every day
but knowing they wouldn’t respond anyways

she isn't with me, and im going to do something about that now.

I miss the way your chest rose against my fingertips
Like an ocean beating across the shore.

The tide doesn’t come in, no more

it’s almost like the sea
knew
that I couldn’t tell
or even recall
the day you met me
was the same day
that all those dreams
were swept
to sea

I hate nights like now

when I can hear the sputter and puttering of the rain
as it goes about its way
and I am left
thinking back on many nights
where I was out immediately
against a heartbeat and grumble

feeling a safety I haven’t known since

I didn’t grasp

how painful reckless love would be

Until I looked up into the sky

simply— just wondering how I could call some pain beautiful

never wanting to feel it again

but sobbing for it anyways

as tears leach down onto pillows starved for attention

I have to reconcile the man who I fell in love with.

finding empty spaces when my fingers stretch, and grasp at nothing — like the day I tried to hold your hand when you let them take bites out of me.

I didn’t have thick enough skin for that, I had already been gnawed at. Stripped bare and bruised and battered.

but even then I still would’ve offered up my the morsels left if it meant you saw me. if you saw me.

But I have to reconcile that with the man who tries to hold it all.

You can’t carry someone when you won’t carry yourself. Sometimes grocery trips can’t be done in one.

(Much to your dismay, I know)

So I curl in, pretending I can hear you beside me

Until I want to scream, because I also hear the way you didn’t defend me.

and I’m left with pillows starved for attention and sleep deprivation.

I thought you were engaged
she told me

I laughed, no not really.

wow have you not talked since?

I laughed, no not really.

how are you doing?

I laughed.

no not really.

i no longer believe it is brave

to sit in blood soaked misery

just so i may go out standing

instead of reaching out a hand

and asking for help

to live

the knight
stands at the ready
Helmet down
sword up

ready to give it his all for those behind him

the white flag long gone
soaked with blood

back leg — staggering
roses dying by the side

and he stays there

never moving

the knight stands at the ready
never breaking

even when it’s only himself to save.

god I felt like an idiot
sitting looking at the different strands of carpet
her hair brushed back behind her ear
when she waited
to hear me ask
“did we even have anything in common?”
she shrugged

“your curiousity”

I laughed, rolling my eyes.

“and your need to be loved”

and god I felt like an idiot

I swear the whiskey tastes better
between little tears
the strum of a acoustic guitar
and those little ‘what happened’ moments

wished we talked more about wanting to be kissed

And how it is so very different when comparing to  wanting someone to kiss you.

“sorry hockey is life”

and i laughed, letting the dots display themselves like I hadn’t already made up my mind now. “Gotta do what you gotta do” I said.

Staring up into the final swipes of mascara. Wondering who would it benefit if I just took it off and put on the hoodie instead now? but I gotta do, what I gotta do. Just like him, apparently.

And I bought the beer. Mostly cause I pinky promised, remind me never to do that again.

And I sat there playing crib, enjoying the conversation, more the beer than anything. Laughing to myself as I caught the flicks from eyes to screen to Phillies to screen.

cause, you know…

“Hockey is life”.

so I sat pretty, sipping my beer. Thinking about all the amazing things life has to offer. Other than hockey.

it’s funny how some of the most cathartic moments can be the most mundane.

like hungover snuggles with the dog

Panicking about what this year will look like, did I even like as he laughed into my neck

and she just cuddled in closer
spreading kisses where she could reach, and reminders to breath a little slower

until I felt a little softer.

and realized it’s now a new year, with new mistakes, new memories, and new feelings

but the same little best friend, willing to snore tucked up beside me

so I’m never quite alone

I guess

I’ve made myself into the woman
I thought I would never have to be

maybe I’m a hypocrite
and that’s something I’ll have to work on.

but why in the hell did you hear me say ‘this is my favourite thing’

and you preceded to give me an itemized list of the reasons you didn’t think it was good enough

and couldn’t tell you were breaking pieces of me, as you continued on through the pages and pages

I wanted to show you a piece of me

it wasn’t for you to judge and find wanting.

but that review wasn’t really for me anyways

I might still love you
maybe the thought of me
and you

and the good moments

maybe that’s why it’s so hard

because I haven’t stopped loving all the little moments or the smell of you

i might still love you

cause nothing tastes like that first kiss
and the longer one after that

the trail of clothes, or hat tipped back

maybe, maybe i still do,

but i can’t.

don’t mind if I do
crawl into your lap

seeking the comfort of familiarity
and knowing where the coffee cups are

and the way your sheets feel curled against my legs
and my back against your chest

but
I know we’d mind

so don’t mind me

Its weird having to balance
the rage, the grief, the love, the loss
in the moments where there were helicopter rides and recycle that was never done

i felt like i was crazy? to ask for something so normal - so real. when you were gifting me with other amazing experiences.

till i heard you tell my father i spent that much to make you dinner, when i wasn’t the one that wanted that liquor.

dad told me

he’s always gonna run.

before you ran the first time.

then the second.

and finally, the third. when you fed me to the wolves because it was easier than facing them yourself.

and I didn’t have thick enough skin for that

something I’ve learnt

and maybe grieved along the way

is striving to be something

is so very different

from wanting to want to be something

that requires you to love

and god just to try

more than you fear

and I watched you close that door

over

and over

before I decided to finally walk away

he got me flowers

just because. or maybe not just because, but because I asked him to.

but he got me the ones I actually liked. and paid attention to the way I smiled.

he got me flowers. and I know he wouldn’t hesitate to set up a reminder,

to get me more

he asked me,

between a half cocked grin, and sip of whiskey —

‘Do you make every man fall in love with you?’

and that negroni —

really never tasted sweeter, against my tongue

I am the definition of a god’s love

I may come bearing gifts
Showering you in adoration and devotion
wrapped in the most pleasurable ways
caring for you in ways you have never known
caressing your soul in the most intimate ways

only to leave when you least expect it

left begging at an alter
I’ve vacated and no longer visit

when i told him about you,

about how safe you made me. smiling while i expressed all the ways you made me realize life was worth all the time and relationships, squeals, and terror, messy open mouth kisses, and doing the thing scared!

i was reminded that you were, and always will be, exactly what i needed- right then. and i just hope,

i was exactly what you needed too.

to someone

my worst will be their best, and my best will be their 'meh'

it just means that a few of those someone's

were not meant for me

i was putting up the little fragmented bats
really just letting them explode everywhere

when i remembered you asked if you could be here
and i tried
i did not to cry
and when the first tear fell
was

when i realized that not every source of love in my life came from you
that the flowers L brought me
and C allowing me to replay that song
J giving me space to ramble and
S telling me how i needed to wax the car
was
when i realized i would really be okay

because you were a perfect chapter of my life, but you were not meant to be in the rest of mine

and that is okay

i think what really broke me

was the way you said

it is a little funny to me
how little words jotted down in moments of feeling have become touchstones to my soul.

where i can trace the etches of love, lust, and loss with you.

but not even just with you, with myself, and apparently, you the reader.

it is a little funny to me.

how my touchstones, have also, in turn— become yours.

where you could see i couldn't sleep. maybe couldn't breathe. where soul aches and loss weighs, and memories become whispers against my skin.

and i could almost feel your laughter skate across my shoulder, or fingers against my cheek.

so i guess i'll continue
jotting down little moments, hoping a few more come my way

funny how poems sometimes slowly become mere diary entries
like it is normal for you to peek into my soul, from whatever corner or slice of internet you appear to be on.
the way connection can happen without sound or eyes on one another.
but you know me anyways.

you know the way i love art, of colour and how green seems to have a hold on me, but you may not know how terrified i am of being truly seen. you also know my partner loved to make me laugh, and held me like the stars were nothing compared to my smile, but maybe not the way he sounded explaining the differences between certain engines.

you know the way i have loved, and lost, but maybe not that some of it was my doing.

and as sips of wine becomes sips of bottles i am left to ponder such loss and love. maybe even lust.

i just wish i could spend most days

discussing the use of colour. or the way humans can capture such emotion in things that do not breathe, but steal my breath anyways.

i wish i could spend most days

looking at the abyss, the way he holds her. the way she holds him, his hands curled up to her head ready to press her in further, just as much for protection as it is for his own need.

i wish i could spend most days

telling you that Rodin's kiss really doesn't showcase love the way Paolo would have done everything all over again, to be with her. But that doesn't change the way he wishes she didn't meet the same end with him.

to lust, to need is one thing. to lunge for a kiss, aching, like it might be stolen from you.

but to love. my god to love, to cling, to cherish— is quite another. To protect, to honour, to know pride means nothing if it means i get to hold you. to be anything you need me to be.

i wish i could spend most days

discussing the way he so clearly loved her. and how she loved him.

I’m stuck

Between hating the love stories where they didn’t fit but “love overcame it anyways”

because why did we play with the pieces that couldn’t fit together and pretend it didn’t matter

avoiding conversations like they were distant future things, intangible, and uncondensable

and as I sit here, rooting through the leftovers of my processing
I know my grief simply overshadows the joy for a moment
Holding space for the lost piece of me, I am happy, and honoured you get to hold.

but grieving her nonetheless.

So I’m stuck

pretending like I won’t always, on some level, be trying to put the pieces together

cause  “love overcame it anyways”

I didn’t realize how much I changed who I was

until my head hit my pillow and the clock kept moving
while I stayed still
or a metaphorical semblance of it anyways

trying to sleep like I hadn’t trained myself
like a dog with a bone
to text you goodnight, or call when you got off

I wasn’t aware how much you soaked into the fibre of my being. Which is why before midnight is so ******* hard.

because all I want to do

is ask how your day was. like a dog with a bone, trying not to beg for more

I know some day
a little Lizzy may ask me
“what was your first love like mum?”

and I’ll have to muster up the way to tell her

He was perfect.
because he made me fall in love with life, with love.
With Scotch, and the way the smoke could be found twirling in his perfectly green eyes.
he taught me all the ways I should be loved, and to love in return.
the ways I should be respected, and worshiped.
he kept my heart safe, and gave me freedom, gave me joy like I’d never known before.

And all while choking back the emotion. I’d also have to tell her

but he also gave me sorrow
like I’d never known before.
because for all of his perfection, he was a fish, and I a bird.

we couldn’t reside in each others worlds for too long, cause darling we didn’t fit.

It just wasn’t meant to be.

“Do you miss him?”

Only every time I smell a campfire, taste a scotch, or see the sea.

was it my fault?
that I fell in love with your dreams, your thoughts, your potential, and your cheeky painting that would hang in our living room?

because some times I have to wonder

was it yours?
When in those first few months, you showed me all the beautiful ways you can paint with colours. Diving headfirst into all the ways people can make you smile and fall in love. how you promised me the sky, the moon and the stars. But then, it felt like their weight, became crushing. And those promises became ‘for later’ and the way you told me you’d move anywhere, wasn’t really true. And Christmas of 2027 might’ve been ******* great. But does our dinning room table still look like that?

and I was left wondering if I changed, or you just didn’t really have the rope, to grab them all.

How can you hold some of my favourite memories
And make me cherish every piece of you
but then be shattered
by the man I knew you could be

I scrubbed or at least tried to
every layer of skin he touched or weirdly rubbed
scrapping my lips into the colour they used to be when you kissed me
and I sat in the bathtub
having scrapped my tongue to a lovely red
knowing it wouldn’t have happened if I was with you
but I’m not yours anymore, am i?

he told me I was beautiful
but you would’ve told me I was stunning
and I now
have to go on
knowing you’d call me stunning, while he
he only calls me beautiful

Lost in Translation never made sense to me before
I don’t know why it suddenly does now
like the silence and looks
clicked
why loneliness sometimes can be so busy
getting lost

It’s almost like dust settled.
routine suddenly happened after spontaneity ran out one morning to grab some milk.

and we're both pretending like it'll be right back

I like the way your name feels
dragged across the nape of my neck
leaving streaks of you to be remembered by

But I prefer the way you kiss me
down the embers of being
and the crease of my spine

for all the songs that speak of lovers bathed in the whispers of moonlight or wrapped in the sheets of sunshine
the glimpses of your eyes
will be whispered across generations
regarding that lover of mine

I want to touch you
like it was that first night
I want to hear your laugh
amongst the blurry images
I want to say it's totally okay
cause what does the future matter anyway?
but mostly
I want to pretend like you're not a fish
and I a bird
just waiting for the other to give out

to wake up
in agony because i was dreaming of you
and it didn't last longer
to smack into a pole
because their laugh sounded like yours
or on days like today
when pillows
feel like interlopers
where even in the shower
tears won't grace us with their presence
and
I can't even drink my scotch
because it reminds me of you

i wanted to be the one for you
not the one that got away

She told me he bought her silver jewelry for her birthday
and I felt like crying
because he didn’t ask her best friend
her sister
or her taste
and she had to sit through with smiles
simply excited for silver jewelry
while she wears gold.

But it wasn’t just jewelry, or cars, flowers, or jokes.
It wasn’t that hats, the stove, or the door.

she told me he bought her silver jewelry
so I sat there
realizing
that hadn’t happened to her before.

it is just
so exhausting
to finally put the masks on the table
only to realize
you have to put them back on
in a way that you can still tell it’s me
just
without seeing me

why does that half glass of red
taste so much sexier
when cuddled in bed
with a snoring floof
and a fresh set of sheets