So many girls have that waterslide nose
the one you had, the shape that tethers on the end
a curly-cue your teardrops pool in sometimes:

so many girls could look just like you
and I might actually acknowledge their blue eyes
not assume they are as brunette as the wool
below their clothes

but none of those girls would know my secrets or
obsession with Build-a-Bear bunnies
because they were never open on our birthday.

two kids
careless and naive

and that December
I’ll always remember
some kind of attraction
take a chance
what’s the worst that could happen?
butterflies killing my insides
smudged eyeliner
fighting, arguing
but I miss you
you say you don’t remember
tangled sheets and gray sweatpants

whispers. lies.
“let’s pretend”
it’s easier than telling the truth
right?

silence.

it never meant anything.
but I’m still here
always will be
and miles don’t mean anything
and my feeling don’t mean anything
to you
wrong timing, always wrong
but you could never waste my time
lets go back to how it used to be
now back to the same routine
same cycle.

cuticles strewn into dismemberment
pulling myself away: picking, peeling
learning to breathe dusty air

i’m never there, you’re never here
tangled pathways in the color of scar

can you hear broken breath,
can you see fractured light,
can you taste salted tears
all before they slip by, unnoticed?

morning has never been a friend
always revealing dreams as nothing more than
silver screen annotations to the life we lead
vs the life we need -
i need to give up wanting
so i rid myself of this lump that rests in my chest
when i try to speak when things are amiss
and tangled becomes knotted.

fingers dismembered gardens -
poppy leaf, red raw
a wallet of unrecalled, trifold and unstable
wanting, wanting, wanting
to fidget into the arms of understand
me

you are a car wreck at 75 miles per hour
that i cannot take my eyes off of
on a saturday morning with lo-fi radio
speaking the sun
as it breathes life into this death setting:
i’ll grow stories wrapped with truth
because it’s hard to only speak truth when
we are both so damaged, tangled
wrapped in the backseat like a baby on it’s first day home

******* the way you
lace fingers in the tea-kettle black ***
coughing up a lung as sacrifice to the ancient gods who told me
on my 18th birthday that
you would taste so good across my lips
no matter how split, how dry, chapped, and hungry
they were -
******* the way you
split aching bodies in two
one half of pain seated on the devil’s tongue
one half of pleasure begging god
please let me get what i want
and i have to tell you
it is not a melody i have gotten used to

because you are still that car wreck i can’t pull my eyes from
even when life is sprouting from my own hands
tugging at my own silvery strings connected to you
and connected to everything
i unknowingly snip those silver strings of fate
and let you hang in the breeze
of the way i have been taught to say
please

Join me in this moment,
The time capsule of my mind.
When I said words that made you laugh,
The first night we met.

Come back with me
To the night that we were strangers,
With no intention of being anything else.
When every inch you leaned, made my stomach levitate.

Sit with me and reminisce;
When your hand brushed mine for the first time.

Back when you tried to be cute.
You picked up the whipped cream
To spray in my face,
but your depth perception was a bit off.
My nose only bled a little.

Come back to when it was innocent.
Before I got comfortable,
Before you got bored.

Back when you tried to be ****.
You lifted me up to the kitchen counter,
To kiss me, like in the movies,
And sat me on a full cup of water.
As the liquid soaked through my jeans
We couldn’t help but laugh.
  
When I was new, and you were new,
And neither of us knew where it would go.

Put your hand on my thigh and admit
That just because it did not work,
Does not mean it wasn’t love.