you keep leaving,
chained to exit signs and
one foot out every half-open
grocery store door
chalk it up to curiosity,
to wanting new things,
to blooming in nature with no roots,
you keep leaving.
and i keep staying,
growing on the side of the childhood
home you told me you loved me in,
stable and wrapped around a tire swing
where you kissed me for the first time.
chalk it up to memories,
to sentimentality,
to the comfort that surrounds safety,
i keep staying.
and every summer, you leave and you
drag your feet through the dirt from
my porch to yours,
past every cricket-chirping dusty town
and i wait,
letters pinned to a mailbox and
welcome home mats on the floor,
i am taking my keys with me this time.
i will always stay here, i can't
imagine my body living any other way,
but i lock the doors at night.
you keep leaving,
you keep running away and i just
can't force myself to chase you anymore.

it has become less like poetry and
more like a confession,
more like if i dont get these words out
of my palms i will burn up under all
of my anger.
how do i talk about not loving you
in a way that contorts my words into
honesty?
how do i immortalize this pain
into writing to remove it from
my heart?
i come apart, i am
undone, there is nothing i can
say that will erase how you
felt,
starry eyed and drunk in the
drivers seat.
be careful, slow down, don't
stop
there is no pity.
i cannot force myself to forget.
all i do is remember.
all i do is not-forget.

a terrible poem about how i fell in love
when i was a child and i grew with it
like moss on an abandoned building,
and i stopped being a child but
i held onto it with the winsom that only
a fresh-faced little girl knew how to
handle things with care,
how to touch gentle, the only way
you can when your heart
has never been broken.

a terrible poem about how i write about
you every day and i'm not sure if anyone
who reads it knows what you did to me or why
i cry in airports and i don't think i can write
enough terrible poetry to explain it

a terrible poem about how i leave my bed and
i see my friends and i do whatever i think my
ribcage can handle and i'm not sure if its a desperate attempt
to forget or a desperate attempt to revive
that girl who knew how to
feel things without breaking her wrists,
how to love things without suffocating them,
how to touch gentle because her heart
had never been broken.

isnt it sweet?
how much the human heart is able to bare,
the lines between support and manipulations that
past-lovers have drawn for you,
isnt it sweet? how much you will
carry for the people who arent quite yet
past-lovers, how you will draw boundaries
and cross lines just to touch, just to feel, just to
create some sort of tangible memory for when you
sit with only their names left in your mouth, isnt the
line between sweet and naive based on experience?
isnt it naive? how far you will go to love people into
boxes, how you will let yourself fall apart and
you will watch them spit you out onto the floor and still
you have so much faith in every single rushed kiss and
almost-memory that one of these people you let touch you
with the lights off, one of these people you will drink
into your poetry will be more than just a past-lover?

i cant help but replay it
like an old tape, flipped over and
shoved into dusty corners of bedrooms,
labels scratched off, there is a scrapbook
of the first time you touched me and there are
no pictures, this story has written itself and has been
stuck to the refrigerator like surviving it is some
accomplishment that i am patted on the back for and
it repeats, its stuck somewhere and i stare and flip it
over hoping that each time i hear your voice it will say
something different, something softer, something
sweeter there is a notebook somewhere quiet
and it sits by itself with my ink scratched into its pages
it has words you promised me that i haven't touched like
every time i hear this song there is ringing in my ears it
is static, there is torture dripping off the lines where you said
i am yours, i am yours, i am yours and i cant force myself
to let go of it just yet, it has made comfort in my chest it has
made its own home and i keep waiting for this story to
end differently, i keep waiting to write about something else
but its all over, i cant help but replay it, in every part of me and all encompassing like a virus like something i fall asleep
wishing i hadn't heard, i cant help it baby i am
yours, i am yours, i am yours

God,
for some of us it takes a long while,
      doesn't it? Voices
stunted from first primal primordial scream, ***-slap
      at birth, howls at the moon
in silent chest-beats when no longer an embryo
      looking,
at it, the sky, awe plastered onto face-canvas,
      suddenly you're a poet   but
God,
for some of us it takes   but a long, long   while
      for anything,
if anything,
      to be born from our ever-screaming
primal primordial airless silent empty
      ***-slap mouth-breath hand-wrought
song
      to sing, to be sung
to sing,
      to sing
                   to sing
                               to sing
                                           to sing.

it repeats in my head like a
mantra or a desperate prayer,
hands clasped tight over a
crucifix necklace. but i cant envision
myself praying just to god, i am so
desperate at this point i am yelling
my invocations to any force that will
listen and my eyes are shut tight like
a little girl wishing for time to
slow down, reciting
"please dont get sick of me please
dont get sick of me
please dont get sick of me" and i
am never sure of what happens when
i open my eyes and i am terrified to
unfold my palms as if someone will
catch me by my wrists and hit my hands
with a ruler and assume i have ever wanted
anything this bad before in my whole life