Talking about the feeling that your brain
is trying to implode and explode at the same time.

Everything is
crashing in on itself,
all the distorted pictures and sound bites
and flashes of all those faces, on jagged
repeat. There are spiders, large, twitching
spiders outside my window
pretending to be my fingers.

Their webs are wavering in the wind and
I’m wondering how long it will take for it to feel
like they’re not crawling on my skin, softly,
in a way that no scratch can appease.

I’m biking on the very edge of the curb
fenced in by street signs
and my tires are wobbling in the way
that tells me that skull impact is imminent.

Stop ******* laughing at my helmet when you
can’t even tell me what it feels like when gravity
shakes up your brain between the sky
and the cement floor.

You have no understanding of not recognizing your own thoughts.
You can’t imagine what a hostile body feels like from the inside. You haven’t a clue what traumatic brain injury feels like,
all the worst parts.

Stop laughing.

Now my whole body is wavering and I see the dark gray, slippery rear end of your car that is not your car.

I am haunted,
paralyzed by the model and make of your vehicle
in the same way that I have been by all the others.

I don’t know why it’s always the cars for me,
but even a glimpse of the possibility catches in my throat and I’m coughing, choking, frantic
on the side of the road again.

It’s the impact of the car but somehow
worse, because you can’t see these wounds except for
how damp the pillow is when I wake up in the middle of the night, nauseous and sobbing.

Maybe it was a dream.
Maybe I’m the dream.
Maybe I am just one long, tempestuous nightmare.

I can’t stop thinking about all the people I’ve run away from,
deeply ashamed of the desperate, wild measures I've used
to savor even a moment of validation.

Unable to face the need I teased out of their mouths.

Only brave enough to start the fire,
rubbing sticks together shamelessly,
but not strong enough to put it out
before the forest burns down.

let me wrap myself up inside the warm cavern of your body

ease my fingers through the spaces between your ribs and hold your heart in my hands.

i want to take all the cracks in your life and all the ways you ever felt you've been cheated and all the emptiness left by crowded rooms full of people and the stinging words of those who should love you and the dark quiet of your mind
and fill them with love and devotion.

let our potential flow over you and bloom like wildflowers.

where along the path
did i lose my faith?

what dropped me down from the
white,eternally hopeful
land of romantics?

i'd like to say it was you, but i don't know if you

if you
if the way you held me against you
if the way your eyes followed my form
if you

deserve that much credit.

we tend to romanticize the dead.
i think we do that to our lost loves, too.

I bought you the last meal we’ll ever share together,
a far cry from all the other food pressed between our lips.

quietly shuffling damp twenties from my pocket
amidst your insistence to proceed otherwise

three months and twenty two days shy of our anniversary
I don’t have the kind of money you’d like me to
my bank account is empty and
hemorrhaging a nine hundred dollar debt to you.
you’re flicking silver cards between your fingertips
tongue like gravel
all I’ve got is cash

the day I leave you, I lie in bed naked
alternating my excursions between brushing my teeth and *******
sometimes both, at the same time
like I’m cleansing the filth from all my crevices
clearing out the decay and rot

It’s poetic to think of your absence
like the gap left after a rotting tooth
pungent and expectant
but in reality clearing my bowels
or the spaces between my molars
makes no difference to the dark
cavern that lives inside me

a space with no sharp corners or dead ends
but an endless death

one I know too well
and spent too many wet nights
trying to force upon you

alone in the dust and clatter I succumb to it
unable to distinguish between
the sore of an infection
and the sear of a wound

through space and time
your thoughts like rockets,
red hot, misguided, overfunded

too busy orchestrating, calibrating, hypothesizing, re-caffeinating
stringing errant thoughts and business plans and lines of code like children's macaroni, haphazard and fervent and

you don't pay attention to anything
not the groceries, the gasoline, the grime
not quiet, murmured, shrieking, spat out reminders
not the sunlight moving through the trees
not your birthday, the laundry, your mother
not my face in the morning, hands reaching
not the directions, not your appointments or morning meetings
not the wishes and dreams I murmur into your pillow
not our dog, water bowl clattering and bone dry

eight years past and the rage blisters my palms white hot
some wicked amalgamation, a spiteful frankenstein
mothering until your skin is smooth, peaceful
unmarred by sounds of pleading
begging, echoing

and even if the noises reached an unwavering pitch
past rooftops and crowns of trees
it would not matter
for you don't pay attention

are you now?