i tangled myself with you
unbearably tight
refused to pull the loose
threads

until i did
until the whole
**** thing unraveled

unraveled all of me
with it
and it hurt
and it ached
for days weeks months years

but you know what?
the bruises healed
i burned those ******* sheets
bought new ones

waited an eternity
to breathe out
the last caustic breath
of you

and one quiet morning
surprised myself
with that first deep breath
of clean air

if love has nine lives
the first one took at least
a third of them

and the second and third
shared a good three or four

and that last one, well,
he took more than i had left

somehow

and in that negative space
i have come to rot

to have funerals
over and over again

for every life
lost

until i get the hurt just right
until i get the lesson just right

and loving again
will never feel right

while i am still reading
eulogies

and criminal records, while i find where
the grief fits in the

the guilt and the longing
fits in with

the rage
and i stop burying the

bodies and making
death and funerals

out of broken hearts
but i can't stop when

i think about how simple survival
can be so brutal

and how could it not leave
a body count?

at the end,
i burned the village
to the ground,
every bridge in,
every road out.

i made sure there was
nothing left, still found myself
weeping in the wreckage

wondering why you didn't
try to save us
why you didn't
stop me -

and the guilt
and the anger
and the love
and the longing

a brutal cocktail
when i was already drunk.

in the years since,
i cleaned up the wreckage,
built a nice little memorial.

i don't visit much anymore.

i burned out
all the love
i had
with you
on you
for you

tank's empty
now
i think

tried to love
and to love
and it only
hurt
and hurt

tried to say
the words

i love you

around a mouthful
of ash

they got angry
when i choked

became the hands
around my throat

squeezing out every
last
drop

there's nothing left
not for anyone else

hardly even any
for me

angry
starved for
apologies
i don't need
anyway

an emptiness
a graveyard of
bad losses
bad choices

a body of invisible scars
broken glass
handprints

i owe myself apologies,
grace, room to grieve
who we once were
what we once had

i am sorry
i let us die a thousand
slow deaths

most days, it's alright -
the cat says good morning
while i make the coffee
and open the curtains
and make the bed
and live my quiet life
exactly as i've always wanted

some days,
the coffee doesn't get made
and the curtains stay closed
and the cat comes to wake me
when she thinks i've been in bed
too long.

those days,
i think about how long it's been since
someone else made the coffee.
i think about how even when there was someone else
to make the coffee
i still made it.

there's a particular song
a particular sound of songs
that make me think of you,
make me wish you'd been the person
you showed me in the beginning,
that soft, gentle, easy guy.

i'm getting better at reminding
myself that he never existed,
at least not for me.
i'm getting better at reminding
myself is that all you were for me
was the man screaming in my face
over a carrot, over cancelled plans,
the man who watched me bleed and bleed and
bleed and

still
did what you did.

i wish you'd been that guy.
but you weren't.
i wish it'd been different.
but it wasn't.

and look at this mess you've made.
there's no place for you now.