mark  number 1, the crack at the very top of your throat
for the times you've had to scurry out of the house
because it would've been too much time and too much noise to put on your shoes

mark numbers 2 to 12, for the number of tragedies you lack to write like a *****, to trick the devil into thinking he's a deity.

mark number 13, the crack at the very base of your throat (although sometimes it feels like it's at the base of your spine) from the brute force of all the words you've had to swallow but never rose in the toilet bowl, amongst all the other things you've purged

and boy,

have you purged your heart out.

what she thought was a family portrait, was a lesson for what happens when you lose one side of a pair of shoes - you can never buy just one again, it comes in a set of two.

what she thought was a stove, was an analogy for the kind of love parents fail to tell - there's nothing more cruel than love, nothing will feel as good as hell.

what she thought were anniversary flowers, were rolled up versions of paper planes telling her mother she now had to use her grandfather's last name, or her mother's maiden name, if only her father had let it stay.

what she thought was his reflection (on a pretty grand mirror showered with lace), was nothing but a crack in the wall, and also the reason why her father never called.

"we'll go home when home is ready to go home."

does it count if i come to your hometown and say i'm here for a vacation or does it seem more like a suicide even though you're four bus stops away and four bus stops away from you is where i'm going to stay four bus stops between what could possibly be a modern tragedy with a lot less poetry away from a cemetery four bus stops away

i'm sorry my hands don't shake the way you expect them to i'm too busy trying to collect the ocean to have a weak grasp on you and i'm sorry that i can't build a road back to you the gravel in my throat has turned into lava and there's not enough dust on the walls to turn that lava into glue and i'm sorry that when i step on glass i cry out for you although i'm pretty sure you were the one who wasn't able to split that wine bottle straight into two but the shards kind of remind me of you and i'm pretty sure somewhere in this apology i said that i'm sorry for loving you