and here i am again
at the intersection
of pedestrian language
& old wives tales
swallowing gum
like 7 year memories
opening umbrellas inside
cause i can't seem get away
from all of this rain
i ******* with my left hand
cause i was told
back in highschool that
"it feels like someone else is doing it"
it gets me wondering
about the difference between
losing you and finding out
that some one else found you
or my sleep
or lack thereof
its starting to tear me apart
i keep having this dream
where you are in
an unfamiliar body of water
trying to wash my poetry
off of your hands
or the one where
something happens in my chest
every time you sit
on someone else's bed
i'm tired of feeling like something you've misplaced
but don't have the heart
to look for anymore
tired of you saying my name
like you're trying to bury it
i'm tired of wondering
if you can tell the difference
between the absence
of my voice & silence
the other day
i almost started sobbing
at work when a woman
asked me about
our equipment
i was explaining how
things come apart
and almost mentioned your name
it made me think
of how you used to say
things like "what would you do
if i showed up on your doorstep
one day?" now, i haunt
the windows in my house
i don't leave for weeks at a time
i sit on the porch like the dog
you didn't shoot behind the shed
the one that refuses to die
until you come home again
i told somebody once, that
you didn't even know
what my voicemail sounded like
i wonder if they thought
it was because you
are so important that i never
let it ring that many times
before picking up
or if you dont know
what it sounds like
because you've never called
you can't be the ****** weapon
and the search party
i'm tired of all the seats
to the ferris wheel in my chest
being empty
tired of your voice
being the one i look for
in abandoned places
that one sound i beg
to bounce back
down vacant hallways
i just seem to stand there
in all of that quiet
like someone looking for a mistake
on an eviction notice
so i guess the hardest part
isn't letting go
it's forgetting
you ever had a grip
in the first place
and since you've been gone
i wonder if when
you pushed yourself away from me
you used your left hand
so it felt like someone else did it

If I did go wrong more or less at once, I wonder where
The chop block decisions of grade school, when you first realize you don’t care
‘I just don’t care’ in whiney and off-pitch voices and messy drawers
Was it the first time you realized you couldn’t be perfect and so just stopped
Being
Was it sneaking on to computers and secretly learning more about life in books than your
Parents wished you to (***** things)
Or was it when you learned because you shouldn’t
And didn’t learn and didn’t learn, and that persistent bubble as you grew up got bigger and bigger
Some looming threat about your future dangled over your animal head like a carrot as you trotted through worksheet a, a-2, a-3
And exercises you could finish in two minutes or two hours and get the same grade
Or copy and get the same grade
And those grades mattered more and more, and vaguer and vaguer
And they guided you less as they shoved more in front of you and grabbed your nose to say
This is important, this is you
And your friends started laughing like lunatics as well as *******
And the first kids ended up crying in stairwells
And you slept in class?
Was it all that, or was it outside. Was it your parents admitting they weren’t happy.
Was it the first time you had to recognize dishonesty or cruelty in others
(you had long since seen it in yourself)
Was it the first time you wanted to die.
Is it now?

Stage One - Experimentation:
I've seen it before, on movies and television shows.
The peer pressure, the giving in, the going back again.
And that's exactly what it felt like to me.
The pressure of your hand against the small of my back,
The way my body fell apart at your touch,
Like an ancient foundation crumbling,
And the desire that stirred in my chest to feel your touch once more.
At first, I only wanted a taste of you.
But the thrill that you brought me was something not easily forgotten.

Stage Two - Regular Use:
It became a casual thing,
Feeling you coursing through my bloodstream.
A knock on the door like the prep of a needle,
And your hand pulling me in like the ***** of skin,
And within seconds, a high I couldn't recognize,
As though I was walking on the sky and the
Grass was tickling my eyelashes,
And your fingers were pressed
Into the dimples in my hips.

Step Three - Risky Use/Abuse:
Before I knew it,
I was lying awake,
Wide-eyed in bed at night,
Imagining your fingertips
Tracing the inside of my thighs.
So I brought my pillow and blanket
And pitched a tent at the foot of your bed.
Then swore to myself I'd never leave your house again.

Step Four - Drug Dependency:*
A minute without your breath against my neck
Causes my chest to burn and my knees to shake,
But every time your breath fills my lungs,
I can feel the years of my life falling away.
Your lips are my nourishment,
Your sighs are my fluids,
And your kiss is my IV drip.
Every part of you has consumed every inch of my thoughts,
Even the dusty corners I have forgotten about,
And with every gentle touch, I can feel the withering of my heart,
Like a flower never to bloom again,
But it's a beautiful destruction.

When we first met,
I waded in the idea of you
Like a tide pool.
After we first kissed,
You became a steady stream
That swept me off my feet.
But now I'm drowning in the
Thought of you like waves
Thrashing against a reef.

Did you ever wake up and realize
that somehow, over night,
everything stopped making sense?
All of a sudden, your bed feels foreign to you.
Your pillow is cold against your cheek and
your blankets aren’t as comforting
as they used to be.
You drag yourself out
from beneath the covers
and the walk to the bathroom
Feels longer than you remember.
The tile on the floor is more solid and
the little rug in front of the sink
no longer caresses your toes.
When you look up,
when you make eye contact with yourself,
you notice that your eyes
are no longer the same shade of blue.
Your hair is longer and lighter,
your shoulders sag lower,
and the wrinkles at the corners
of your eyes are more defined.
You turn the **** on the sink
but the water takes longer to warm
than it did the night before.
Washing your face,
you hope that it’s all just an illusion.
You look up again and nothing’s changed.
Your heart starts to race,
you hope that it’s just an off morning
but your mind tells you that you know better.
Slowly, you take the few steps
back to your room and
look at the person lying
in the space beside yours.
You close your eyes and
open them once more.
Nothing, you feel nothing.
The person lying in your bed
is suddenly a stranger,
and then you realize,
so is the person inside of you.