Miss Scarlett In The Ballroom With The Lead Pipe

wingedpiglets:

I washed the sheets four times (once
for every year you dreamt beside me)
before your smell
no longer lingered.

I deleted all of your
voice messages on my phone, but
they still replay
in my dreams some nights, and
I will always know your texts by heart.

I put all your clothes I gathered over the years, tangible
bits and pieces of you, into a garbage bag
and donated them, but
I still wake up on cold mornings wishing I had
that black jacket of yours.

I tore apart
every picture of us, and still
it took me too long to be able to
convince myself there was no missing
half in all those photos of just me.

I have flipped it so many times, and yet
I cannot get the imprint of
you out of my memory
foam mattress. The outline of your body
etched in chalk on a crime scene.

it makes sense now, you
being born during hurricane season:
the way your eyes melted
into clouds,
the way you spoke in rain,
the way you tore apart the ground
beneath my feet
(you made it look graceful, though).
you were my life’s greatest
metaphor,
and you’ve left me
looking for explanations
in every corner.

baby, you’re the first hurricane of 2015. // a.s.m

i tried, i tried
so hard not to
step on your toes, even though
sometimes i felt like
you’d intentionally poke them out
under the crack of your door to see if
i might do it anyway.

i tried so hard to
make sure
you had room to breath;
that when you looked over your shoulder
i wasn’t always there. even though
sometimes all i wanted to do was kiss you.

i let you breathe.
i let you breathe without me.
and i think you realized that
sometimes the air is fresher when you’re alone.

a.s.m

the past is
the past is passed.
and i know i need to stop
looking through the binoculars backwards,
but for some reason
i keep seeing little flecks of you
in the glass when i look through my windshield,
and i wonder if it’s your reflection from behind me.

i see you laughing. i want to
be the reason for that laugh,
to be next to you so i can hear it.
but i know it’s
something she said
that’s so funny,
and that you’ve already forgotten
the way i snort when i laugh.
she doesn’t snort when she laughs.
i wonder if you like that better.

i wonder if you wish you could hear me
laughing too.
i wonder if you’ll see a photo of me in a hot air balloon
in August and wish you had been there to hold my hand
as i looked over the edge because you know
my fear of falling
from great heights.

checking up on an ex will only bring pain, i promise. // a.s.m

You were only
the second person
I understood how to love.
I was naive– I still hadn’t learned
that love isn’t
bleeding out onto the card table
and showing everyone your hand;
that in order to win,
you had to bluff.

And I came in like a hurricane and
tore apart the small space
you had just started feeling like you could call home.
I asked for a room– you weren’t sure
you had any.

But I made myself a copy
of your keys and slept
at the foot of your bed until
you finally started leaving
extra eggs in the frying pan for me
in the mornings.
But you never were one for routine.

You were a runner,
you said. You didn’t like to stay still.
You could find home within yourself but
were too scared to rent out property
in anybody else.

I told you I was looking
for a tenant.

When I finally started making an indent
in your mattress,
you locked me out.

‘It’s too risky,’ you said,
‘this real estate game.’

i just wanted you to want me, too // a.s.m

please don’t ever forget how much
i loved you.
please don’t think that because i’m gone
my love is, too.
please don’t think it stops
when my silhouette fades away.
please don’t think it doesn’t flow
just because my mouth is shut.
please understand that once
the seed is planted, it will always be
in my heart.
once i love you,
i cannot un-love you.
once i love you,
i will always love you.
please don’t forget.
please don’t think i don’t
care.
please understand that my flaw
is seeing you as perfectly imperfect.
my flaw is loving your
faults too much.
because you didn’t love mine,
and as i began falling deeper and deeper in love
with every flaw i discovered,
you were falling farther and farther out of it.
i loved you for all of you.
you loved me for parts of me.

i gave you all the love i had for you, and all the love i did not know how to give myself // a.s.m

Impossible Equation

in physics class
i learned
the further you fall,
the harder the landing:
F=ma.

i fell
for you at
90 miles per hour
without a parachute.

if the force of your lips
saying you do not love me
is like a thousand hammers
pounding at my heart,
what is the mass of
the empty shell
that remains?

Space Boy

you were my space boy.
i didn’t see that you were light
years away because i was
transfixed by the nebulas in
your eyes.

you were my space boy.
i didn’t mind that your kisses
came through the arms of
reaching stars, because they
tasted like the Milky Way.

you were my space boy.
it didn’t matter to me that you
only touched me with your fingertips,
because I loved hearing about
what the earth looked like
through your helmet.

you were my space boy, but
i tried to ignore the fact that
there wasn’t room for me in
your shuttle–
that all those stars must make
my eyes seem so dim.

you were my space boy, but
it is hard to love
a space boy when there are
heavens between
infinity and earth.

You’re Still Replaceable

Before you pride yourself on being so hard
for me get over, remember that you broke the heart of a girl
who: falls in love with
sticks and leaves, and keeps her favorites
in the backseat of her car.
cries at crimson sunsets.
tiptoes around insects on the
sidewalk.
feels too much and not enough.
sees beauty in everyone
but herself.
does not understand the concept of loving
halfheartedly.
jumps in puddles and digs
her toes in the mud.
lies in the middle of the street at night
just to feel her heart race.
was never taught how to
put herself first.

You broke the heart of a girl with emotions like
rain drops in a torrent,
an ingenuous heart that still hasn’t learned
that hardening is much safer.
A girl reckless enough to tear open
the stitches, to risk bleeding out
to love you.
You sawed through the tissues
that never had time to congeal.

You’re hard to get over because
I opened my wounds for you, and
every time I pick my scabs, they take
a little longer to heal; they leave
a deeper scar.

Your Dream Girl Doesn’t Exist

i am not the answer
to your mind’s unrelenting questions.
and no matter how broken you
think you are, you are not
a puzzle to be put together– i
cannot fix you.

do not put me on a pedestal
where i don’t belong.
do not put me on your shoulders
where i might fall.

do not tell me you need me–
tell me you don’t,
but that you want me
anyway.