i rolled a five
on the night sky

the heavens say we’re tied
i’m tired
of playing with dice

who knows where we’ll land

tomorrow.

a storm just rolled in // a.s.m

palms to the sky
a patient sacrifice, i’m waiting for ink
to spill from my veins; to taste of something
other than you.

because i haven’t kissed you
in over two months, and yet
you are still in my bloodstream
somehow.
because every fucking poem, every song,
every sunset is about you and
i’m sick of going to sleep
praying for relief from thoughts
of your eyes, only to see them
in my dreams.

and i don’t understand how it’s fair that
you’re biting her bottom lip
the way i used to bite yours and not
thinking of me, and yet i am
hit with memories like rocks
to my temple,
sending my sandcastles
tumbling.

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

i assured myself his eyes
would always search for me
in the cracks between the pavement
and his ears would listen for me
when the wolves
howled at night.
but now i know
he’s filled those cracks
with softer skin and
while the wolves
howl, his ears are full
of her laughter,
and so
it doesn’t
even
matter.
i am nothing
to him anymore.
and so a piece of me dies.
i am a little less
of who i was before.

does a piece of me die every time someone stops loving me? // a.s.m

Loving someone who doesn’t love you back in the same way is a suffering unlike any other. Every minute in their presence is a reminder of what you are not, what you never will be: enough for them. And in the process of loving them, you end up hating yourself.

don’t you know this is why i had to leave? // a.s.m

i’m in some sort
of fucked up purgatory.
dancing between
reaching for the phone and
reaching for my throat
because
it’s my fault you’re gone
it’s my fault i’m gone
but at least i’m not
on fire anymore.

and i want to call you.
sometimes i go so far as to
hear the dial tone before i remember
i deleted your number
and never bothered to memorize it.
i never thought i’d need to.

and sometimes i go so far as to
imagine what it would be like to have you
in my life again until
i remember how much it hurt
the first time around;
how heaven and hell were never meant to be
together because
that’s what being with you was and
it was a cycle so vicious
i couldn’t for the life of me tear myself away.

but i did.

and in the process i lost
my skin from where
we were attached
at the hips.
the scar reminds me why i cannot go back.
because my hands might as well be ghosts,
the way they touch you.
because my lips are useless
if they never meet your skin.
because i will always love you,
and you
will always love someone else.

and even on my best days, my soul wasn’t enough // a.s.m

Looking back, I’m thankful that you hurt me. If you hadn’t, I probably would have stayed.

when you made me cry, I finally realized how bad we were for each other. so thank you for opening my eyes.

If only you were in my life as prevalently as you are in my dreams.

you are ubiquitous in my mind, but a ghost in my arms

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?

But if it’s frozen and full of tar, it can never break

When your eyes freeze and turn to ice
I need to run or
I am impaled by your words
like darts—the poison
seeps into my blood stream and
I carry the venom
inside me until it claws at me
from inside my veins, restless
to get out.

So much
venom thickens my blood to tar and
fills the cracks of my heart
with lead,
and the only way to forgive myself for
being cold enough to freeze you, too, is
to let it out.

So when they scratch
and wriggle in my veins,
I cut them loose and
watch the black venom
drip out.