You Only Stayed While You Were High

You rolled me up
and lit me on fire.
You kept me burning
until I dissolved in the
wind and collapsed
into ash–until
I was small enough
to pinch between your fingers;
my ebbing embers smothered on
your skin.

Hitch Hiker

One day
my heart skipped a beat
and I realized you’d made your home
in the caverns between my ribcage.
You treaded on my heart
while it was still soft,
skimming your hands along
the white walls.
You filled
the empty space,
you left nothing
untouched.

Anchor

Our love was the way we hugged when
we said goodbye:
two anchors, with limbs tangled
we jumped into the sea
knowing, yet ignoring the fact that
we were drowning each other,
we were killing each other.

I loved you because your lungs were filled with water, too,
until I realized
I didn’t want to drown anymore.
I shed the skin you burned
with your fingertips,
and ever so slowly rose to the surface,
my lungs bursting with the anticipation
of air.

I Loved You Like

i loved you like taking
showers in the rain and rolling
in mud. like jumping in
puddles.
like skydiving, cliff jumping, squishing
three people and some swimming noodles
on a moped with one helmet.
like exploring the jungles
in your eyes.
like running through
the forest barefoot.
like cutting the sole of my
foot on a piece of glass, like
continuing to run despite the
bleeding. like the infection
that developed afterwards.
like the scar that remains.

So We Meet Again

i saw your face in a tree stump–
large and pale, with exaggerated
sorrow sliding off the
corners of your canoe eyes.
and again on the body of
a girl with your strawberry hair.
i am strengthening myself
in nightmares so that reality
won’t seem so bad.

You’re Where They Were All Born

If all my other loves were the twinkling city skylines
of my heart, then you,
my dear, are the capital.

If everything I’ve ever felt before
burned with the intensity of a star,
you, my love, are
a nebula.

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.

Rehab

I’d shoot you up,
swallow you whole with
a glass of orange juice
in the morning—
inhale you
during my lunch breaks.

I thought that I needed you.

Now my sheets are drenched
in all the words you’ve ever said and
my eyes roll back to replay
your smile until it distorts
into a sneer.
And I can smell your sweat.
I can taste your lips.
I can taste the milk going sour.

You are leaking out of
the bullet holes—out of
all of my pores—but
I know this
is part of getting clean.

When I told myself I’d love again after you broke my heart, I always imagined it would be with someone else.

but it always has been and always will be you.

I used to be crazy about you– now I’m just crazy.

there is crazy in my blood, my heart just doesn’t beat for you anymore.