it is always
mitigation with you,
always putting out fires but
never trying to prevent them
letting the sagebrush grow
just enough that you can
consume it again

but i thought you were the adult
here

i thought being an adult meant
knowing how to love
like really
love without hurting
each other

you yell at me from across
the table &
even in the dim light
i know there are eyes
on us

& in silence i stare at
you & marvel
that of all the conceptions
occurring in the year of 1994,
of all the uteruses &
fetuses to inhabit those uteruses
& consciousnesses to inhabit those fetuses
God decided to give me
to you

it hurts too much to think
there was no method to this

again, you apologize
& allow the act in itself
to forgive you

you snore heavily in the car
as i drive us home.
while you dream i wonder
when i will finally say
it’s okay

a.s.m

i reside in
what i don’t own
what isn’t home
what isn’t mine anymore.

i reach for hands
i once found shelter in,
i slip on my feet and
scrape the bottom of this
circulating stream.

i once sought structure
in the scattered.

i’m carried off
to go somewhere
i do not know
that isn’t mine
that isn’t home.

planktonic // a.s.m

I either feel like I’m too much or not enough.

i’ve never felt just right for anybody // a.s.m

the day you told me you loved me,
i cried. because
if walking away without saying
a word
while I am telling you how
the darkest parts of my soul seem to be
black holes and
they are sucking me in,
or ignoring me so you can
smoke weed and watch netflix
alone,
or saying I’m not a priority,
means ‘I love you,’
I am terrified that those
three words define
something that doesn’t actually
exist.

did it really mean anything? // 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

I was your shooting star: just
a bright wish passing by
to get you through a dark time. But
you are my moon, persistently
invading my
thoughts at night and burning
your afterimage into my
mind.

you never loved me, but my love for you is imprinted in my irises // 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’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

Fenton

i walked to the river today–
 the one we hiked to  on
our first date.
 I sat in the flowers,
the same ones I sat in when 
you looked at me like
 I was something 
you’d never seen before
 and asked me what music I liked.

I walked to the river today–the one
you and I got lost
 trying to find.
 I hiked the trail to  the rock where
you told me I was beautiful 
for the first time.

Do you still hear my laugh 
in the ripples of the river?
Do you still listen for me
 when the trees sing like the rain?
 Because despite all the time that’s passed,
I still see your eyes in the summer grass 
between my fingers,  and these
waters will always  whisper your name.

hybrid heart

thank god for hybrids, you’d said as you looked at me
and grinned the day
the gas prices climbed.
i can get 40 miles per gallon on this baby.
you could spend less money and
go further, and
you loved that.

you always were thrifty.

and now
i can’t help wishing that maybe
my heart was
a hybrid, too because
the more time that
goes by,
the less you hold
my hand;
the less you tell me you
love me
and i’m trying to
make us run with
less and less gas, but
i’m not sure how much
further we can
go.