Saying I love you was never a question.
It was the answer
to the way your fingers fit perfectly
between mine.
It was the pause where I knew
it belonged
every time we said goodbye.
It was the way I laughed
instead of rolling my eyes
when you’d fart under the covers, and
the way doing the dishes together was just as fun
as the actual party.
I love you.
It would run out of my mouth
without me thinking,
just like love is.
Without thinking.
Without blinking.
Without sinking.
I’m somewhere in between
fuck you and please don’t
leave me.
It’s okay, I understand.
But the questions in
her eyes say otherwise,
and what she does not understand is that
okay is miles away.
The entire universe was under my eyelids
and for one instant, I felt the buzz of my brain
folding in on itself, like the caving
sides of a melting candle.
There is a numbness to being
a million tiny pieces of mosaic, but also
one large silhouette
all at once.
Why did
me
have to love
you?
I let you tear me open
down the middle and climb inside.
And like a fetus
you settled in
the pit of my stomach; you rearranged my
organs. You twisted my heart.
And every time I cried,
I let you take my
tears and make them yours.
I let you
scream for me.
You’d stick
your hand in my back and
dress me up in frills,
carrying me in your
purse in case someone you knew walked by,
so you could show them how well
you ventriloquize.
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.
the sun entered your eyes
when they met hers
and the way you held her in photographs
defines love in a way my words cannot.
i can see what love is,
but my heart is closed and cold, chiseled
from unforgiving stone, and I will never
understand the warmth.
I cannot see the way you look at me
or if the moon resides in your eyes.
I do not like photographs; the way they
distort the perfect
pictures in our minds.
So I may never know the definition of us.
I don’t feel bad that I didn’t do it; you smelled like sweat and beer, and there was nothing meaningful about your blatant attempts to forget everything we don’t understand in this world by sharing that confusion with someone else– tasting it on their lips, knowing you’re not alone. I know the world is confusing. I know we are all trying to be loved, and in desperate attempts to make meaning of the world, we get farther away from what it really means to be alive.
I write to release
the emotions and feelings I’m
too scared
to express.
To see my thoughts
on paper. Sometimes
I write to
remember
and sometimes to
forget.
I write because it’s the only way to make
my feelings concrete
solid
cohesive, understandable.
When I write, my
thoughts become art
instead of a jumble in my head.
Silenticel 