vibraphone:

i found that book you wrote for me
last winter, when i wore your jumper
for 3 weeks straight
and burnt it the week after

chapter one was an explanation
that i can get over depression 

thank you for the message

chapter two proposed that i
made you feel worse than
anyone you’d ever met

reader’s note: likewise

chapter three was just a jumble
of words of how i shouldn’t
die
you don’t want me to die 

chapter four brought a climax
telling me a kiss is just a kiss
you’ve kissed a thousand men
and plenty of girls
and you’re drunk
and i’m pretty
and by the way a kiss is just a kiss 

chapter five brings a sub-tale
about your love for her
sadly that was brought up in
all the novels after
and all the short story anthologies
that no one cared to read
(including i) 

chapter six you brought it all to a close
wrote about how you’re miserable and tired
oh, woe is i
wrote about your bread being too dry
swore i’d read that somewhere else 
but it was fine to repeat
and copy
that was an idea in your head 
that you could repeat and copy words and
poems
fine for you to fuck your friend
over and over
because at the end of the day you’re a bastard
to me because you’re in love
with a moron
because you’re a fool 

i found that book the other day
and wrote ‘is an asshole’
besides your name

I was having a hard time,
so, he crawled into our bed, sucked on my toes
kissed the backsides of my knees like pulling out a drawer with his teeth
full of ticket stubs and traffic jams
(we were sick of winter)
blood stains and a copper taste
(we just missed the sun)
I was having a hard time
when he said he’d like to draw me,
to stencil out my skyline, trace the mountains of my hips and
the pink valley of my cunt

god, he sleeps with such simplicity
such noble quiet sounds
I wake with salt encrusted eyes, his hands mixed in
my folds of skin, our sheets so stained
blood dried like lines of drugs we never did
we share this place, its creaking walls
bullet holes through our front door
he wakes before me in the morning, burns his hands
in scalding water, reads my spring lake eyes
(the color of his paintings)
like books I long to wear as pearls
my blood runs red and down my thighs

wanting to kiss you is like
peeing
while having a bladder infection
the urge comes suddenly
unwanted
and overwhelming
maybe it feels good while its happening
but after, all that’s left is
emptiness and knowing
you
are
sick

the sun was rising and I smelled like you.
his shirt clinging to skin like the sin
I don’t believe in.

I’m falling in two different directions
similtaneously.
the great and terrible paradox
that underlines my verbs,
the fine print in every kiss.

I could have burned that shirt.

sometimes,
it feels so fucking good.
but sometimes
it feels like pushing up against
so much negative space
like the world is ending
when eyelids close
slowed down and winding
into itself

the rain cried over us, and
we are clean as the river
with its living stench

I am not the woman
you loved
yesterday
please consider my cries
a testament of my imperfection
a living stench of sensitivity
too delicate to touch
I can’t remember the last time I cried

I am not the woman you loved yesterday
the rain is no cleaner than
the showers
I sprung on your shoulders
I am the raw and bloody hands
of today’s forgotten children
an entirely created shell of a thing
that is not one thing
but many

I am the river: in constant creation
not
the woman you loved yesterday

I feel horrible. She doesn’t
love me and I wander around
like a sewing machine
that’s just finished sewing
a turd to a garbage can lid.

- Richard Brautigan