we sat in the stairwell
of your apartment building
and picked kernels of stale popcorn
out of our teeth
at three in the morning
so you wouldn’t jump
and end it all
just yet

your beautiful bruised legs
        my empty queen bed
that dead summer lawn
        his heart breaking on the line

we kissed under the back porch light
blinking off and on and off again
like my love
like every flickering thing
like peaches in the back of the van with the windows down

all of your nightmares have already come true
in a past life
somewhere far away
so you don’t need to worry
the scars were there, they fade away
now you’ve moved on to live another life
to tell your lover about it in the morning light.

Its so nice not thinking about people you once loved
who didn’t love you back
not even a little bit

We watched that house burn like it was our own.
From across the street we mourned the photographs
and boxes of ticket stubs and letters that we saved
dissolve into grey flecks that burnt our eyes.
Still we couldn’t look away.
Even though the fireman worked their way
through smoke and flame
the darkness of the front porch,
where we once sat drinking lemonade
all afternoon,
collapsed upon itself in blackness
seemed to sing out sad goodbyes
and we knew it could not be saved.
We could not be saved.
You once said you couldn’t understand
how someone could know me and not fall in love with me.
And yet you did not love me.
Maybe you can’t love anyone, maybe it burned up that day
insides black as the front porch and crumbling.
You could not be saved.

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.

you’ve fallen asleep while you’re falling for me. darling you’ve stained my new suit with your tears and my dear you’ve spilled out all your dreams in my ears. there’s a hole in your dress from where your hips rub against it, there’s a hole in my heart where you words grind into it. I’ve counted your ribs and they’re all in place, I’ve faced all my fears and I’ve earned this disgrace. if lightning strikes the same place twice I’ll hold your hand, I’ll hold it tight. if lightning strikes the same place twice just close your eyes, I’ll kiss it right. 

the strangers that assumed they were entitled to her attention who were once great entertainment became a hassle that led to avoiding certain streets and neighborhoods. she only loved the rain at night when it wasn’t soaking down her spine and making all things wet. everything was always wet. dripping. even the sound of the train that once caused her moments to slow and her lips to upturn became unnoticed background noise. she was ready to leave. this place had filled some recess dug deep during the sleepless nights of screaming but it held none of the things she had grown to crave from the endless questions. the city was simply too big for her.

you showed us slivers of your secret sensitivities on the back porch balcony with Bright Eyes on your lips stained with Mary Jane’s kiss and your grandfather’s guitar to sing along to songs that filled our lungs like smoke from the cigarettes that sank into your skin and gave me shivers each time I entered bowling alleys or bars without a cover charge. when we kissed I ruined that pretty pleasure of wanting to kiss you, because unrequited love is the purest kind and I’ve learned to love the yearning that comes with lust and keep it safe as mine to hold. most of my desire is ruined by speaking up, or not speaking at all because the default is to wait for them to come to me. 

the way you grope my thighs and look through me like you have something to say. pull my hair. suck my bottom lip. the roadmaps you trace along my back are the only answers to questions I am always asking. ihop, pie hole, taco bell. we only see each others faces in the moonlight. eventually, I stop asking questions. I am your sacrilegious priest for midnight confessional and you are the book I can’t put down at bedtime. even though your words weigh down like giants you never fill me up enough to move forward, so I keep on coming back. you deserve every beautiful thing in the world except for me. its not fair. 

You think you’re the only one who’s watched someone die, to see the life fade out of the body that once held your hand, but you’re not. It was always about you. I was the one reading your journals and picking through boxes of memories finding the traces of stories and long passed feelings. Your life was a book that I read over and over. But your nimble fingers never picked through my treasures and your deceptively open heart never pulled apart my past. The stories behind my scars were never the subject of your curiosity. It was always about you, so you never knew that I’ve watched a man I love die, too.

because baby when you say I’m perfect you reduce the beauty of the person I will become to the person I am now. Don’t spoil my potential. I don’t need you on your knees, worshipping me. I need you standing behind me with your hands on my shoulders, pushing me forward. You can hold my hand as long as you don’t hold me still because I’ve got so much to learn. Put me on a pedestal and I’ll always be looking down at you. Darling, I’ve got to look up to you. 

Sometimes hunger feels like loneliness and a stomach ache is only sadness because my body feels the anger in your voice and I can taste the suffering on your salty lips. When you hugged me goodbye it burned regret into my bones, for shin splits are just a sharp reminder that we’ve grown. A sweet caress pressed fresh bruises on my back to paint a portrait blue and green of all the eyes of men who broke the news by breaking legs. But we healed those bones with a bloody catharsis in sweaty basement shows and the warm familiar smell of battered books that brought our flighty lovers home.