And it's funny don't you hear me laughing?

I immortalized every lock of your hair in verse it became your strength, the thread that held us together I am a weaver with words, but

It's hard to understand

And my meaning isn't clear.

I won't call you babe, but I'll call you the miracle, the futility, of the sunlight's endless yearning to reach the pavement just to be blocked by me, her quest unfulfilled, and the way I tried so hard to soak her up, to make her become a part of me, to compensate for the fact that I ended her pilgrimage, tried to consume her like sunbeams on a plant. I'm a sponge on your still falling tears while you were just the jar that collected them.

"We were both young

When I first saw you."

Our taste match

on Spotify (when you were still,

then, the apple of my eye)

was 58% I laughed in your face,

your lack of taste.

The song: Love Me Like You Do

And you, loved me

like

you

did.

"What are you waiting for?"

One year later "you got your

first car" promised "you

and I would go for a drive."

You let me play the music,

feet on the dashboard

songs I curated for you.

You knew all the words.

Regina Spektor: Don't you know "I loved

you first?" (You were shocked that I decided I loved you first, but

I did). Didn't you hear me beg you to just "take a

seat as you said you want to stand?"

Our taste match, that

summer? 98% Your top

artist? Taylor Swift. I forgot

she was half the world's favorite singer. She

was just ours.

Don't you understand how it hurt

When you knew You're

Losing

Me

before I played it for

you?

Do you know what it's "like

third-wheeling in your

own

relationship?"

Why couldn't you

"stop?"

because Love

"you're losing me."

You don't know this part,

the way I look, the way

Spotify has become a lifeline

my one high, our communication time,

a celestial sign: who are you

now?

One day our taste match

89%

Say Don't Go because

"I would stay forever if

you said

don't

go."

The way I look for our

my songs, are you playing

She's Mine for her? Is she

"funny and clever and kind? Does

She say whatever pops in her mind?"

Do you know how special I felt when

you knew all the words?

Your "one-hand feel on

the steering wheel,

the other on my heart?"

Do you know that's "the closest I've come to

my heart exploding" when you said it made you

think of me? I Bet You Think About

Me. Taste match 86% and you're

free

from

my

sad

girl

music

"and I hope you're happy

(just not like how you

were with me)."

79%

Still

falling

down.

Your songs sound happy

I don't know them

must be radio hits

not Taylor Swift.

Do you look, do you see that

"this is why I broke up with you?

Do you realize you're too high to care?"

That I know, I knew, that

"you're not really there"

you're not there

anymore.

Love,

"I want you to be happier."

Our top match

still

a reminiscence

a reminder

"I can't find a pulse. My heart

won't start anymore

for

you."

I'm still writing poetry and I still won't show it to you, but this time you, babe, my love, I saw you at my poetry reading I looked right at you and thought again about the stain on your jacket sleeve and how proud I was that day you let me wear it and how I thought I'd never feel cold again and it was you but your hair was straightened and not pulled back like when she straightened your hair and I kept thinking about how it must've felt nice to have her hands moving through your hair and how could I blame you for enjoying the sensation so much more than one person could do it for you, she might as well touch your dick for you too. I'm sorry I'm sorry no I mean it the same way you did when you said it over and over and over again every time I spent the day waiting for you and I forgave you every time because I still believed we were quilted from the same cloth and stars from the same constellation and cliches from the same hopeful teenager's diary. So I kept reading my poems to you and melted at the sight of your hands so empty without mine clutched in it cover my scar with your thumb so I can be pure and beautiful again let me be authentic again and I can stop pretending I know how to sit through a talk without zoning out without feeling scared that everything I see means my own inadequacy that the ghosts are closing in on me this room getting smaller and me always getting bigger. But you look great I could write poetry about your smile, I've written poetry about your smile, I think the crescent moon was modeled after your smile, and I write a lot of poems but it was you I loved not the poems like some egoistical English major. I wonder if that's how you see me now. And you were there with another girl which is how I knew it wasn't you. I won't be spiteful because you were right I didn't have a reason not to trust you, I just had a reason not to like you because you didn't want me to feel loved enough or you couldn't make me feel loved enough. They are talking and you and you are here and they say we should condense our poetry and mince our words but my emotions are overflowing like those fountains in your room. The turtles! If we had bought one would we have stayed or would I be single mothering it? And you'd be scared to ask about him. And please how is Misty? Please how is she? This anger is so heavy to carry and i know how it hurt you. Love is a limb I wish I could amputate. I walk around with a model of your heart in your pocket but you didn't realize I left you with my full one and put the model back in my chest to beat hollowly. I think it's safer with you anyway.

but I did see you at the grocery store and I almost didn't believe it I see your gait so many times in my dreams on the street each time I almost break into a run into the wrong man's arms every time but this time you had that smile that is always so certainly comforting and understanding and I had to forcibly restrain myself because the next step wasn't to press my head against your chest and cry and cry and cry until your green shirt (you always had the softest shirts) would dry my tears and I would blubber out an apology and you wouldn't even have to say it's ok I already knew it was.

At least there’s still beautiful things

Hints of pink in the clouds sometimes I

Forget I’m not living in a portrait

Hanging on your mantle, I hope

Over your fireplace, I get so

Cold. Sometimes at dinner parties I

Can almost smell the tea and crumpets as

Someone remarks: well isn’t that

Lovely? Isn’t that simply

Beautiful? And I almost

Think I’m real, crafted

From velveteen and not

Painted on an August morning by

Numb fingers disheveled hair and

Opened skin, cracked open like

A vault, but this time it’s

Empty. You swallowed the key I

Think. I’m never sure. A different

Me applauded your magic.

I'm certain I have the kind of hysteria they used to lock women up for hair uncombed uncouth the moons under my eyes purpling like the shade of gowns I wasn't permitted to wear am I pretty yet am I pretty yet am I pretty yet let me perish in arms that won't call me beautiful at least there's still arms to catch me you don't need to know my suffering you don't get to know my suffering I'm trapped up here but my hair is long and unkempt i hold my strength in its strands while yours lies in pieces on the ground I'll sweep it up you'll never see the painstaking ways that I'll gather each piece and try to reattach it I'm always sorry to the brink of insanity only I would keep running back to you see my veins protruding my yellow eyes bulging see you send me away out of sight while I wonder where those cries are coming from and why my voice is so hoarse

It’s kitchen table dining

Her sweater slipping off her shoulder,

Plain yogurt.

I say to her: you look skinny

And her face spreads open like runny eggs in a pan

We both pretend her reaction is appropriate.

Fingers sticky,

I grip my juice a little tighter,

I tell her

Of summer sun and bare chests,

Caught naked in his arms, I say:

My heart beat so loudly,

I’m speaking in cliches,

I thought it would leap right out of my chest,

Excitement, and fear, and

Dry toast, dab your pizza,

Count your calories, count your blessings,

I don’t know why I let him do it,

Mom, I don’t know,

It was something to do,

Swim and dance, feel pretty, and regret.

This table must be getting wider,

My shaky arms shorter,

My throat dryer.

Drink some water.

Litter the floor with Diet Coke cans:

I’ve been bad today,

This week, this month, this year

Treat yourself, eat a cookie, and regret,

Let a boy touch you until you wish he hadn’t.

Spiralized vegetables,

I’m dizzy, spinning round and round,

Eating discarded crumbs off her plate.

Eating discarded praises off her tongue,

Her eyes dim when they meet mine,

We both pretend they don’t,

And

I don’t say:

I’m sorry

I wrote a poem about you,

Because I know it’s one

I’ll never show her.

I’m the stain on your jacket sleeve

And I’m sorry I’m just telling you about that now see the thing is I was painting my nails and I had an itch and next thing you know dark green polish on that pristine white sleeve but I’m sorry and I tried to clean it off took bleach and remover and the dry cleaners and my mom and couldn’t get it off and I love that jacket more so that you gave it to me to wear and I love that feeling of now I kind of belong to someone and I’ve never loved that feeling before and I should’ve been more careful because then I had that evil creepy crawling thought that now you can’t give your jacket to a new girl and I think that’s just a secret way of saying please don’t leave me and

I think you love me because I was pretty confident you’d forgive me kiss my head while I reach high up on my tippy toes just to play with your hair and keep your arm around my shoulders so I won’t fall behind or get lost in the crowd or feel a chill or have a thought that I don’t get to share with you

Because I think my thoughts are prettier when I know I’ll tell them to you. Not in like a toxic compulsively honest I have to tell you my every thought but that when you ask me about my day it means my day was important and I never looked at them that way before

And now I get to wake up in the morning and hear your voice and sometimes you laugh at my jokes but not too often, you know? Like it doesn’t feel forced which I appreciate and sometimes I’m shocked that you like me because not to be shallow but boy you are really hot like objectively movie star beauty you’re hot but also you’re smart and it shocks me that you don’t think you are because you are and actually it’s a secret worry that you’ll leave because I’m not very smart and I’m sorry I won’t ever show you this poem it’s just my exes embarrassed me when I got too emotionally vulnerable and you’ve seen me cry and I don’t want to make the same mistake again but the thing that shocks me the most is that you keep staying

Like that stain. On your jacket sleeve.

We define ourselves by our hopelessness,

Our homeliness, our you’ll never leave your hometown-iness

Dance with me in the churchyard -

The one you were born in, the one you’ll die in.

You already have your plot picked out -

Name carved out on stone.

I can already see the vine growing over it,

Your name so gray almost obscured entirely,

Until you’re nothing, no one knows what you were to me.

You’ll say marry me in that churchyard,

And in that one moment we’ll feel immortal, like daffodils in August.

So yellow it’s nauseating. They’ll want to step on us, but there’s no need. We already forgot about December.

And when I say I love you I mean I’m scared you’ll leave me

I’m so used to the warmth of your arm around me without you I’ll be forever cold,

In the terrifying realization i never should have grown used to your warmth.

And today I spent all day writing because I remembered all of those things I promised I’d remember forever and I forgot

Like the login information for the poetry account I made that I don’t know if anyone ever saw

Or the night we had our first kiss in the hours right before sunrise

That glowing kind of faith that sunrise would still happen it was so dark out but we still closed our eyes and trusted it would be light when we opened them

I wrote it all down

Because what if you aren’t there to remind me.

And when I say I love you I mean I know you’ll leave me

You’ll find my voice too shrill or get tired of the times I fall asleep right before your lips touch mine, the promise of one day not real enough, and my silly jokes and foolish dreams too tiring to hold on to

So I’ll slip through like sand in your hands

And I’ll hold on to you because I wrote us all down

Turned us into midnight poetry

Timeless like my middle school dreams of a tall boy with green eyes to hold my hand

And in the wake of rejection I’ll want to throw my words into flames,

Let the fire consume us like feelings always do

I’ll be laughing through my tears as you disappear

But your phantom arm on mine quenches the inferno

I’ll save you the memory I owe us that much.

And when I say I love you, I mean, I’m asking you to stay

At least for today

And if I’m lucky

Tomorrow.

And tonight maybe I’ll call you

Just to say I wrote a poem about you,

But it isn’t your time to read it.