I wrote this for you

I often feel like a wild beast, fleeing at the smallest movement.

I fled when I realized that we weren’t in love.

We weren’t in love,

but fuck it if I wasn’t.

It dawned upon me too late that you were a wild beast too,

gnawing on your own leg to get out of the trap

that I apparently was.

You left me to pick your hair out of the drain

and the pictures down from the walls,

like picking scabs off too soon.

I don’t know how to translate that into poetry.

And know I’m here, smoking your cigarettes just for the scent.

When the sleep won’t come,

don’t open the vodka.

When the words won’t come,

don’t pick up the phone.

I don’t know if you touched me just to break me like a promise.

I don’t know if you touched me, because I was the first thing

in a long time that felt good,

but it’s not fair, it’s not fair, it’s not fair,

I never got to yell,

I got to sit in silent tears with hangovers

you could name battleships after.

The first time you touched me, I didn’t know what to do with my hands,

like they were alien things, like I’d never had hands before

and this was the first time, and maybe they belonged in my pockets, and maybe they didn’t.

The first time, we were in the same bed I tried so hard to stay still.

It was the first time, our bodies were that close, the electricity could light whole cities.

I felt like screaming, or think of Charlie,

‘I got a Golden Ticket, I GOT A GOLDEN TICKET’,

breathing was hard like algebra, or why we do the things we do,

only thirty seconds had passed, this was worse than breathing under water,

I wanted to say so many things and nothing,

I felt everything.

I know I leaned into the insecurity too fast.

I’m either slow and shuffling or colliding at maximum speed.

I don’t know gray, never have.

And now I’m sitting here, five beers in,

with charred lungs from the cigarettes I devoured

in the attempt to smoke you out of my head.

I am still surprised I’m alive.

I tried to forget you, you know,

but you grew roots around my ribcage

and sprouted sunflowers below my cheekbones.

I wish my mother had told me

that you can’t water flowers with vodka.

And now I can’t think about anything else other than the hickey on your neck.

And you’re out fucking some blonde girl who gets high all the time,

and I’m a fucking mess.

You’re up in the mountains, and I’m drowning in lakes while you’re describing the water.

I’m scared of the nights.

I’m scared I’m losing my mind.

I’m scared you’re going to stay in me forever.

The day you left, I realized why hurricanes are named after people.