We haven't spoken in over a week,
But really, we haven't spoken since May.
And how many times can I spell out I love you with a fistful of gold dust
Before you believe someone could love you with a fistful of gold dust?

How was that party with the mountain boys?
Did my name fling itself through the windshield
As you pulled in to the driveway and back in time?
Was it all 2012? Ski slopes and corduroy?
The herd of heads you've only ever heard of?
Were you a wild child in the deep woods?

I see champagne bottles scattered under trees,
And guitar strings echoing, resonating, suffocating.
When she pulls away you fall into blue eyes, all wrapped up in books.
Good for you, perhaps the happy couple will one day
Take up residence in Georgia or wherever the freckled girls gather.

if you went back in time
and found my eighth grade self

you would find long sleeves
pulled way down her arms
and you might notice
she was hiding something
that she got awfully tired of hiding
and tired of stares when she wasn't

i'll give you a hint
my ninth grade self
had bright red scars
seared into her shoulders

my tenth grade self
was still finding leftover
pink horizon lines from
safety razors on her thighs

my eleventh grade self
found all her skin remarkably
pale but her coping
mechanisms still unhealthy

and my twelfth-grade self
she was the weakest one of all
just had the strongest
jaw to hide behind
and enough self-confidence to
stretch thin across her neuroses

but if you could go back
and find my eighth-grade self

please tell her
something for me
she won't believe it
but i just have to tell her

that in four years she will buy
the most beautiful sleeveless
white dress with navy lace
and she will wear it with
sneakers and bruises on her knees
a smile the overexposed
color of her insecurity

and nobody
will say a
**** thing
about her scars
bleached into
a memory.

he slept facing his dreams,
lost in a world that didn't feel
the kisses i gently placed along his spine
or hear the "my darling, i love you" that i breathed
into his skin.
he slept facing his dreams,
and i laid against him,
facing mine.

I want to fill your mouth with pennies

I’ll pull your intestines out with my teeth

your hands are cacti,
your eyes rolled backward
like your rolling papers over kush

I am a cricket,
you are a size 11 shoe

I am click bait for your insecurities:

“self-deprecating,
emotionally vulnerable Canadian
seeks love and fidelity”

am I enticing?

I sat at your window and waited
to see you come up the drive

I am fiction

at the lake where I spent my childhood
you pressed your cheek to the sand

as I held the hand of my 6-year-old self in the water

you left yourself in my mouth
and I am still picking out your remnants
from my teeth

I see no better solution

than to hack away at my joints

and mail them to you

with the note,

“I share this with you”

we waited
fingers trembling,
trying to remember
the way we felt
before we felt nothing
memories of feelings
we never told each other
trapped under books
and strings and a paper world
locked behind doors
of anxiety and anguish
fingers trembling,
we waited