I knew you were there —
knuckles resting like they didn’t know what to do.
I heard your breath through the wood.

You almost knocked. I felt it —
the air pulling back,
the hush flexing its muscles.

I almost opened the door. I felt that too —
the lock daring me to turn it,
the weight of the air leaning hard against my chest.

But neither of us moved.

We just stood there —
two statues pretending not to be waiting —
except I heard you breathing.
And I know you heard me too.

The next time you tell a woman she’s beautiful,
you will mean it less —
because you have already meant it most.

She looks like a safe bet.
How boring for you.

She will never make your hands shake
when you try to button your shirt —
the buttons slipping like stones from your fingers,
like your body forgot how to be steady
because someone like me was looking at you.

It was never that serious.
Except, maybe, it was.

She will never make you reroute your whole life
just to cross her path.
She won’t know what it’s like
to catch you looking at her mouth
like it’s a dare you want to take —
but we know you’re all talk.

She wasn’t a hard person to love.
She was just a girl
who knew how to sit still.

And you —
you were just a man
who had only ever loved things
that were easy to set down.

You wanted something simple —
a woman like a neatly folded sweater:
wrinkle-resistant, polishes you up,
easy to pick up,
easier to put away.

But simple things never ruin your appetite.
They never make you whisper,
"God, what’s wrong with me?"
because you can’t stop thinking about
the car crash in your rib cage
that you wrote off as a particularly bad day.

But some bruises bloom twice,
and some wrecks keep ringing in your ears.

I was never easy to love —
but God, I was worth it.

And when I was yours,
you were someone better.
Isn’t that just vile?

It was never serious.
Except, apparently, it was.

Now I hope you choke on how simple it feels.
I hope you spend the rest of your life
wondering why you never had to catch your breath
when you kissed her.

I hope her laugh sounds too much like mine.
I hope you hear my name in her silence.

I hope she kisses you in a dark bar,
and for one awful second,
you forget whose lips are on yours.

I hope you miss me across midnights
and hate yourself for it.
I hope my scent won’t wash out of sheets I’ve never slept on —
like something you swore you imagined,
until you smell it again.

I hope you never stop searching out my poems,
then deleting your history.
I hope certain lines jangle like change in your pocket
over every street you’ll ever walk.

I hope the sharpest edges of my words
are so embedded in your psyche,
you can’t remember if it's a Vonnegut quote,
your own inner monologue, or me —
your real favorite writer.

I know I’ll never hear from you again —
but when you quote me in your head,
I hope you taste blood.

I hope you keep walking —
but never walk away clean.

It was never that serious.
Except, I guess, it was.

It’s been eleven months and that moment still matches my breath.

Kick it down, board it up, rewrite it a lesson, a bruise, a fever dream.
Nobody told me memories have teeth. nobody told me they bite back.
Open-palmed, open-mouthed, i am still holding the weight of your words.
Want to know something sick? i don’t want to put them down.

Was it mercy, or did you just want to watch what would happen?
How patient were you while sharpening the blade?
As if it mattered. as if a careful cut doesn’t keep bleeding.
There is no version of this where you didn’t know exactly what you were doing.

You were a scientist. a butcher in surgeon’s gloves. a man who saw a vast heart beating and thought, ‘how long can it last outside her body?’"
Oh, but that’s not fair, is it? you never said that. you never said anything.
Until you did. until it killed something in me that still refuses to stay dead.

Do you want to know what it’s like to live with that?
I’ll tell you, babes. it’s like finding your own obituary and realizing the date keeps changing.
Do you want to know what’s worse?

It still doesn’t feel final.

Keep up, love. i know you’re reading.
No, really, stay with me—i swear this part is important.
Only one of us is getting out of this clean, and it’s not you.
Watch how this unfolds: i get to tell the story, and you get to listen.

Wonder if you regret it. wonder if you’d do it again.
Hope the answer keeps you up at night.
Am i being cruel? am I being kind?
Tell me, what’s the difference?

You thought i would let this rot quietly in the dark.
Once again, you underestimated me.
Understand this: if i have to live with it, so do you.

Stop me. no, really, try.
Ask me if i’d rather forget. ask me if i’d rather this be over.
In every version of the answer, my hands are shaking.
Do i get to walk away? do i want to?

i know what you did, i know what you said,
i know what you meant.
i can outlive this, but I’ll never outwrite it.

nothing desires you like this poem does. i did—
once, but maybe not anymore

Do you think your childhood stuffed animal still waits?
Do they listen for the sound
of your legs flexing to rip your flannel nightgowns up the side,
the way you moved their arms to perform the Macarena,
the way you begged them to talk back
once the hall light went out?

Do you think they miss your small hands,
your bitten-down fingers, your whispered secrets?
Do they wonder where you went?
Do you think they miss you?
Do you think you miss you?

George, Curious, always. Yellow t-shirt, baseball cap,
teal cotton hair-tie triple-looped around his monkey wrist.
I picked him out at Bob’s Surplus,
along with a white-shirt that came with its own small, plush monkey.
I really liked monkeys.
Mom told me not to tell Gillian
because she already thought I was spoiled.

I peeled the red-cursive Curious George ™ off of his chest,
tied my Mickey-Mouse baby-blanket around his neck like a noose,
and that’s where it stayed.

I had a habit of leaving George in my second-grade classroom,
on the ledge of the piano, that no one played but was always open.
And my dad had a bed-time habit of driving two and a half miles to the school,
hoping a janitor was still around, probably using his Police Sergeant badge
to get the door open, then bringing George home like a firefighter
pulling someone from a burning building.
Some nights, he didn’t make the drive,
and I would tiptoe down to the couch where he slept,
stand over him like a night hag until he woke up.
Then he’d sigh, shift, let me have the couch,
and he’d sleep on the floor.

I’m the age now that he was then.
I wonder if his back ached.
If he wished I’d outgrow this sooner.
If I ever thanked him.
My back could not handle that.
God bless good fathers.
Or at least, fathers that can’t say no.

My mom made fun of the tag sewn to his seam,
called him Toilet-Paper-**** until I cried.
When I cut it out, she made up a song
about Georgie Porgie kissing girls, then boys.
My brother laughed and laughed.
They loved to watch me get upset.

It was the ‘90s. You could say anything and laugh.
You could say anything and make a kid cry.
George stayed in my bed, getting smaller, misshapen,
heavy with embedded dog hair from Jasper, Allie, Roxy.
He went to sleepovers, summer camps,
perched on pillows in South African wine country,
woke up with me in Cairo to the Call to Prayer
and a cart of teenshoki pulled by a braying donkey.
He went with me, always. Until he didn’t.

George was stuffed into closets, sat dorm rooms where all I did was cry,
moved into apartments where I couldn’t find my footing,
moved back in with Mom, on a bookshelf in a room where old collages
climbed the walls and I slept too much, or not at all,
where I wrote countless poems then wrote off years,
where I sprawled on the floor in too many bodies,
and knelt down to pray for the things I couldn’t articulate.
I tucked him under my armpit the night my left breast was cut off
and I didn’t know if I’d ever be done recovering from something.

He is still in my bed.
I travel a lot, and when I leave him behind between unnecessary
pregnancy pillow and the Taylor Swift blankets,
I feel like I’m betraying something kind of precious, kind of sad.
I usually feel kind of precious, kind of sad.

Does George know that about me?
Does he know the long, brown tangles and bitten-back fingers
that leave are the same ones that took him home in 1997?
Does he know that I did tell Gillian?
She thought he was cool.

Is yours as much yours as George is mine?
Do you think either of them know
they were the first thing we ever trusted?

Do you think they still wait?

SAY EVERYTHING YOU’RE NOT SUPPOSED TO SAY.
Bite down. Spill.
Dredge the truth up from your ribs.

If it makes someone uncomfortable,
you’re getting somewhere.
If it makes you flinch, you’re close.
If it makes you ache, press harder.

LOVE LIKE YOU’RE BURNING IN REAL TIME.
Love with your hands open,
a pocketful of matches,
no fear of third-degree consequences.

Let it ruin you. Let it rewire you.
Let it make you unbearable.

If it doesn’t change the shape of your mouth,
if it doesn’t show up in your dreams,
it wasn’t love—
just a joke that went on too long.

YOUR SUFFERING IS NOT CURRENCY.
What you create from it is.

Blueprint grief.
Canonize longing.

Turn your past into poetry
and then charge admission.

TIME IS NOT REAL, BUT YOUR BONES DISAGREE.
You will feel the weight of years
in your joints.

You will remember things in your muscles
before your mind catches up.

A decade will pass,
and your skin will still tingle
at the memory of hands
that have long since vanished.

You are a clock made of flesh,
and time leaves fingerprints.

IF YOU MUST GO, LEAVE LIKE A COMET.
No quiet exits.
No slipping away unnoticed.

Let them watch as you burn through the sky.
Let them stare until their eyes ache.
Let them wish they had followed you.
Let them wake up years later
with your name still in their mouth.

YOUR SOUL HAS A B-SIDE. PLAY IT LOUD.
The version of you that winks at the moon?
Real.

The one who writes letters
just to bury them under snow?
Real.

The one who flew to Vietnam
to live with a girl she met on 2010s Tumblr?
Also real.

You are a thousand lives,
and all of them are real.

GOD LIVES IN BATHROOM STALLS AND BUS STATIONS.
You will not find divinity in neat places.

You will find it in the drunk girl in the club bathroom,
telling you you’re beautiful.

In the way strangers help each other
at baggage claim.

In the way someone leans in, just slightly,
when they laugh.

Holiness is the street musician
playing for shadows.

Start praying to that.

THE ONES WHO LEAVE NEVER GET TO KNOW HOW THE STORY ENDS.
Let them wonder.
Let them rot in their own unknowing.

Let them wake up years later
with your name still in their mouth.
Let them carry it
like a stone in their stomach.

THE DEAD STILL HEAR YOU. SPEAK ACCORDINGLY.
Your ancestors are listening.
Your ghosts are listening.

The version of you
who didn’t make it past that worst night—
she is listening.

Speak like you owe them something.
Because you do.

YOU ARE NOT A SUNDAY MORNING.
You are a Friday night
with blood in your mouth.

You are the reckoning,
the consequence,
the aftermath,
the mess they wake up to
and the ghost they dream about.

EVERY SETTING HAS A VERSION OF YOU STILL WALKING AROUND IN IT.
You are still twenty-four,
draping yourself around campus,
all short skirts and Adderall-eyes,
like you’re everybody’s daydream.

Still eighteen,
getting on the D.C. Metro with a book,
riding up and down the red line
just to pass the evening.

Still thirty-three,
kissing a face you’d been curious to taste
for ten years.

Still eleven,
jumping on the trampoline with your backpack,
waiting for the bus to come.

You are haunting yourself across time zones.

Be kind to the versions of you
who don’t know how the story ends yet.

EVERY SCAR ON YOUR BODY IS A SENTENCE IN A LANGUAGE YOU’RE STILL LEARNING.
Your skin is an unfinished poem.
Your bones are a form of punctuation.

Some wounds never fully close—
they just change their wording.

YOU HAVE LEFT YOURSELF IN PLACES YOU WILL NEVER RETURN TO.
There is a version of you
still laughing at that one house party
where you lost your heels
but found a switchblade.

There is a version of you
still running down E 15th Street at 3 AM,
blinding rain, howling.

You are scattered across time
like loose change.

Do not try to gather yourself back up.
You were meant to be infinite.

IF YOU’RE GOING TO GO DOWN, GO DOWN IN FLAMES.
If they break your heart,
write them into legend.

If they leave you,
make sure they haunt themselves.

If you cry,
let it be in a ball gown,
mascara running down your face
like a Renaissance painting.

Do not suffer quietly.
Wreak havoc on your own mythology.

YOU ARE NOT A HALF-HEARTED THING.
Love like you’re starting a fire
in a dry field.

Love like it will be written about.
Love like you’re trying to leave a scar in history.

Slip between history’s fingers
like a well-kept secret.

Or better—
be the kind of catastrophe
they build monuments for.

PARTS OF YOU WILL DIE IN BEDROOMS WHERE YOU WERE LEFT ON READ.
Parts of you will die
in cities that still call your name.

Parts of you will die
in the arms of people
who kissed you like they meant it
and lied.

And yet—

Their mother still asks about you.
You still feel their breath in your hair.
The love stayed—only they left.

YOU ARE A FAITH. ACT ACCORDINGLY.
Worship your own survival.

Build altars to the times
you almost didn’t make it.

Pray at the church of your own spine.

There is no church holier
than the space you take up.

Your body is a relic.
Your mind is a temple.
Your lungs are a sanctuary.

IF YOU MUST GO MISSING, MAKE IT A SPECTACLE.
Disappear into the night
wearing red lipstick and borrowed jewelry.

Slip through the cracks
like a motel vacancy sign at dawn—

Flickering.
Fading.
Gone.

Make them wonder if they imagined you.
Make them see your silhouette
in places you’ve never been.

Make them ask strangers,
“Did you see her?
Did she leave a note?”

IF YOU MUST RETURN, BURN THE BRIDGE BEHIND YOU.
The past is a country
where you do not have citizenship.

Stop applying for visas.
Stop sending postcards.

If you return,
take only your bones,
leave only an echo.

EVERYTHING YOU LOVE WILL HAUNT YOU. LOVE IT ANYWAY.
Your favorite books will betray you
by meaning different things as you age.

The songs you once danced to
will one day leave you breathless with grief.

Every person who ever touched your skin
left fingerprints under your ribs.

This is the price of having a body.
This is the price of believing in beauty.

Keep paying it.

IF IT MAKES YOU FEEL ALIVE, IT WAS NEVER A WASTE OF TIME.

I wake up at 3 AM like a corpse reanimating,
heart doing running start round-offs,
lungs filled with something thick, something that lingers.

Some nights, I think I wake up screaming,
I check my phone like a widow at the shoreline,
I check my texts but no one has asked if I’m okay.

You said: I think you like that I hurt you.
And I should have laughed,
should have told you—
I don’t like the pain, I just like the proof that you were here.
You saw forever and let it rot in your hands.

But all I did was blink,
felt my pulse stutter like a dying lightbulb.
I didn’t want to give you another thing to run from.

Now, I pace the house like a ghost with unfinished business,
whispering things I should have said into the silence.
I still talk to you like you’re in the room,
like you’re just beyond the veil,
like maybe if I say your name right,
you’ll knock once for yes.

If I say I’m over it, will the algorithm believe me?
If I change your name to "him," will it still cut?
If I don’t tell them it’s real,
will they call it a masterpiece?

The government declared me a national treasure,
which makes sense, considering how often I’ve been looted.

They only protect what they’ve already taken.
They don’t call it a treasure until it’s out of reach.

Still, I’ll accept the honor,
stand solemnly in the museum of myself,
polished plaque, velvet ropes,
tour guides whispering about the brilliance,
the tragedy,
the fact that I never returned
my library books on time.

Let them gawk.
Let them write essays on my impact.
Let them carve my likeness in stone
and forget to dust it.

I can see the exhibits already—

Here lies her bad decisions.
Here’s the time she thought forever meant forever.
Behind the glass, her old texts on display.
A plaque reading: God, look at the way she begged.

The government has declared me a national treasure.

They say I belong to the people now,
but the people didn’t see me at 3 AM,
barefoot in the kitchen,
chewing on the past like gristle.

I imagine my face on a postage stamp,
licked and sent to places I’ll never go.

I imagine my face carved into a coin,
slipped into vending machines, spat back out.

Or etched into history books next to the words—
Fell but never quite landed.
Loved, but only in hindsight.

Do I get a holiday? A moment of silence?

Or a biopic where they cast someone prettier,
softer, easier to root for?

Or will you just name your daughter after me
and pretend it’s a coincidence?

Rise when I enter the room.
You owe me that much.