We kiss on the roof,
disturbing time and space.
We hold tight to each other,
watching the landscape quake.

(I point out fires for him to see-)

Six stories down, this street
mirrors my marrow:
young, velvet, ******-
a little bit further than
he’s willing to go.

(I light my torches and set them free.)

The dark parts flare and
we are alone.
Forget breathing,
now we pant.

(I burn things before they burn me-)

The heavy parts leak and
we are alone.
Forget tasting,
Now we take.

(I burn things before they burn me.)

I carved liar into a birch tree with my house key,
the bark peeling back like it agreed with me,
and kissed the wound to make it better.
(It tasted like sap and second chances.)

Don’t worry,
I didn’t curse you.
Just mildly inconvenienced your future.
Just made sure the next time you made a wish,
it’d take the long way home.

I was going to bring your sweatshirt with the teethed-on drawstrings
until I remembered
you never apologized
for that thing in November.
(I'm still deciding which thing.)

The neighbor came out, squinting into the half-lit yard.
Asked if I was okay.
I said,
"I’m practicing stillness, Babe,"
like it was a normal thing to say,
like the word Babe didn’t snap in the cold air like an old wire.

She backed away —
probably could feel the vibration of me
almost texting you something poetic
and illegal.

My phone’s on 2%.
Which means the night has stakes.
I love when there’s stakes.
Feels romantic.
Feels cinematic.
Feels like if I walked into traffic,
even the streetlights would lean closer to watch.

It feels like
I could throw a rock at your window,
and it would break
into a heart shape,
because the universe loves a bit.
Because somewhere, some cheap god
loves a pretty mess.

I thought about leaving you a voicemail.
Just heavy breathing and maybe a line from that song
we used to swear wasn’t about us.
You know the one —
the one where nobody says sorry,
they just drown better than the last time.

Instead,
I sat down in the driveway.
Let the cold crawl up my back like a consequence.
Watched my breath weave itself into small white lies.
Practicing, I guess.
For the next time you ask if I'm fine.

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.

I woke up with glass in my throat—
slivers of something I swallowed last night
when the sky was peeling itself open,
like skin stretched too thin.

I remember standing on the curb,
watching the streetlights flicker like eyelids,
thinking about how no one ever
means to slam the door that hard.

My breath was smoke in my mouth,
hollowed out like a bitten plum pit,
and I was talking to no one—
just mouthing things I couldn’t finish saying.

Maybe if I kept my lips moving,
he’d appear
like a coin behind my ear.

The wind dragged its nails down my arms,
and I swore I could feel the sky
swallowing me whole—
clouds closing in
like a body bag zipper.

I said your name into my own collarbone
just to hear how it sounded breaking—
sharp, jagged,
splintering against my ribs.

Like I was still wired
to the sound of you.

I wanted to scream
until my throat blistered,
but all I could do was spit out the glass—
small diamonds catching the streetlight,
like I’d somehow turned the hurt
into something that glittered.

I stood there,
staring down at it,
thinking how beautiful it was
to lose something sharp enough
to know exactly where it hurt.

And maybe that’s what we were—
a wound dressed in glitter,
a myth I kept retelling
until it sounded like truth.

Maybe you never loved me.
Maybe you did.
Maybe I was always going to bleed
either way.

He never even kissed me
and I still wake up
like I survived a car crash
I begged to happen.

I memorized the cadence of his typing bubble
like it was a heartbeat.
I stared at his “active now”
like it was Morse code for almost.

I drafted messages like legislation.
Held back like it was holy.
Called it chemistry—
it was just inconsistency with good bone structure.

I Googled, “how to be wanted by someone
who never said they wanted you,”
and got ads for perfume.

I blamed Mercury.
I blamed my softness.
I blamed the ghost of the girl
who asked him to visit.
Kneeled down to ‘crazy boy ****’ like it was a prophecy.

He didn’t break my heart.
He drained it—
with a bend, sip, thanks
that left me lightheaded and poetic.

I told my therapist
he was a metaphor.
She said, “For what?”
I said, “For me.”

I should’ve burned something.
Instead I wrote fourteen poems
and shaved my legs
like closure was coming.

Now I bite down on his name
like it owes me blood.
I spit it out
like it’s still in my mouth
because somehow, it is.

You wrote yourself a note and taped it to the window,
now it’s sun-stained, ink-blurred,
typeface dripping, tapestry ripping,
another thing you let pass,
another ring slipped from your grasp.
Another night alone in your empty rooms;
waiting for a glimpse of golden.

Stutter into sleep, wring awake,
forage your phone for letters that haven't moved.
The world's still the same; bills seep your numbers,
alphabets plait your nerves.
The city won’t cower before you,
the summer won’t buoy you into anything
other than forward; tanner and older, unfound.

What do you dream of these days?
And in what shades of blue?
What’s dead in your head? What’s kicking?
What do you hope for in the vacant morning,
and who do you miss in the lingering night?
There are no wrong answers.

There are lights you forgot to turn off,
there are epiphanies you forgot to remember.
There are days you forgot to dance in the kitchen and touch your skin to grass,
but you haven’t forgotten me. You just don’t care.
Does that make me a ghost or a regret?
Both leave sand in my mouth, both ricochet an echo;
neither feels like an ending, and both make me shudder.

I’m looking for something to fill the space between my ribs
that isn’t a calamity and isn’t a marvel,
just some kind of ballast that won't see me at sea.
I need a tether for my tongue that doesn't look like you,
and a compass for my eyes that won’t point you-due.
I need a berth for my grace that won't let me drown
as you **** a cigar, and angle to watch the shore watch you.

My library-heart roars and aches with every story ever told,
my big feelings hold up the sky and call in the waves.
I’ve never been so close to something that wasn't mine,
I’ve never blinked more golden than when no one's looking.
I’ve never been lonelier than when I was
holding on to you,
so why can't I let go?
There are no wrong answers.

In 3150 BC, you crowned me with lotus.
Then said I made you look too mortal.

In 2500 BC, you swore to build me a
monument. You did.
Then sealed someone else inside.

In 1200 BC, you blamed the gods.
I blamed you.
You said ‘same thing.’

In 44 BC, I warned you not to go.
You wore your laurels anyway.
When they stabbed you,
you mouthed my name.
But you didn’t say it loud enough
to survive.

In 73 AD, I poured wine into your open mouth
while the city burned behind us.
You said you’d die for me.
You meant later.
Much later.
With someone else watching.

In 245, I don’t talk about what happened.

In 810, we met in a monastery library.
You touched my wrist over a psalm
and whispered heretic.
I thought it meant holy.
You watched them exile me
with your hands folded like praise.

In 1207, we shared a bed during famine.
You bit my shoulder in your sleep
and murmured it was dreaming.
When spring came,
you left with the first ripe fruit.
You didn’t even wake me.

In 1258, you said the library was sacred.
I said ‘So am I.’
We hid manuscripts in clay jars
and told each other we’d survive.
When the city fell,
you were seen fleeing with her.
You left the books behind.
You left me behind.
History lost us both—
but only one of us remembered.

In 1462, you pressed a seashell
to my palm like a vow.
You promised to return before the tide turned.
They said your ship shattered
like a wineglass on coral—
I drank the ocean dry waiting.

In 1500, you said I looked like rain
the year the fields drowned.
We laid together in the lotus marsh
until your father summoned you.
I lit paper boats for every lie you told,
watched them drift toward a place
where girls like me
become folklore.

In 1505, you called me the sun’s daughter.
Then vanished before solstice,
left me to climb the mountain
alone, draped in gold I couldn’t eat.

In 1593, I was the widow with ink on my teeth.
You kissed me behind the theatre,
called me muse like it meant yours,
then left a sonnet in someone else’s corset.
I caught the fever,
but it wasn’t the one that killed me.

In 1619, I whispered your name through a veil
as we rode separate carriages to our arranged marriages.
You blinked once.
I spent the next twenty years
treating silence like a sentence.

In 1806, you said we’d run away to Vienna.
I waited at the station for two days.
You sent your regrets
on someone else’s handwriting.

In 1865, you sent me a letter from the battlefield.
It said keep living.
Then you died
with someone else’s locket in your fist.

In 1915, you wrote: ‘I miss you when it rains.’
I read it under a leaking roof.
They found your body days later
with a picture of me
folded into someone else’s letter.

In 1933, we wrote to each other from opposite cities.
You said the distance was killing you.
Then married someone local
so you'd stop dying.

In 1942, I woke up mid-war
and realized we’ve done this before.
You looked surprised.
I wasn’t.

In 1963, we kissed in the back of a Chevrolet
and you said you felt safe with me.
Then you enlisted.
Then your birthday flashed on the TV in color and static,
and I understood the difference between
missing and gone.

In 2024, you told me I still think about you.
I asked in what way?
You said in the way you remember a dream
you can’t explain.
I laughed.
But not because it was funny.
Because I knew I’d spend three more years
trying to wake up from you.

And still—
I keep loving you.
You keep
reinventing new ways
to leave.

I wonder if Taylor Swift
reads poems like mine,
filled with guys who are
forever running away,
or standing still
in the shadow of the last word.

I wonder if Taylor Swift has ever been
the last person at the party,
waiting for someone to notice the empty room,
wondering when she stepped out of her heels,
and who stuffed them in their bag,
as she left the night behind like an art thief,
taking all the pieces no one thought they'd miss
until they’re staring at a wall of empty frames.

I wonder if Taylor Swift has ever looked at a stranger and thought,
‘You are the version of me that never had to sing
about all the things I can’t say aloud—
the version that’s free of the weight
of every note I write.’

Somewhere, in a parallel universe,
I hand her my heart—
heavy with everything we never spoke,
but she doesn’t need to read it,
because in this universe,
we’ve already lived the words.

Somewhere, she writes me back,
telling me that love
is just a song
we forgot to finish,
and maybe, in the silence,
we’ll finally hear it echo between us,
looping in a way that sounds
like both a beginning and an ending.

May of last year, I became a girl again—
not one I’d been before,
but one I met for the first time,
bejeweled in a New Jersey parking lot,
singing with lungs
too used to holding apologies.

When the stadium lights dimmed,
we stood at the blockade,
a constellation of strangers orbiting
the same star.

It was the closest we’d ever come
to being fully ourselves—
sparkling, loud, unabashed,
together.

We were women relearning how to be girls,
unfolding ourselves in a carpark,
peeling back layers of too-muchness
we’d been taught to hide.

The years had pressed us quiet,
shrinking us to fit spaces
meant for us to be seen,
but never felt.

But here, under the floodlights,
we found permission in the shimmer—
sharing shorthand glances
and whispered secrets that sparkled.

Someone spilled a White Claw;
someone else sipped their heartbreak.
We nodded solemnly at both,
because ravishment and sorrow
need no explanation here.

The music reached us on delay—
her voice traveling not from the stadium,
but from the sky,
echoing just far enough
to feel like it already belonged to the past.
We sang anyway,
daring it to catch us.

There was glitter on the asphalt,
scuffed into galaxies
by the soles of cowboy boots and Converse.
We spun and swayed like children unlearning shame,
our bodies moving freely,
finally forgetting how they’re supposed to look.

A security guard, middle-aged, glowing white bob
mouthed All Too Well like a prayer
she’d carried for years,
her female gaze—
not surveillance, but sanctuary—
the kind women save for each other
when the world isn’t watching.

She nodded as we screamed the bridge,
her eyes sparking,
as if unearthing something long-buried.
In that moment,
we were all the same age.

On the upper balcony,
a silhouette waved—
a shadow carved by backlit glow,
as if the universe greeted us by name.
We waved back,
because what else do you do
when kindness feels that big?

The glint and glimmer turned
strangers into sisters.
We clapped for the ones who ran to the gates,
even two hours in,
hands clutching miracle QR codes.

We whooped for them
like it was our own triumph,
because it was.
Together we're storming the barricades
of a revolution made of rhinestones.

Someone spun with their arms wide,
spilling bliss into the night.
Someone else stood still,
eyes closed,
holding the weight of a lyric
they didn’t know they needed.

It wasn’t just a concert.
It was a reclamation—
a bead-strewn riot of tenderness,
a reminder that we’re allowed to take up space,
to hold everything,
to feel it all at once—
even if it's messy,
even if it's ugly,
even if it spills like light too wild to gather back.

A woman with long braids
and Bluetooth speaker in her Hi-Vis vest
blasted Fearless at the station,
while directing us to our trains.

We sang it back to her,
off-key but perfectly in sync.
Joy spreads like stardust,
and what else can you do
when you’ve carried something
so vast,
so bright?

For once,
the world paused—
not as an audience,
but as something softer,
a witness to the sound we made.

We were there.
It was rare.
I'll remember it.

December is still lucent,
winter is still scratching its legs in the grass.
Our bruises are yellowing, our swells are endless.
The scorn is still hot in my mouth,
the tense is still past.

I don’t want to lose the taste of red,
or the weight blue brings in its throat,
but I’m ready to peel your scent off my skin,
scrape the sanctified from my sinned-in-bones,
and burn the map to the hidden rooms I built for you.

I know the fire is slow and the years are not.
I know the burning is mine and you are not.
I know the stuttered-tongue is a cliff and the knife-edge is in my hands.
I know that silence is an answer and that you are not.

I saged the room,
but the ghosts keep vaping,
blowing rings of blame
with burnt-out coils
and Irish Goodbyes.
They keep telling me to calm down
while rearranging my furniture.

I dream of strangers' hands,
too much of a stranger to know
what to leave behind,
pressing my grief
into neat little boxes.

I keep forgetting which ones
hold his name
and which ones hold mine.
The world spins without me,
the shadow I left behind
frozen in place.

I thought closure was a door,
but it’s a hallway with no exit,
the same door I keep slamming
in my own face.
Empty rooms painted
in the bluest regret.

If I could’ve spoken English for just one day,
I wouldn’t have wasted time
asking for treats,
or walks,
or one last ride in the car—
window cracked, your hand on my chest
like a seatbelt you didn’t want to let go of.

I wouldn’t have said “I love you.”
You already knew that.

You felt it
in how I followed you from room to room
like your shadow had bones.
In the way I sighed
when you moved me off your spot on the bed
but I never left the room.

I would’ve used my one day
to say all the things
you never let yourself hear
from anyone else.
The things you needed someone to say
without flinching.

I would’ve said:

You don’t have to keep shrinking
just to fit in someone’s arms.

You deserve to take up space,
and time,
and seconds that stretch out
without needing to be earned.

I would’ve said:

You weren’t dramatic.
You were drowning
in a place that looked like air.

I saw it.
I stayed.

I would’ve said:

You’re better when you sleep.
You’re smarter when you sing.
You’re beautiful when you’re writing—
even when the words hurt.
Especially then.

You are allowed to be tired.
You are allowed to want things.
You are allowed to leave
before you’re pushed.

I would’ve told you:

I knew when the end was coming.
Not because my body gave out—
but because your voice did.

You started saying goodbye
in the pauses.
In the extra seconds it took to say my name.
In the way your hands shook
before they reached for me.

You got quieter,
not in volume—
but in hope.

And even then,
I wasn’t scared.
You made dying feel like
staying close
in a new way.

You said
“good girl,”
and I knew what it meant.

It meant thank you.
It meant I’m sorry.
It meant please stay longer—
but I’ll let you go if you have to.

And if I had one more sentence,
just one more word
before my voice disappeared again—

I wouldn’t make it poetic.

I’d say:

You were enough the whole time.
You just needed someone who knew it
before you asked.
I did. I always did.
I still do.

Then I’d press my head into your chest,
like I used to—
when the whole world felt too loud—

and I’d stay
until you believed it.

The morning cracked wrong again.
Light spilling like something nobody cleaned up.

It was the kind of sky
you could mistake for mercy
if you weren’t paying attention.

The sky did that thing—
couldn’t decide between rain or nothing—
so you walk around all day
half-braced for the wrong kind of touch.

You told me once
you only believed in second chances
if you didn’t have to ask for them.

I wonder if you still say **** like that—
out loud,
like it's not a kind of begging too.

The trees are pretending it’s spring already.
It’s not.
They just want it to be.

I keep forgetting what month it is
and calling it muscle memory.

I’m fine.
I’m fine.
It’s just the weather bending wrong again.
It’s just the air folding at the corners.
It’s just a version of me
still practicing hello
in case you forgot
how to say my name.

Maybe I bent wrong too.
Maybe the sky just learned it from me.

October wears the wrong shoes, wears out her knee,
wears days passing like ****** rings on each bony finger.
I’m getting quiet again;
tucking my hands in my jacket,
tucking my scraps and starlight in sidewalk cracks.

There are days you can convince yourself of anything,
but they don't come as often as they used to.
I feel like I should be the one singing,
I should be the one watching the moon rise twice in one night;
skimping on sleep and feasting on frisson.
I’m not that old, but I feel like I could be.
I’m not that jaded; I prefer reverie.

September was made of sighs and swords,
August was slow-marching shadows and tiger-tight dreams.
July was nothing but waiting-
nothing but stringing beads on an endless thread,
nothing but erasing the map and starting over.

Months have a way of slipping to the street
as you loosen your grip;
like coins storm drain-clinking,
like jewels gutter-glinting,
like time spilling, time seeping;
time swallowing you whole.

There are days you can still get away with anything,
but it’s getting harder to curtsy to the mirror and feed it a lie.
There are days when it’s fine to forget the name of your city,
But you can’t forget the names of your teeth,
or where you buried them, or when you’ll need them again.
Dirt is always shifting, names are always changing;
I’m still singing, still counting, still naming.

There are nights when I know I’m dreaming, but I also know I’m awake.
How many moonrises can I count in a day before I run out of fingers?
How many streets can I name before I run out of breath?
I’m a little anxious, but I mostly get out of bed.
I’m a little sad, but I still meet each month with hard hands and rings.
I’m a little anxious, but I keep my scraps and starlight.
I’m a little sleepy, but I still sing while counting my moons.

I saw you in the rearview of my mom’s Santa Fe,
your shirt half-buttoned, a half-burnt cigarette,
the sun catching the gold in your teeth.
I was fifteen, which meant I was fluent in making it worse,
and you were the kind of boy who could skin a rabbit
but never learned to say sorry without spitting.

I told you a lie once-
said I didn’t care if we kissed in the parking lot,
in front of God, or the devil, or the Home Depot sign.
That was the first time you looked at me like
I was glass and you were bored.

I was sixteen, which meant I was fluent in leaving,
and you were the kind of boy who could gut a fish
but couldn’t spell the word bruise if it was on your own skin.

You played me songs you didn’t finish writing,
the kind where the girl always runs,
and the boy always watches her taillights
until the guitar string snaps.
You told me I’d ruin your life if I stayed,
so I stayed.
That was the first time you looked at me like
I was glass you could see through
but wouldn’t bother breaking.

The night you didn’t say goodbye,
I wore the amber oil so heavy it felt like drowning,
stood in the mirror until I blurred into a girl
you might have wanted
if you weren’t so scared of the wanting.

I was seventeen, which meant I was fluent in staying.
I’m the girl who learned that wanting
is just another way of setting yourself on fire
and hoping someone else smells the smoke.

I bought stamps for a letter I’d never mail you,
I saved your voicemails on a phone
I kept at the bottom of my drawer,
next to the earrings I stole from my neighbor’s sister,
the ones that looked like a promise you never made.

You’ll tell your friends it wasn’t that serious.
I’ll tell mine you never learned the chords.
But we’ll both think about it:
when the air smells like wet asphalt,
and the radio plays that one song
we never sang together.

We both know the words.
We just never sang them at the same time.

the dream where we made a truce of our bodies
in the belly of a boat,
ignoring our stutters and stings for one small
and sublime
passing note.

a nest of warm-wood walls and soft,
faded sheets,
something like mercy in our quiet-
redemptive, or at least,
semisweet.

your hair caught
in the buttons of my
sweater,
my white dress flitting
behind me like
surrender.

then white knuckling the bow,
bruising my knees,
slain and sickly,
retching in the sea.

your roommate braided her hair as she
watched me and laughed,
your eyes blinked heavy with the weight
of ache, fore-and-aft.

at sea we can see what we really are:
the kind of love that eats you alive,
a tangled affair you may not survive.
the kind of slow motion implosion
that cracks the sky,
the blind devotion explosion;
a shattered lullaby.

you ask a question, I answer with the dream.
this was months and miles ago;
the dream and my hands were wet with salt,
your mouth and fingers cold, your eyes aglow.

your brain is really protecting you,
that was your response.
from what? from the yearn of man
who can
only haunt.

a piece of penance smuggled in your
trademark nonchalance,
and all the grace that the dark can give,
all the
rust and want.

I’m dreaming of boats again—
white dresses, cruel lines,
the way your laughter sounds
when I can’t see your face.

I surrender my subtext and sigh
in rooms small enough to swallow
everything unsaid.

And you—
half-light, half-shadow,
saying my name like it’s yours.

The air is salted and stifling.
A girl I don’t know laughs—
her hands in your pockets,
her voice a blade, stitched neat,
and when I see her face,
I’m afraid it’s mine.

“This is not an answer,” I say,
as if boats know how to be honest,
as if white dresses don’t drown.

Outside, the water churns.
Inside, I am heaving—
lungs full of salt,
mouth full
of you.

This is how you haunt me:
small, quiet,
always below deck.

And when I wake,
the dream asks me:
‘What did you bury there?’
I open my mouth to answer,
but only salt comes out.

You will not find me staring wistfully into the distance,
a shadowed enigma,
a woman of few words.

No.

You will find me leaning forward in conversation,
hands flailing,
explaining in vivid detail
why the texture of grapes
is both deeply upsetting
and a miracle of modern biology.

You will find me launching into a 15-minute tangent
about why ceiling fans make rooms feel colder
but don’t actually change the temperature,
and how this is a metaphor for human relationships
if you think about it hard enough.

I tried to be unknowable.
I tried to be quiet.

But the world is so stupid,
and I have things to say.

no one tells you
that even after the ending,
you still flinch when someone says
his name
or wears his deodorant
or exists
in the same shape.

i told my friends i’m over it.
and they said
we know you’re not
and i said
but i’m trying.
and they said
no, you’re writing
which is not the same thing.

he said
i’m not ready for something real.
and i said
okay
like it wasn’t
the most offensive thing
anyone has ever said to me.

i’m not mad anymore.
just
liminal.

just
inventorying
the damage
like a girl who survived
the softest
apocalypse.

i keep hoping
someone will touch my face
and say
there you are.
like i’ve been missing.

like
i’m not still
missing
myself.

The first inhale said, You should be wearing sunglasses at night.
The second said, You are not in love, but someone is in love with you.
The third said, You are dangerous in all the right ways.

I exhaled and saw my future
in the glow of the streetlights.
It was dark.
It was mysterious.
It was doomed.

I smoked the whole thing.
I am now in a different emotional tax bracket.

And suddenly,
I understood
why the femme fatale
never makes it out alive.

No one tells you what to do
when your heart is in your mouth,
when your toes cramp and tangle,
when your body aches to be a better bouy.

No one tells you how to act
when your tongue burrows thick and cold in your throat,
when your knees buckle,
when your chest reels six slow shackles to the ocean floor.

No one tells you where to run
when hope is thin on your lips,
when your feet drag and the sand burns,
when the whole world thinks you're a coward
and they’re right.

You can’t tell if you're singing or screaming,
dancing or decaying,
miserable or marvelous.
a galaxy or a ghoul.
All you can do is stand and sway.
All you can see is the tiniest scrap of light.

No one tells you when it’s time to go;
when to strip the bed and when to sink in deeper.
You can't know if your eyes are the right color while looking through them,
or how your heart could be a burning match when you hold your breath and wait.

No one taught you to gag promises and jagged teeth;
to pluck moss from your hair and rust from your limbs,
but your fingers know what to do in the dark,
your lungs know how to keep a flame alive.

No one taught you when to be brave and when to keep your mouth shut,
but you’re learning, aren't you?
Your mouth stays sealed and your anchor stays secure.
You’re learning.

This is my first-ever life. I’ve never been anybody's,
I’ve only ever been any body.
I’m not brave because I’ve never had to be;
I’ve never had to call my own bluff, or learn
the rules; I’ve been coasting by bad beats
and dumb-luck, and the boys always
fall until I flush, tilt until they fold,
love me until they don’t.
I pocket the chips anyway.
My clumsy hands get antsy;
always dropping hints and pennies,
never dropping hands that drop pilots,
barely dropping hands that drop bombs,
and my fermented dreams;
my sweet turns so acidic, I can't see
the color of an aura over the bacteria and bubbles.
I go to sleep with yeast on my fingers
and get drunk on my dreams.
I’m a bad poet and an okay bird;
I spend my midnights pecking on the keyboard
like a sparrow at its reflection, tapping out
a list of things that might be.
I have this thing where I try to write my way
into myself, but the vocabulary makes me lie;
the syntax makes me slink,
I use semicolons wrong,
and always too many commas,
but if you’ve ever seen the inside of my mouth,
you know that I’m doing the best I can.
My first-ever life is shaping up to be
an entire sentence so run-on
and run-down that it
almost doesn't matter if I get to the end;
inmates don’t get to choose where
they serve, even if it is my first-ever life.

I touch things I’m not supposed to
and call it prayer.
mouth open,
spine bent,
tongue tasting the fence line.

They say longing is holy
if it stays quiet,
but mine doesn’t—
mine breaks the jar and drinks the oil.

They told me I was an open wound,
festering with verse and girlhood.
They weren’t wrong.
But wrong feels a lot like worship
when done slow enough.

They say impure
like it’s a curse,
but all my favorite girls
are made of swampwater and sin.

I’ve never confessed
without turning it into performance.
My mouth was built
for poetry
and plea deals.

I was thirteen
when I learned to ache
without making a sound.
Seventeen
when I turned it into scripture.
Twenty-five
when I realized no one was coming
to carry the body but me.

I keep trying to write
the right-sized truth
but it never fits in a single poem
or apology.

I want back the girl
who ran barefoot into fire
because she believed
it might be heaven.

I want someone to touch me like I’m soft—
even if I’m not.
Even if I bite back.

I want to grab
without apologizing
for how hot my hands are.
I want someone to look at me
like a threat they’d die for.

I want the kind of love
that makes funerals nervous.
I want to be written about
by someone who isn’t me.

And I want to want less.
But I don’t.

You want a softer girl?
Tell that to the altar
I keep burying her under.

I’ve thought about what absolution will feel like in the dark,
how forgiveness will sound in my hands,
the smell of clemency in the morning,
and where the sun sits in the palm of a man
who hasn’t let himself get used to anything.

I’ve thought about the resound of effusive, earnest prayers
when I finally mean them,
what the poem will look like when it escapes its cage,
and how the night will unfurl its sparks then
shatter stars along the promenade.

I’ve thought about what would happen if I stepped on his face
and kept going– if I’d hear any bone-snap.
I’ve imagined how fun it’d be to drown his gaze in its own
reflection, to be the echo he chokes on.
In my night-struck existence, I’d giggle while he stumbled around,
a charred-orange wreck, a muted-barb affect.

I’d plug his mouth with a sharp-edged, holy silence so
that the next girl stands a chance; so she won’t be
gouged into a ghost, all violent and vanquished,
a lacerated light who still has a soul to save.

If I cut his lungs with a poem, would it be a mercy killing?
Like a priest praying for his own death,
would I be breaking the sacrament?
I’m still consuming a body; a different kind of lamb.

Could I slice into his side and crawl back into his rib,
hold the pulpit, perform my own liturgy, and seize
the forgiveness that wasn’t offered?
Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned-
Deliver me, Father, my light has dimmed.

You texted, “Let me know you got home safe,”
and I did.
Every time.
Even when the only thing I made it home from
was myself.
Even when “home” was just
the bathroom floor,
or a voice I borrowed to sound okay.

Even when I didn’t want to,
but thought maybe you’d notice
if I stopped.

You said, “You don’t have to tell me everything.”
So I didn’t.
But I left clues like codes in poems we both know you read
and buried my bruises under jokes you laughed at—
because it’s easier to be funny than fine.

When I listed you as my emergency contact,
I wasn’t being poetic—
I meant if I vanish,
you’d know where I haunt.
I meant if my throat closes,
you’d answer on the first ring
and not be drunk,
or walking through spring like it’s not violent,
or sleeping through the night like people who are safe do.
And if you were in bed with someone,
I still believe you’d get out for me.

And when you called me “dangerous,”
I almost said thank you.
Because isn’t that what a flare is?
Burning too loud to ignore?

I wanted to be yours.
Not your girl,
not your burden,
just yours—
like the worst idea you ever loved,
or your last cigarette,
or the dream that wakes you
with your mouth around my name
and your fists full of sheets.

You never called.
But my body still answers.
The phantom limbs of your apologies
twitching through me
like they still belong here.

You never called.
So I made you a myth.
That’s how it works, right?
If someone won’t come save you,
you turn them into a god
and burn in their name.

So here’s your update:
I got home safe.
Then I lit it on fire.
And now I haunt it.

If salvation ever came,
it came teeth-first.
I bit my own tongue last night,
tasted copper and salt like a curse I knew by name.
The blood pooled under my teeth,
hot and mean,
and I swallowed it like a promise I couldn’t keep.

I still dream of him standing in my doorway,
hands full of stones and silence,
eyes bright with the kind of cruelty that doesn't bother aiming,
and I wake up gnashing my teeth,
chewing through the rope of my own patience.

I’ve grown rabid in respite
all claws and bitten-down nails,
a beast pacing the borders of my own skin,
still biting down promises like bones.

Some nights I think if he came back,
I’d tear him apart
just to see if he bleeds the same color as me.
Then I'd leave him open,
let the stars learn his name,
and no one sang him back.

Introduce yourself to the word scour. Break in your boots. Look in the mirror but don’t fall in. Find your way back to the city. Be sad. Pray with your mouth shut. Paint the breeze with your fingers. Scream at the sky. Make someone else a statue and never tell them about it. Run faster. Breathe harder. For the record: you are every scribble from every pen. For the record: profound things happen when you expect them to.

Stitch the word havoc into the sky and watch the clouds tangle themselves around your fingers. Be careful with your tongue. Let it be a secret in your mouth. Let it keep itself, and keep learning. Be careful with your mouth too, there are teeth and spikes and claws in there. There’s a reason for the blood, but there’s no reason to be afraid. Remember: there are no monsters, just open wounds. Suture or salt; you can cut your own hair with the same pair of scissors.

Soak in the word desperate. Drag it to the coast and see if it floats. Spell it out in the sand next to your name. Follow it into the water. Drown in it. Let it sting your stomach, burn your chest, infuse your lungs. Puke it up. Bury it in the earth and watch it bloom. Every word is a little bit of sky and a little bit of grave. Keep in mind that a word is always larger than you, and always more complicated. You are not a word, but you are inside of a word, even when you’re using it wrong.

Become familiar with the word unyielding. Hold it like a torch and see how it catches fire. Read it with your eyes closed and remember how much it looks like a window. Know how it sounds when it creaks, how it smells when it singes. Keep it burning. Hold it to your chest. Keep it near your heart. Remember how it feels to keep a flame inside you, a burning wick, a glow of your own. Glass shatters and panes splinter, but you can still see through it. You can still breathe through it. The only thing that will ever stop your heart is your own hand, and your hand is busy holding the fire.

Be wary of the word indifferent. It’s slippery ivy. It slinks around the garden and climbs the fence. It jets out of the drain and spills into the street. It sways in the wind and the crows seem to avoid it. It finds you as a heap on the lawn; hemorrhaging from another too-soft song, another too-familiar funeral. It hides in the hedgerow and waits to bite. It will show you a dead branch and claim it as its own, it will wrap its arms around you and make you feel dead too. It stains the sun and drowns the rain, then drinks in the fog and swallows the dew. It devours all the light. But you need the light. Rip out roots and demand light. Make yourself a bouquet of light. This is the only weapon you have, so use it. Use the light.

Appreciate the word tender. It is the word that sings the most, that draws the longest breath. It is the closest you can come to an answer and the only word that can stand up to the question. Earnest and pure, always meeting you at the door, always taking you by the hand. There are no innocents in this world, no unscathed souls, or unmarked hands, just a mess of water-stained, dented hearts, of coins greening in the fountain, a hand-drawn map of a sinking city, and an endless tunnel of light. There’s a wide-open mouth that wants to be a door and a door that wants to be a mouth. There’s a window that wants to be a window, and there’s a word for this. There’s always a word for this. You just don’t know it yet.

We were a storm wrapped in silk,
a wildfire in a library,
a circus of one juggling two.

Whispering
with hollow eyes,
screaming
with sticky mouths,
teeth bared like warnings.

We didn’t love quietly.
We made noise;
we made chaos,

burning so bright
we went blind
and called it fate.

We dipped toes in flames,
called each other liars,
made a scene,
and painted it as art.

We yelled like
the walls had ears,
and maybe they did—

neighbors leaning into the heat
of us, drawn to the firelight
they didn’t know they missed.

Their quiet love folded its hands
on the porch, waiting
for something
loud enough
to break them open.

Maybe they envied
the way we burned,
but I wonder if they stayed
on their porch
because they knew fire
always turns to ash.

Your voice struck the match,
mine poured the gasoline.
We burned to see
who’d scream first.

I yelled because
quiet
would have killed me.

You kissed me like a dare
wrapped in an apology
you’d never say.
I kissed back like I chose
the wrong truth.

You moved like you
were trying
to drown out the sound
of breaking glass,

and I shrieked back
because silence
was a language I refused
to learn.

We roared
like the neighbors would call the cops,
but they never did—
perched on their mezzanine,
our 11 o’clock number
bringing down
the house,
while bringing out our worst.

You tasted like unfinished business,
something sharp enough
to draw blood.
My laugh—
a broken bottle,
teetering on the edge.
And you kept pushing—

a kiss like a scream,
caught in the throat,
a yell that landed soft,
like love was always
meant to bruise.

Isn’t that the way of us?

If I could go back,
I’d kiss you softer, yell louder—

maybe then we’d learn
that loving is different than
screaming,
that flirting with death
isn’t the same as living,
and silk wasn’t meant
to hold storms.

I do miss the noise—
the way it filled the cracks
in the silence,
the mess that made our love
feel alive in all
the wrong ways.

I miss the heat of you
in the middle of it all,
kissing me
hard enough
to steal the breath
I was about to waste
on saying your name.

I say please.
I say thank you.
I shrink when I should expand.

I smile when I do not mean it.
I soften my tone,
I round my edges,
I play nice
so that people will like me.

And what did it get me?

A seat at the table
where I apologize
for taking up a chair,

where I am too afraid
to ask for a bigger plate,
so I tell myself my hunger
is all in my head.

I tell myself
I should believe it by now.

Some days,
I almost do.

Less a flirtation than a duel,
you take the hit and then you hit back.
You know I won’t die of you.

More a free-fall than a slow burn,
I clear my throat and you reach for yours.
I know you’re keeping score.

You are not the last word,
but you are the only one I’d speak aloud.
You know you won’t live forever.

You are not the worst thing I’ve done,
but you are the only thing I can’t confess.
We will never be strangers.

Less a revelation than a metallic plea,
I come undone and you just come.
When I choose my words carefully, I choose you.

Betrayal is a heavy word I won’t hold against you,
and you won’t hold me.
More a truce than a treaty, we do this until we don't.

We blur out the edges then circle back around.
You are not the endgame,
but you are the only one I want to play.

I’ll send you a postcard when I get over you.
I just hope you know it won’t be soon.

It’ll say something vague, something nonchalant—
The weather’s nice, the men are kind,
none of them look like you.
Paris is overrated.
Hope you’re well. Hope I mean that someday.
Wish you weren’t here.

It’ll be from somewhere ridiculous—
the French Riviera, a ghost town in Nevada,
a cruise ship I’m not on,
a gas station in Ohio at 3 AM,
where even the clerk looks tired of my ghosts.

I will sign it with my full name,
so you remember how it used to sound in your mouth,
but I won’t send it to your real address.
I’ll send it to a random house in a town
I’ve never been to.

Let some stranger in Arkansas
trace my handwriting and wonder
who I loved enough
to haunt like this.

I don’t want him back.
I want him wrecked.
I want him looking up my name like a prayer
he’s not allowed to say out loud.

I want him mouthing my name in traffic
like it’s a hymn
and he’s the wrong kind of sinner.
Like if he says it, I’ll appear—
but not to stay.

I want him walking past a girl
wearing my perfume
and feeling sick.
Like car crash sick.
Like pulled-over-on-the-freeway-thinking-of-me sick.

I want him to swear he saw me
in the corner of his eye
three states away.
I want him to feel watched
every time he lies about me.
I want him to dream in second person
and wake up shaking.

I want him tracing my texts with his thumb
like they’re Braille,
trying to remember how it felt
to touch someone who meant it.

Let him write poems and choke on every line.
Let him dream in my syntax and wake up stuttering.
(Let every stanza end where we did.)

I want him to tell people he’s over it—
and mean it.
Until he isn’t.
Until a Tuesday breaks him in half.

I want him to pause mid-bite
at a restaurant we never made it to.
I want the taste of me
to ruin his appetite.

I want him to see me tagged in a photo
and spiral.
Not because I look beautiful—
(which, I do)—
but because I look fine.
Like I forgave him.
Like I made it out.
Like the part of me
that waited so quietly
it started to look like faith—
then moved out
and left no forwarding address.

I want him wrecked
not because he left,
but because he almost didn’t.
Because he said forever
like he meant it,
and ran like he didn’t.

Because I waited.
Because I believed.
Because I held the door open
so long my arms shook.
And all he had to do
was walk through.

He kissed me
like he was afraid to break me.
Then broke me
like he was tired
of being afraid.

Every nerve ending—
scarlet, theatrical, yours.
You touched me like a hymn
then left like a plague.
And I still
light candles.

I said I wanted closure,
but what I meant was:
hold my hair while I purge you.
What I meant was:
prove I wasn’t the only one bleeding.

I keep dreaming of you
with your wrists full of carnations,
offering them
like an apology
too beautiful to believe.

Sometimes I picture your face
on the body of someone kind.
And I call it progress.
I call it healing.
I call it
don’t look at me right now.

I see him less now.
Only in mirrors,
or firelight,
or men who say sorry
too soon.

And every time,
I forgive myself
a little more.

You’re always going to be a bit of an open wound.
Are you running lines or running away?
I can’t tell if my labored breathing is a testament to
how fiercely I am trying,
or how loudly I am failing-
a strange mouth full of pointed teeth and honey.

Breath; bated and
muttering words I can’t get right.
Breath; rife and
barking to any ear that might hear.
Breath; soft and simmering,
begging to be set alight or
extinguished, or buried among stumps and limestone.

I was born soft and everyone knows it.
I was born soft and every time I put my palm to my chest,
something shudders. No one taught me how to be.
Soft and sad, like an old song you dreamed of,
soft and solemn, like the last time you tried to pray,
soft and sinking, like the flag of a country overtaken.

I was born soft and every time I’m wrangled
back to earth, it​​ rips me open.
I was born soft and every time I’m touched,
I bloom to bruise the same color as the wind.
Softness is the color of mercy, not the smell of dust.
I am always on the brink, my edges are sharp enough to cut,
my fingers always bleeding and my mind always jangling.

Magic and cruelty- another line I cannot hold.
I was born soft and I know how I look to the world,
but I will never understand how I look to you,
or why you keep coming back.
I’m shimmering, glimmering, rare and hard,
a spectral glow in the reeds,
a lake without shoreline to leave a drowning girl.

I’ve been lonelier, but I’ve never been so haunted
I’ve been rustier, but I’ve never been so stiff.
I fight myself to do things, I can’t write poems.
I’m up all night, throat raw from licking wounds.
My appetite for anguish is colossal,
and my calamitous softness abides.

I’m talking to myself about you, I never shut up.
Born soft and inarticulate, I wrote a whole script for us.
I’m not always sure what I am saying, but I know that it’s true.
A girl floated around a lake and never got wet, a girl with a boat in her heart meant for lovers and the lost, a soft, swaying girl with delusions bigger than the whole sky. I’m talking to myself again and your line is soon, do you know your cue?

It’s impressive, really,
how you can ghost yourself in real time,
leaving echoes where you should stand,
how you speak in circles so tight
you vanish into them and bow.

But don’t worry,
I’m not mad.
I just hope, someday,
someone whispers “forever”
warm enough that you finally hear
what you threw away.

You’d rather wade in puddles
and call them oceans.
It’s cute, really,
how you mistook self-sabotage for bravery.

My bad—was that mean?
I didn’t mean it.

I just think it’s sweet,
the way you told me I deserved better,
like it wasn’t your job
to be that for me.

I’m not bitter, though.
(That’s what people say, right?
When they’re lying?)

I just wonder if you ever think
about the space you left behind—
a perfectly carved absence,
still shaped like you.

You’d probably call that poetic.
You’d find a way to make my grief
a compliment to your charm.
You always did like a good metaphor,
even if it wasn’t yours to claim.

And me?
I’ll keep apologizing for what you did.
My bad-
for trying too hard to make you stay.
My bad-
for thinking love was a language
you could learn to speak.
I should’ve known
you only ever mouthed the words.

But no hard feelings.
I hope you find someone
who doesn’t mind
standing in your shadow.

I hear the view from there
is stunning—
just like watching someone leave,
and realizing you built the door.

All I crave is love-shaped, all I see is light.
I’ve held faces in my palms,
and held my breath for weeks;
the only soul I’ve cradled is my own.
The only sighs I hear are screams.

I make ghosts from epilogues of once-closed books,
and write them into new poems for safekeeping.
I ask for a sign and get a stone,
I search for a home and find a haunting.
Each garden is a cipher for the other and each creek is a clue.

I pray to saints and saints pray to me.
The nicks of my body are staring at the sky, saying:
wait for me, wait for me, and I will wait for you.
I don't recognize the saints, but I see their eyes behind the slits of mine,
and trust they are as soft as I am.

Kneeling across moons and seasons for the hope of it, the poem of it.
I know love because I am love.
I believe saints because I am one.
I am everything-shaped. I write words that crawl out of graves, resurrect nuance,
and whisper, wait for me, wait for me, and I will wait for you.

I’m in a Target parking lot
wearing his sweatshirt
and a sash that says
'Poet Laureate of American Mistakes'
because I won it in a landslide
against every girl
who’s ever texted
“you up?”
knowing **** well he is,
but not for her.

I didn’t cry today,
but I did stare at a peach
for ten minutes thinking
about death,
and foreplay,
and if any of this even counts as research.

I think about texting him
just to say
I’m sorry I made you a metaphor.
But the truth is
I’m not.
He was the only thing
that ever meant something
after I wrote it down.

I came here for toothpaste
and left with a bikini top
I’m too emotionally haunted to wear,
and a notebook I won’t open-
because if I do,
I’ll make art again,
and I’m trying to quit,
but I never really try that hard.
I don’t even know if I want to get better.
I just want someone to notice.

A man honks behind me
because I’m not moving.
Because I parked
but forgot to arrive.
Because I’m not really here,
I’m three texts back
and one year late.
You don’t know it’s the last time
until your hands feel stupid.

I wave like I’m sorry
but I’m not.
I’m just poetic.
Which is worse.

This parking lot’s a stage.
I’ve died here six different ways.
Once in June.
Twice in sweatpants.
The fourth time I thought it was over,
but the music kept playing.

I wear the sash like I’m in on the joke,
because it takes a hint of genius
to be this stupid,
because when I said
“I’m okay,”
no one fact-checked me,
and when I said
“I didn’t learn anything,”
they gave me
a crown.

I take the sash off
before starting the car.
Fold it like evidence.
Leave it in the front seat
like I’m done with the bit.
But I’m not.
I just need a break
from being clever.

I should’ve bought the peach.
Let it rot on the dashboard,
at least then
something would’ve gone soft
without making it my fault.

The sweatshirt still smells like
whatever I was hoping he’d stay for,
(mainly, me.)
And the notebook?
Still closed.
Which is hilarious, really.
Because you’re reading it.

(This poem is a lie.
I opened the notebook
before I even left the store.)

I wasn’t born alone but I’ve been alone ever since.
I’ve traced lines of fleshy eyelids with stub-fingers
and wondered who I was before
the world was.

I’ve held my breath while holding my tongue, then counted
to ten and went to seek anyone who’d hold my gaze.
I've walked down ***** streets with knives in pockets
and scars on hips,
I’ve stumbled through the night with headlight pupils
and sirens lining my boots.

Brown eyes the color of the river as seen from above,
and hands that can make love but not hold it.
I saw the light through the trees and thought
I was going somewhere-
but I stopped going.

I don’t want to go alone.

Does it count as love
if it only exists in parallel universes?
In one, I keep the keys under the mat,
but no one ever comes home.
In another, I rewrite endings
that no one ever reads.

The moon nods at me like it understands,
like it knows how it feels to orbit
what will never be yours.
I keep praying to stars
that burned out years ago,
their light still threading the night sky
like stitches on old wounds.

Somewhere, he holds my hand.
Somewhere, I hold my own.
Somewhere, they are the same thing.

This summer is the apocalypse.
July gnaws on her dress,
the hem a serrated knife,
the shoulders too hot to touch.

July has a way of sifting its scorching
into every kingdom crevice,
of shattering and scattering,
and flogging the fleeting.
July tries to maim memories, choke
daydreams, forget I’m waiting for you.

This summer is the apocalypse.
August twitches like a viper,
scales iridescent,
eyes empty as wind.

August has a way of biting back,
of wringing out bygones,
extracting grit from muscle and gut.
August turns thoughts into sirens,
words into whips, my pride into porcelain,
And I'm still waiting for you.

This is a river that runs uphill.
This is a lake that​​ swells with silence.
This is a field that keeps its secrets.
This is blistered lips and a clenched fist.
This is you howling my name.

This is the thirst I couldn’t drown.
This is the shadow that stretches.
This is the echo of an almost, the heat of a not-yet.
This is the other half of the premonition.
This is me, still waiting for you.

(Because you never did know how to say goodbye right.)

I set a place for you anyway.
A ghost seat at my table,
a shadow in the doorway,
a wine glass smudged
with the shape of an absence.

You were always late
to your own consequences,
drifting in just in time
to miss me leaving,
staring at my taillights
like you thought
they were stars to wish on.

I should have stopped
writing you into the story,
should have let you fade
to a footnote,
a forgotten guest
on a list I never mailed—

but instead,
I keep setting the table
like love is a dinner party
and you just got lost
on the way.

I’d spell out the way
you let people love you halfway,
then blamed the empty rooms
on their leaving.

You build doors without hinges,
frames for windows
opening only to emptiness.

You call it safety,
but it feels like a monument to loneliness—
just another way
to keep your hands clean.

You ran
because you were terrified
of what it might mean
to finally be seen—

to stand still long enough
for someone to trace your outline
and call it human.

You thought moving fast enough
might blur the edges,
stretch you thin enough
to disappear—

a shadow so fragile
it couldn’t hold its shape.

It didn’t need to cut deep;
it pressed slow on your softest spot,
and laughed.

And maybe you laughed, too,
because isn’t that easier
than letting someone stay?

Isn’t it safer
to leave the door cracked,
watch them slip away,

than risk them staying long enough
to watch the walls crack,
the beams snap under the weight
of all you’ve hidden?

It’s admirable, really,
how you’ve turned heartbreak
into performance art.

Did I just say that?
Oops—slip of the tongue,

like when you called me a mistake
and dressed it up as self-awareness.

“I’m walking away
because it’s the right thing,”
you said,
as if morality were fear
in a designer suit,
polished for the press.

No, really, I envy you.
It must take a kind of brilliance
to gaslight yourself so thoroughly,
your airtight lies
barely letting air in.

I’d ask if you believe your own stories,
but I’m scared of the answer—
being that committed to the act.

Oops, there I go again.
Was that too much?

It’s just—
you make it so easy to write about you,
like I’m bleeding out for you,
staining the sheets,
while you dream of clean hands.

You’re a character that refuses to develop.
All first act, no resolution,
the kind of person who leaves a wound
and then calls it poetry.

You’re inspiring, honestly.
So inspiring I can’t stop writing you down,
line after line after line.
You’ll live forever in these verses,
like overripe fruit
festering in a golden bowl.

Oops—
did I just compare you to a metaphor
you’ll never understand?
My bad.

I guess I’m still trying to
turn the volume down
on how you left.

You told me you were trying.
I told you about the time
I threw up so hard I started praying.
I saw stars in my hair
and thought they might be angels.
But it was just the acid.
Just the light.
Just me, alone again
in a bathroom that never loved me back.

You didn’t say anything,
and that said everything.
You texted “sorry”
like a magician pulling shame from his sleeve,
then disappeared
like a good lie.
I stopped asking you
to prove yourself after that.
I just started watching
to see if you ever would.

Maybe I made the whole thing up.
Maybe you did say something.
Maybe it was kind.
Maybe it was cruel.

Maybe the light flickered
because of bad wiring,
not heaven.
Maybe I was just sick.
Maybe you were just tired.
Maybe none of it meant anything.

But then why
do I still dream in that fluorescent color?
Why does the silence still have your shape?
I built a chapel from our last conversation.
Tried to make the ache holy.
But I was the only one kneeling.
And no one wants a martyr
who won’t shut up.

You said I was unwell.
I said, Amen.
You said I was always bleeding.
I said, Isn’t that what makes it a miracle?
Because if this isn’t a resurrection,
then I’ve been dying for nothing.

I gave you the ugliest parts-
even the bathroom prayers,
even the version of me
that asked God to make you gentler.
You said, “I didn’t ask for that.”
I said, “Exactly.”

You weren’t the end of the world.
You were just the earthquake
I canonized.
The tremor I learned to waltz with.
The reason my mouth still tastes like salt
and I call it grace.

So if God ever comes back,
I’ll know how to greet him:
on my knees,
already emptied.

I told the stars to shut up.
They weren’t witnesses. They were worse.
They kept spelling your name,
blinking slow, like pity,
glinting gallant-
like that ever saved anyone.

I walked past the summer we called ours
like I wasn’t still stalking it.
Like I didn’t prowl on purpose,
like I didn’t rehearse your alibi,
like I didn’t pray
(for prey.)

I was fine with the trees, the oil stains,
the way the sun pretended nothing happened.
I could go days without hearing an ice cream truck,
or seeing a sun-burnt stranger
and thinking: maybe the universe
rerouted you into someone
I could almost survive.

You once said I was dangerous.
And by once I mean
I wrote it down
and heard it forever.
It’s in my lymph nodes,
in the poems you pretend not to read.
It’s in the version of me
you kept almost loving
but never quite chose.

You called us perilous.
Or maybe I did.
It’s hard to tell, since
I’ve been writing you
with your mouth shut
for months.

I keep checking the margins
for your voice.
All I got were
the noises people make
when they’re trying not to drown,
but pretending to wave.

Why is your name still more siren
than sentence?
Still more blood than bruise?
I made your absence
a body I slept beside,
because I kept waking up
guilty.

I never served,
but I wrote the ending.
Put my hand on a Bible,
bit my tongue so hard
the truth still tastes like you.
Wore borrowed pearls,
and swore to God
I never loved you more
than the day you didn’t show up.

I would’ve done time for you.
I would’ve confessed to a crime
that didn’t exist
just to hold your hand once
on the courthouse steps.

You said I was dangerous.
You were right.
But not in the way you thought.
I told the whole truth-
just not out loud.

You didn’t get convicted.
But I still can’t go back
to that summer
without thinking the tan lines
were warning signs,
without getting subpoenaed
by the sky.

Some nights,
your name still tries to get in
like a burglar.
I play dead,
tell the stars to shut up.
But they unlock the window anyway.
They spell you out in light
like they want me to remember
how it felt
to be the crime scene.

The kitchen smells like a secret I forgot to bury.
A peach gone soft, skin splitting like a bad promise.
The fruit flies know something I don’t;
they’re the last priests of a dying faith,
and they’re waiting for me to leak.

I tell myself I’m healing,
but last night I dreamt I had to eat your heart to survive.
It tasted like burnt sugar and nail polish remover.
I woke up gasping,
your name soldered to the roof of my mouth
like a curse I didn’t mean to cast.

I call it the trick of wanting:
how I keep looking for your fingerprints in places you never touched,
how I flinch when someone says my name in the dark,
how I let the mirror watch me shatter
and pretend I’m a stained glass window.

Here’s the part I shouldn’t post:
I liked it when you lied to me.
I liked it when you said this isn’t about love
and I let you mean it’s about power.

The fruit flies keep coming.
I pretend they’re a sign from God.
I pretend they’re angels. Or demons.
Never both.
I pretend they’re a reminder that sweetness
is just another word for rot.
I pretend the buzzing is the sound of my name-
fermenting in your guts,
putrefying in your chest,
decomposing in your memory like abandoned fruit.

I know I shouldn’t write this.
But I do.
Because I want you to see it.
Because I want you to flinch.

Because I want you to know:
I am the girl who would eat your heart if I could.
I would peel it open with my teeth,
lick the blood off my lips,
smile like a god in a red dress,
and call it love.

And you’d believe me.

Bury my phone under the maple tree.
Do not unlock it.
Let the passwords rot my teeth.
Let the wind lift the dirt in small spirals above it
so anyone passing by feels the urge to walk faster.

Keep the bracelets.
Keep the letters in the wrong order.
Let my poems splinter across languages
until no one can tell what happened first.

They will plant my voice in the garden
and water it with salt,
never admitting they were the ones
who taught me to bite.
They will leave flowers at the door
and pretend they never nailed it shut.

They will drop my name in the brown-thick lake
and watch the fish stop swimming,
like an old car battery, or a dead dog,
and it will feel like both,
depending on the sun.

They will drag my words ashore, gut them for parts.
They will build a church from my mouth,
hang my jawbone above the altar,
and pray it never speaks again.
I will kneel with them,
smiling with my empty mouth.

They will say the work was too sharp,
the girl inside it dangerous,
and never admit they handed her the knife.
They will polish the handle,
wrap it in velvet,
and wonder why she carried it everywhere,
as if it wasn’t still dripping.

The first time you touched my wrist
I said my blood followed a tide schedule,
at 3:17 every afternoon
it rushed so fast I could hear seashells in my veins.

I’d been swimming laps in the neighbor’s pool
since before I had teeth,
but only at night,
and only in my communion dress.
The chlorine was holy enough,
I didn’t need the priest.

My grandmother left a key
to a door in the middle of the river,
you had to hold your breath to use it,
behind it, a room lined with childhood voices and vices,
each one still asking if you’d come.

Once, I told you the scar on my knee
wasn’t from falling off my bike,
it was a map.
If you traced it right,
you’d end up back in the year we never met.

You laughed at the river key.
You swore the tide thing was real.
You said I had more interesting scars,
and I said all liars do,
which wasn’t a lie exactly,
just a matter of which wound got promoted.

You’ll never know which story was the anchor
and which was the chain,
but the boat is long gone,
the water keeps my name,
and the waves outrank us both.

You didn’t even try to swim.
You watched.
You waited.
You let me drown just to see if I would.