Twisted, sharp the words pierced, echoing in strange rooms
looking for escape or transformation, and flew from death's lips,
cruel shifting sounds cutting steel traps and cages,
still a wingless bird cannot fly in mad fits and rages,
sits alone devising plans for freedom and does not see,
all the bluest skies lie deep within him

You know what I expect?
I expect to stop wallowing in self-pity.
I expect to stop feeling miserable just because some guy
Doesn't feel about me the way I feel about him

I expect to get over you.
And I expect to stop beating myself up for it.
So what if I fall quickly,
And make myself get over it when I have to.
That Doesn't make me a bad person.
That's just who I am.

I know who I am.
I know what I have been through
And how much I stuck it out in the past.
We aren't a couple, I'm allowed to move on.

It hurts, I expect that's reasonable.
That's 'getting over' not 'being over'.
But sometimes it hurts less.
People still make me smile, and laugh.
I can be happy without you.

I expect I'll make the same mistake again.
I don't want to,
But I don't know how not to.
I expect my expectations will be my downfall,
And for now, my strength.

After waiting so long to hear from you
You tell me you want to 'get together'.
I say yes, where, and when.
I always come running to you.

And when I'm with you, it's all I want.
In your arms nothing else matters.
As you touch my body I let go of wanting you to love me.
This moment is all there is.

As I feel your breath on my skin hot with desire,
I am happy.
As I feel you inside me and your body pressed against mine,
This moment is all I want.

Even when you accidentally lean on my hair, many times
I don't say anything.
You are with me, giving yourself to me.
I will grit my teeth and bear the pain with the ecstasy.

As you look at me you hold my gaze.
Not just a fleeting look like other lovers.
You look at me like I'm real, like I mean something.
This moment is right.

For a second, as you hold me after the ecstasy
I feel sad that you don't love me.
But I let that pass,
Right now is bliss and this is all I want.

I feel invisible
Yet you claim(ed) I am the air you breathe
And perhaps like air I am always present,
But presently forgotten

The heaviness of your hush is crushing me with empty blows
This silence leads me to wander down a path cloaked in a heavy mist
That whispers harsh truths such as:
Our hopeless, fictitious, drawn out infatuation is like
A library book that was checked out last March
You underlined and doggie-paged the first few chapters
And then left it on your shelf to collect dust all of April and May

I foolishly kept begging you to finish the book
Read the last sentence
Take time to skim over the epilogue
Please
Find your way to the back cover

I foolishly ignored your “I can’t”s

And now it’s late August and our love is long overdue,
In the opposite sense of what the phrase typically means

I write with angry lead because
I am too stubborn to admit I just filled a trash bin with tissues
And that the cuffed sleeves of my flannel
Are damp like grass’s morning dew

I have so much more to say,
Although I cannot find the words
To say anything more than



You should’ve written.

Because two weeks of nothing
Was enough for me to realize that you are just a passing breeze
Seldom present, presently becoming something of the past.

this floor feels like a raft
& i am a castaway
in an ocean of empty bottles
"don't worry wilson -
i'll do all the paddling"*
wading through the night
looking for morning's land
the soothing, softness of sand
i still feel you,
like phantom limbs
clinging to my hips
like the tide to the beach
like the smoke to my lungs
beer & cigarettes heavy on my breath
dread weighing heavy on my chest
last night,
my fantasy you fell out of love
with my saintly me.