I’m ******* freezing.
I’ve been sitting here across from a parking lot
in a little patch of green, and the sprinklers
keep going on and off, but I sit here—
watch the droplets slide down my black leather boots,
shifting my legs in my soaked denim shorts,
picking at the soggy bread of my dollar menu sandwich.
I didn’t win the peel off sticker contest on the wrapping,
and I also missed the trashcan when I threw it out,
like you threw me out

and it’s not like I saw it coming. Considering our cat
is still at the vet and we just found a new couch,
but I guess my bag of clothes and one pair of clean underwear
are my only companions now as I wait
for some sort of direction or weird, metaphor
to slink down from the Maybelline billboard,
crawl up my skin and into my mind so I’m not just
sitting here, freezing.

But I guess it’s not as cold as that one time
you slid half a Klondike bar down my back
as I sat circling help-wanted ads in the paper.
I screamed, but you covered my mouth and kissed
the space behind my ears a million little time.
I licked your hand and you wiped it on my shoulder,
turning

back to the stove to stir the Campbell’s soup we found
behind the expired olives in the cupboard. Yet, I always thought
that I was your sliver of a masterpiece.

It’s not everyday that someone calls a girl beautiful
when she’s got bags the size of small countries
under her eyes or a flannel with five missing buttons.
But the way you held my collarbone in your hands,
or carried my sculptures to the shows, or bent
your life a little differently just to fit my mold.

I guess our love just grew old
to you, but I never thought that a parking lot,
after hours of drizzle and haze
rising from the blacktop, would look better
than the canopy we made from old t-shirts
that hung above our bed with a mobile
of everything I ever made up in my head
that you could be.

it's a faded blue color, pressed from being unworn
when i last wore it i was a different me
and i been many different people in between
along a natural path to find myself
i've done unnatural things,
said several things that i would never let pass
my lips again.

i've learned and i've grown, most awkwardly shown
in a faded blue dress in the back of my closet
now hugs curves that weren't there for the last
girl who wore it, and a few inches shorter

the girl back then wouldn't dare to do the things i've done alone with you,
and she wouldn't let herself feel what i feel for you, too

and she would blush at the words and the steam in the air in the back seat of my car.

There's nothing more attractive
Then a faithful man

you should’ve never unpacked your bags,
because it gave me this expectation that you were in this for the long run. i’m still running. i have swallowed so much blood that tastes like your regret from biting down my tongue to cage it behind my teeth from screaming about you to a world that wants my blood for ink.
i am more than a number, but 24 makes me feel better than 26, so i sit in jeans that leave red marks on my hips and make it hard to breathe, but see it’s two inches and
i am more than a number, but i know every test score i ever got and still remember fourth grade and question three and crying because suddenly my mistakes had weight and i couldn’t fix things by saying sorry and
i am more than a number, but i was always the middle child, always the not-quite one, not the best friend to anyone, just a girl with kind eyes and jeans that are a little bit too tight and
i am more than a number but to you i am seventeen, ten and three. and lets be clear; it’s the three that haunts me, because *** doesn’t matter and ‘girlfriend’ is just a label, but i wish i was the first girl you truly loved, and sometimes i still wish i was the last, but with you i fear i’ll forever be just another number.
i drove over 17 bridges the other day and next week i'll do it again and i think nobody gets what that means except maybe you.
i just tell them i love the scenery, that somebody must've made these trees blush just for me.
you know how i love to change the subject?
i bet they'd love the view. i bet you would too.
and all these metaphors for other things are beside the point.
this is a metaphor for why i don't wear my seatbelt, a metaphor for why whiskey knows me better than you could ever try to.
all the buildings seemed to sag yesterday and all the stars are doing that cliche thing where they talk quiet jet noise and some lumbering giant made everything shake.
not those hand metaphors, not another one of those & keep the sea to yourself,
i think it was a train, it's sound hugged the embankment for a moment and then trailed off into nowhere,
and that's kind of like me
how there's a town called 'rescue' close to my home and it's no coincidence that i've never been there.
i’m just flatlining now and hoping that you can look at the next girl the way i looked at you.