And I don't dream about you anymore,
But I still get scared when someone pretends to hit me,
And I can still feel that empty ache in my chest
In the middle of the night.
And I talked ad nauseum about the things you did to me,
But only once about losing you.
How do I explain the secret beautiful parts
Of the boy with the scars?
How do I explain the difference between
The boy with the lovely words and utopian dreams
And the one who put my head through the drywall?
How the pain of having you
Will never come close
To the exquisite agony of knowing I will never see you again?
I loved you, at least a little bit,
And that matters,
Too.

Imperfect expanse,
Rolling landscape,
Sacred and ordinary.
Scars faded almost invisible.
Stretch marks slashed red on lily white,
Reminiscent of the wounds
From the straight blade I kept in a drawer.

Canvas thick with paint,
Layers of love and hate
Painted on by lovers, strangers,
Self, and others.
Cigarette butts and crushed beer cans
And masterpieces on the walls.
Cherished and reviled,
Wrong for society's standards of beauty,
Exactly right
For me.

This time next year,
Where will I be
In relation to you?

it takes approximately two months to fall out of love,
apparently

and i love you
and i hurt you
and i need you
and i want you
closer

and i don't know how to make you know me
the way i want to know you,
the way i want to know the landscape of your body
and the landscape of your mind.
i want to know the hidden parts
that have grown wild and beautiful
left to their own devices.
i want to know all the lines of your life
that i can't see in your palms,
and i'm glad to see the beautiful,
but i want to know it all.
i want to see your pain
because that's a part of your story,
and your story is a part of you,
and you are a part of mine.

i promise i won't leave
a mess,
i promise i won't leave
without scattering seeds,
i promise i won't leave
you the way i found you,
i promise i won't leave
empty promises,
so i can't tell you that
i promise i won't leave.

that moment of clarity,
of understanding,
of the crystallization of abstract into tangible,
when  two worlds explode into one
and you think you're complete
but then,
inevitably,
time changes everything,
and,
inevitably,
you're alone again,
and it's only then that you realize
you were complete to begin with

And it's like
The reason I start so many poems with those three words,
"And it's like",
Because every poem is just part of a constant flow of thought,
A window opened into a world that moves on.
And the world is moving on,
Has moved on,
Will move on,
Would move on without me.
And that's okay,
Because my world
Moves on without him,
Without her,
Without them,
Without every last one of them.
Whatever it's taken,
I have survived.
And even though I've been hurt so bad I thought I'd never recover,
I keep on loving,
Because thinking
Isn't
The same thing
As life.