ground zero
i become aware of boundaries
i am a dog chasing cars
i sing your voicemail to sleep
there are no surgeon general warnings
to tell me that
the objects in the mirror
are more depressed than they appear
so how do i tell you
that there are parts of my life
that move slower
without you in them?
or that i look for you every day
in emails & unanswered calls
in the sunrises
i didn't choose to be awake to watch
that i sometimes still stare at doorways hoping you would walk through them
   *stage 1 you tell your new lover you've got a splinter and they pull the sound of your body falling asleep on mine out of your fingertip
   stage 2 your new lover says something at dinner that makes you choke so they call 911 & the paramedics do the hymleich not knowing you would ***** our promises all over the the restaurant
   stage 3 your new lover surprises you by cleaning the house & washes the shirt you kept next to the bed, not knowing it was the last thing you had that smelled like me
after
people always ask
what was loving her like?
after a really long silence
i just say
"it must be nice"
but i never say
it's watching paint dry
i never say
it's a window seat in hell
i don't tell anyone
about the dreams
where i am reading you
bedtime stories
each one is a different way you die
& every time i can never save you
dreams where what i think
are angels in my bedroom
are just homeless versions
of myself you never loved
i have dreams
where i pay someone to shoot me
just to see if you would cry
just to see
if you would cradle my body
i don't tell people
that loving you is like
playing piano
for someone who can't hear
that it's hitting repeat
on my favorite song
& forgetting the words
every time it starts over
that it's finding out
there's no milk after you already
poured yourself a bowl of cereal
it's getting locked in the dark
& being told to
look on the bright side
that loving you is like
being reminded of what it felt like
the first time
you accidentally let go
of a balloon as a child
it's drowning without the water
it's the feeling you get
when you start to dance
& the song ends

so you're disappointed
that you're disappointed
and maybe that's to be expected
some folks make beds
out of their catharsis
differently than others
it's this list
of things you lost in the fire
or how jealous you are
of people
who never came back up for air
you're crying
so the faucets leak out of solidarity
& someone asks you
why the floor is wet
so you tell them
"we've been weeping here forever"
then they want to give you
a mouth full of presupposition
by saying
"are you going down with the ship?"
& you look them in the mouth
like Leo is handcuffed to a pipe
five decks down
you look at them
like you just woke up
from that dream everyone has
where all their teeth fall out
maybe it's an intervention
a hearse vs station wagon origin story
a clearance sale
& everything's gotta go
or maybe it's the dream
where you're at the docks
from your childhood
and there's a little girl
unmooring all the ships
because she thinks
they'll float away
but every time
she unties them
they just sink




                                          they just sink

I need to stop talking about you as if
you were dead,
could it be this is the only way to cope rather than knowing you're
still out there, somewhere, bleeding
shards of glass, grabbing for
something smoother, something
more stable, but the months pass by and shred away any chance you had
you become further and further away from who you are,
from what you were,
you're a shaky resemblance of your fathers past, an embodiment
of the pit inside your stomach and you're too
afraid to be alone in the dark and
in the light and
I'm afraid there's nothing
quite as terrifying as saying you're fine so many times you scream it while
you sleep or noticing
the erosion in everything; your
ex lover, your father, the bus driver,
the mirror, the degradation of you & i

Today
I will sing my sins as if I
Hadn’t yet learned right from wrong
As if I didn’t recognize
The becoming wrinkles of my skin
The fading of preconceived thought
The fading of what we were
As if I don’t conjure up detonating
Definitions for what we depict as
Reality,
As if I don’t feel it
As if the wind doesn’t rattle through my
Bones and shake my soul and wither
Me away
You reach out your hand
I turn the other way
Chrome colored lines that intersected
At the wrong time, the wrong place in history
As if I don’t consider
Dying, intentionally
Projecting perceptions through this lens
Titled reality,
White upon the spine
Drawing images and you feel it,
The finality of your
Vitality

fast forward three years
you're living on the coast binding books and your hips together
and i'm still in the small town that turned me into a sinkhole
you got out though, huh? you got out just fine, you have always been stronger than me
you have always been able to get well and get up without anyone bringing you bouquets of hands

you sit down to explain to her that love has made you reckless, that too many people
have been easygoing with your heart; let it cross the streets alone.
drunkenly leaving it in cabs in other countries
so for a while there you weren't sure who to give it to

my dear, I know now that you were never a hotel I could check in and check out of
you were in the best way possible, the mental hospital,
the time I woke up with nobody but the voices in my head (they were all yours)
(I couldn't leave until I got better)

you tell her you fell in love with a girl who never burned your letters,
who showed love in all the wrong ways, never picked up the phone, "honey", you'd say,
"she was nothing like you" ... "kept her hair light to contradict the dark inside of her,
didn't trust anyone to blindfold her and walk her down the street"
you try to tell her my name, but you can't
you can't remember what they call me, call me, call me,
I never picked up the phone

fast forward three years
you're living on the coast making love and mixed drinks a little too strong
and i'm buried near the sinkhole in town, next to the dog my dad kicked a little too hard
out the door of the house he lived in with my mother
i've got your name tattooed on my neck

i can only love in splinters,
in tsunamis.