for the nights in your bed and the days
on the other side of the room,
for the years I thought it was romantic
to be a secret,
for the size of that closet.
The Ocean Always Looked Like You: Reprise
At the beach,
I put my ear to a conch shell
and tell myself
I only hear your name.
It sounds an awful lot
like just the ocean.
Ask Your Mother About Starving
You were born hungry, baby.
You were born with an open mouth and empty hands.
You came into this life with a starving heart.
I know better than anyone that you cannot fill it
with fence posts or china patterns.
All those replaceable things
they say add up to a good life.
You can’t fill it with people either.
Don’t go trying to build your home like a house of cards
in the mouth of a lover who breathes too hard at night.
They’re only going to knock you down.
You are almost always going to want more
than someone else can give.
Almost always.
Barefoot Molly
Once, we made plans to start a band and call it Barefoot Molly. Once, we bought a temporary tattoo from a twenty-five cent machine and I fake-tattooed your ass in the bathroom of Regal Cinema. Once, we sat in your mother’s minivan parked on the road in front of my house and you held my hand while you asked why nobody else wanted to kiss you. Once, you spent six months sending me nudes and then pretended it never happened. Once, I said I’d do anything for you and I meant it. Once, you told me you’d never loved anyone the way you loved me. Once, we slept curled around each other on your parents’ fold out couch and you woke me with a mug of hot tea in the morning and it felt like life was moving too slow. Once, you called yourself the Sam to my Frodo. Once, you called my heart a bitter animal stuck in a trap. Once, you Skyped me just to sit in lingerie and play love songs on your old guitar. Once, you made me take photos of you laying on my bed in lingerie for your new boyfriend. Once, when you were making dinner, you asked me not to watch you put together your secret pasta sauce but I did from the hall, and it was mostly just Campbell’s Tomato Soup and crushed garlic. Once, you chased me through that kitchen with a video camera and we were both laughing and laughing and laughing.
This Went All Wrong
You were never supposed to be a choice.
You were never supposed to be a lesson,
a hurdle,
a thing to learn from
and overcome.
So That’s About It
The voicemail you left
on my twenty-second
birthday is still stuck
in my phone. And by
stuck, I mean I can’t
bring myself to delete it.
And by in my phone, I
mean I got a new phone
so I actually transferred
it to my laptop.
Sometimes I listen to it
when I can’t remember
what you sound like.
Thames St.
When I woke today,
my whole front lawn was dotted with dandelions.
All I could think about
was that summer we spent in Baltimore
when her hair turned out yellow in every photograph we took,
and how I haven’t been back since I kissed her
with a mouth full of gelato
and she laughed against my teeth.
I never tell the whole truth in my poems.
I wanted them to be better than us.
The Muse Bites Back, Or The Poem In Which I Berate Myself Because She Won’t
after Yena Sharma Purmasir
I KNOW THEY SAY
THERE ARE TWO SIDES TO EVERY STORY,
BUT I DON’T THINK I’VE READ
A SINGLE TRUE THING
YOU’VE WRITTEN ABOUT ME.
I DON’T KNOW
HOW YOU COULD MAKE A LOVE STORY
OUT OF WHATEVER THAT WAS,
HOW YOU COULD TURN ME INTO THE VILLAIN
WHEN YOU’RE THE ONE WHO LEFT.
REMEMBER: YOU’RE THE ONE WHO LEFT.
YOU’RE THE ONE WHO ASKED
FOR YOUR BOOKS BACK
AND BOUGHT A PLANE TICKET
AND NEVER SPOKE TO ME AGAIN.
I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU WROTE ALL OF THAT DOWN.
I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU QUOTED MY LOVE LETTERS.
I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU USED MY VOICEMAILS.
I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU TOOK THIS PRIVATE THING
AND USED IT TO GET YOUR FOOT IN THE DOOR.
Okay
I couldn’t sleep last night because I don’t know
what you eat for breakfast anymore. I don’t know
if you still wear my old clothes or if you threw them out
when you threw me out.
I read somewhere that it’s okay to miss people
even if you don’t want them in your life anymore;
and I hope that’s true. I hope everything I feel is okay.
I just want to leave your name on a page somewhere and never need to come back to it.
A Love Poem For Myself Because I’m Sick Of Writing About You
I hope one day
somebody loves you
so much
that they see violets
in the bags under your eyes,
sunsets in the downward arch
of your lips
that they recognize you
as something green,
something fresh and still growing
even if sometimes
you are growing sideways
that they do not waste their time
trying to fix you
So You’re Engaged—So What?
I found out secondhand
and skipped
all five stages of grief.
(I went right to tequila.)
Ongoing Construction
When I think of our separate futures,
I picture concrete chipping away,
and the ghost of our happiness
dancing on top of the rubble.
Reminder For Times Like This:
Embrace the days
on which you are still hurting.
Sore muscles have always
been a sign of growth.
The Blue Lagoon
Autumn. Cheeks flushed from the cool air. I wore my grandfather’s flannel shirt over my dress instead of a coat. You pulled off your gloves in the driver’s seat. Held a warm palm to my cheek. Asked me what kind of face to make to get someone to want to kiss you. Instead of flirting, I started quoting The Little Mermaid. I ran inside afterwards, straight up to my room. Sat on the edge of my bed with two fingers pressed to my lips. Singing “Kiss The Girl” in your car was the first time I’d ever wanted to put my mouth on your skin.
The night you told me that the more people I kissed, the dirtier I would become, was the first time I wondered why anyone would ever want to put their mouth on your skin.
I guess neither one of us came away clean.
Unsent Text Message
I dreamt about you
three different times
last night.
I need this to be over.
38 Days
I am still cutting my hair over the bathroom sink and taking the weather personally. It’s been a year since the last poem. Since the last time I picked up a pen and thought about writing your name somewhere on the page. Everything feels so small in your absence. My whole world could fit on the head of a pin.
Body Language
Conversations about her always start the same way. Someone asks: what does your tattoo mean?
And I say, I loved somebody too much once.
They shake their head like I don’t kno
w what I’m talking about, like I’m one of those parents with selective hearing. They shake their head and point. No, not that one. The one on your foot.
I say, every part of me means the same thing.
Leftovers Pt. 2
I do not believe all love has an expiration date;
I just believe ours did.
I have put to shame every night I thought I wouldn’t get through without you.
Thank You
The smell of your hair puts my stomach in knots.
I want to lay roses at your feet.
I want to pray at the church of your hands.
I want to thank you for every awful thing you ever did to me.
No one will ever be able to knock the wind out of me again.
Not like that.
Not like you.
37 Days (Reclaiming The Bee)
Still writing about you feels like needless repetition.
It feels like sneaking into a neighbor’s backyard
just to look around.
It feels like carving my own name
into anything I can get my hands on.
Still writing about you feels like screaming
into someone else’s abyss.
A void that echoes back and back and back:
I AM NOT YOURS.
YOU ARE NOT MINE.
I WILL NEVER MAKE THIS MISTAKE AGAIN.
YOU CAN LOVE AND LOVE AND LOVE
AND YOU STILL WON’T BELONG TO ANYONE
AND NO ONE WILL BELONG TO YOU.
IN THE END WE WON’T EVEN HAVE THE PAIN OF IT.
YOU WERE NOT THE FIRST THING TO STING ME
AND YOU WILL NOT BE THE LAST.
It’s All So Light
Nobody is in love with me and everything is still warm. Still soft. Still rosewater and a typewriter ribbon. Still cookbooks and salt air and sheer black lingerie. Still red lipstick. Still mostly kind. Still often uncomplicated. Still mints at the bottom of my purse, hair held back, pulse thumping through skin. Still sweet tea in a pitcher on the kitchen counter, a cold glass with three lemon slices, a full ice cube tray.
Ode To The Purple Mug I Found In Marshalls
God, it will feel so good
to have something warm
to wrap my hands around
at two in the morning
again.
Think of the quiet days
we’ll spend together.
Think of the packing and unpacking,
the leases, the emptiness of moving,
the homes we’ll leave behind together.
The tableware you won’t match with.
God, think about that.
Think about how out of place you’ll look
next to my great grandmother’s china teacups
and all the silverware I’ve pilfered
from work.
I’m living alone
and I still don’t have my own dishes.
Last month, I lived entirely
off of paper plates.
Say you’ll come home with me
anyway.
Loud, Loud, Loud
In a dream,
I see you walking out of the post office
and I swallow my pride like a lit match.
I say,
I’m sorry for hurting so publicly.
I know I didn’t have to make so much noise.
29 Days
The morning you marry your true love, I will have an ex-boyfriend laughing somewhere because I told him that it was foolish to be jealous of you; but it was always you. It was you before I moved in with him and it was you after I left. It is not still you, but sometimes I do wake up with a pit in my stomach that goes by your name.
The morning you marry your true love, I will ball my hands into fists and sink like a worm into the bottom of a bottle of fine silver tequila.
The morning you marry your true love, at least three people will say to me: I thought you’d let this go already. I will try to explain that leaving you is something I am still trying to process. I will try to explain that letting go comes in waves. I will try to explain that even when we didn’t appreciate each other anymore, you still felt like my other half. Sometimes you still feel like my other half.
The morning you marry your true love, everything will taste like quiet panic. Like being startled by house-sounds in the dark. Like walking up to the wrong person in public. I will keep trying to picture your hand with someone else’s ring on it.
The morning you marry your true love, I will block out the memory of you sitting across from me in a café on Main Street, whispering like you were worried he could hear you from three states away.
The morning you marry your true love, I will have a mouth full of regret. I will be stuck six feet deep in the memory of your fiancé calling me up just to gloat, to say that he had won. Like you were a thing to be won. Like there was ever any competition. I will recall laughing, saying, you can have her. Hanging up the phone. The sound of it is ugly. It does not feel like me. It does not sound like me.
Maybe it will be more than a mouthful.
The Perseids
it’s late and i am thinking
of the voicemails i never left you.
all that time i never spent pleading
with your machine.
the fight i did not put up.
the difference it would and would not
have made.
the last time i saw a meteor shower
i thought about the taste of your shampoo
and how your hair might look
pooled on my pillowcases again.
even after
we hated the sound of each other’s voices
i still wouldn’t have minded
pulling your hair
from the shower drain,
but you don’t know that.
i like to think i’m over it.
i like to think one day i will have stories
that don’t all start with your name.
i like to tell myself that i wasn’t
really in love with you but even on the months
i forget to pay my credit card bills,
i still remember to check your horoscope.
A List Of Things That Remind Me Of You
turtleneck sweaters / violin cases / eating chocolate icing from the jar / 7am / writing letters / checking the mailbox / checking the mailbox again / black ankle boots / minivans / bad parking jobs / gelato / custom lingerie / fake red roses / post-it notes / mix CDs / obscure indie music / 9:30 Club / that one E.E. Cummings poem / holding hands at the movies / Birdies Coffee Shop / cornfields / honey spice rooibos tea / polka dots / pianos / pool tables / hot chocolate / cinnamon / the way it feels when you ache and ache and ache and then sink to the bottom of the bathtub and for just a few minutes it doesn’t ache anymore
The first time I really heard my own name, it was in your mouth.
I Still Forget We’re Not Even Friends
I still wake up
with things to
tell you.
One day, I won’t.
I will learn placid acceptance.
I will stop panicking when I can’t perfectly remember
the pitch of your voice
or the curve of your jawline.
The smell of cinnamon won’t
make me sad anymore.
At this point it’s not about finding someone
to replace you. I have spread my love
all over the place.
It’s about trying to sleep
knowing
I live in a world that
has your hands
in it.
This Is What The Poems Are For:
telling other people the things
I can no longer tell you
24 Days
I found one of your old perfumes
in that suitcase you lent me
when I moved off of Uhler Lane.
Instead of throwing i
t away,
I unscrewed the cap
and emptied what was left of the bottle
onto my bedroom floor,
spent the next few days
unable to sleep
without a window open.
I’m still airing you out of that room.
Lemon And Honey
For my sixteenth birthday, my mother threw me a Sour Sixteen instead of a sweet one. We sent out green and yellow cards. We ate large slices of lemon cake. You and I weren’t friends yet, but you were someone else’s date in every one of those photos.
For a short amount of time, you lived next to a beekeeper. You gifted me honey in a repurposed jam jar and I left it in the cupboard until it crystallized. I thought that this meant it was ruined.
There are other truths but these are the ones that stick with us even now.
Chameleon
I am different more often than I am the same.
I don’t know how anybody falls in love with me.
I don’t know how anybody keeps up.
19 Days
I read somewhere
that love only gets old
if you let it.
I can’t remember why we stopped
writing love letters
and started crying drunkenly into the phone.
I can’t remember when we stopped
watering our roots.
I can’t remember when we started
competing for the sun.
I tell everyone
who asks about you
that we outgrew each other.
I still don’t know if that’s the truth.
Maybe we just got
tired.
Honeybee Page 3