I Find Your Fingerprints Littering The Pages Of All My Poetry And I Can't Get Them Off Without Smudging

I find your fingerprints littering the pages of all my poetry and I can't get them off without smudging the ink and ruining my work. I don't know why I let you touch it. But its more like it asked to touch you. And how could I say no? Have you ever tried to deny inspiration? And how could I blame my writing for wanting to hold you? How could I blame her?

I don't hate you for leaving but I despise you for making me think you might stay. Loathe you for letting me become accustomed to the comfort of your presence. The leaving always hurts more when it is unexpected. Wounds deeper when they are laid in the back. Taking longer to clot. Always scarring worse.

And now my lips are always chapped because you're not there reminding me to stop picking at them, and to lend me your honey lip balm. And I don't want to buy my own lip balm because its definitely going to remind me too much of you. But every time I am irked by flimsy peeling skin, like a scab begging to torn, a wound waiting to be reopened, that reminds me of you too. And so I heal and tear open stitches in a vicious cycle of remembering.

I just want to forget you.

I just want to forget you.

♡

"Give me a smile sweetie"

And I have always been good at

Giving until I break

So I grin until my teeth crack

And I choke on the shards

Of every sharp thing

I was never taught

I did not need permission to say

♡

The sky bleeds pomegranate gin

And no one dares lay sutures

Across the cusp of her rebellion

And so we sip second chances from

The sewers and wait for the

Wound to clot with sticky fingers and

Stained lips dripping hollows

Gorging ourselves on handfuls of grief

From the gutters, carrying our mother's rage

In our bellies until next rainfall

♡

When I think of stars I think of

Music notes falling from the sky

I think of each of them hitting

The skin of the pavement in a series of

Shattered promises that echo like gasps

Accidental harmonies

I think of melodic dissonance

I think of the collective inhale of rhythm

Rewiring our heartbeats for single

Shared moment of apology

♡

When I think of clouds

I think of forgetting

Perhaps in another life

I could have told you why

But I can no longer remember

♡

Afterall what is my existence but

Circumstantial evidence

For my body aches these days

Stretched thin over the skeleton of my

Mistakes, waiting for sin to split

Skin and bloom across the surface of

My doubt

♡

synonyms for meaningless // 03.31.21

And I

Let the quiet of the night devour me

Let the darkness feast upon me

(As though they crave even the crumbs

Of what remains of my existence)

And I find myself laying awake,

(Patiently)

Waiting

For them to come for me

Because it is in these moments

That I feel most desired

And even if I dissipate this way,

(Slowly consumed night after night),

Atleast I will fade

Unafraid

And

Feeling

Wanted

S o m a t i c R i t u a l

Wait until it is raining. By raining I mean pouring. I heard once, that a sign that your repentance has been accepted is rain. A gift. So go outside and let yourself be drenched in forgiveness. Wait until the mercy seeps into your bones and into your socks. Look up and inhale the possibility of the person you could become absolved of sin. Run your fingers through your hair and savour the knots, the barriers to perfection. Exhale your guilt and run away so you do not run the risk of inhaling it again. Keep running. Down the street. Down the path that takes you anywhere but here. Anywhere but where you started. Until your fingertips are numb and your chest is warm. Run your fingers over your lips and ache as your breath heats the cold of your palms. This is about contradiction. About oxymorons. About how opposition exists in your own body.

Look up at the grey of sky and ask it if mercy is a gift if you must beg for it, make sure there is no malice in your words if you want the clouds to listen. Think about why you are sorry and repeat the words to every puddle you pass until they mean nothing. They are just words. Excuses. Say them until your voice is hoarse and you are tiered. Do not come back until you are tiered. This is important. Trudge home in your wet clothes and soaked soul. Listen to nothing but your heartbeat. Listen to your heartbeat. Listen to your heartbeat. To nothing but your heartbeat. If someone stops you or looks at you oddly or asks you what you are doing or asks you if you are okay, remember their face. Remember their words and the way their life flickers in their irises. Remember them so you can include them in your poem so they can be forgiven too.

Wring out your sleeves and heartstring at the door. Politely decline the droplets offer of redemption. It's rude to decline a gift. But is mercy a gift if you must ask for it? And what does a sinner care about being polite. Go upstairs and crawl under your covers. It is okay if your bedsheets become damp. Take this as a practice in being grateful. You can apologize to your blankets later. Thank them for their sacrifice. Take a nap and dream of your sins. And when you wake write about the promises you have broken and the mistakes you have made and all the terrible things you have ever done. On the other side of the paper, write a letter to yourself about being deserving of second chances. Change your bedsheets and strip yourself of your guilty garments. Put them in the wash. Take a shower. Let the remnants of your hate and sorrow wash down the drain. You have paid for your sins, darling.

And there is nothing left unsaid, and yet a million things unheard. The chasm between us widening and deepening and every word tumbles down into the depths and we remain. Sore throats and hoarse voices and strained eyes trying to make out the details of your face that drift farther away with each passing eternity. And I suppose, that we could jump. But who knows what awaits us? How far we will fall. If We will hit the bottom alive. If we will drown in the accumulated sea of sentences that have amassed over the years. If we will see each other the same in the darkness. If we will ever resurface.

But I will jump first. If only to know it will be your voice that drowns me. If only to attempt to consume everything you ever tried to say before it devours me instead. If only to be suffocated by your truth. If only to be laid to rest here, amongst the sins we birthed together. Here, next to the slowly disintegrating corpse of our love. And perhaps I will never know peace. But I will have known the whole of you, And that would have been enough.

The idea of you spending the rest of your life with me makes me sick.

Which is to say I do not think it would be fair of me to sentence you to the rest of your time with me. What a shame it would be for your years to be wasted on us .

What a tragedy for your infinite love to be reduced to soft smiles and to drip slowly through cupped palms. Reduced to weathering skin and decomposing dreams.

I do not think I could bare, chaining you to us. When I know there is so much out there calling to be known by you.

What a sin it would be, for your infinity to be stifled by my desire for a fleeting eternity with your unfathomability. Your soul a broken record of lost potential.

I do not think either of us would be happy, for long. The endless loop of what could have been, lulling us to sleep and waking us at dawn. The winding melody threading itself between us as we hold eachother in the dark.

Your unfuillment clouding the windows. My guilt cracking the floorboards. The rements of our love sitting in a shoe box at the top of the closet. A fond memory of our youth that evokes more slammed doors than it should when we dust it off over a glass of Nostalgia. We don't know why it makes us so angry. So sad. To recall that we have become nothing of what we thought we would.

I think fate would forever resent me. For stealing you away from her. Life plotting our drifting slowly. Poking holes in our roof, flooding the kitchen sink, fiddling with the thermostat so its never quite right.

Until we find the silence (a once soft blanket we giggled under in the pillow fort we made in the living room)-- thread bare. Itchy. Fraying. Slowly unraveling. Until we find ourselves sleeping back to back. Holding hands awkwardly for photographs. Not talking until noon after 3 cups of water downed coffee. Dinners eaten at different times and tight lipped smiles with sad sighing eyes as we cross unexpectedly in the one bathroom in our appartement.

All of the kisses I brush across your cheek tasting of apology. Both of us trying to hard to let it be enough. Life, a spited lover picking us apart slowly. It would never forgive me. I would never forgive me.

I do not want that with you. I want forever with you. And I think the only way, for us to have that, is for me to let you go.

But love,

Please

Come back

And visit

I will patiently await your breif moments of return. Savor the sticky honey footprints you trek into the house. Every step dripping in hope. You-- drenched in life.

Wring out your sun soaked skin over the bath tub while you tell me tales of the way the universe has made love to you an infinite number of intricate revaltions.

Your eyes sparkling with a garden of blooming constellations that would have long ago wilted if I asked you to stay. Let the glittering of the stars in your gaze tell me I made the right choice. That it would have been selfish to keep you,  in all your miracle, to myself.

The taming of your galaxy. Until it be consumed by its own blackhole in self preservation. Making itself small enough to plaster itself across my bedroom ceiling. Call it the sacrifices you made for love.

No. I would rather miss you recklessly gentle. My longing tinged with the knowledge that you will return, to assure me that that love I refused to take from you is being spent well. That the time I refused to steal from you is being spent well.

My needing double dipped in the the belief

That

You

Will

Come

Back

To

Me

If only to rest your weary soul, a moment. My little shooting star. My little galaxy. And tell me tales of your travels, without me.