prelude to disaster

if that was love, you can count me out. equations
don't mean shit to me anyway-- i nearly failed fifth grade math
and i'm incapable to adding up the number of times
you were good to me
and subtracting that quantity from the number of times
you so severely fucked me over that i couldn't find my legs
couldn't recognize strength to walk out
leave, or
disappear. & you told me: "this is who i am;
i will never change." which i must have thought was endearing
or cute or something that made my heart beat twice its limit
because i must have believed, then, that you were honest.
like the time you said: "i'll never do that to you, i'll never treat you
that way" and i fell for it- because that was thing to do, when you're falling
in love, you fall for everything- but the thing is- can you see this?-
what you did was incomparable to those tedious flits of fuck-ups.
you may not have fucked the other girl
but you let her in, and out, and in and out.
do you even remember how many times
you tried to kill yourself
in the midst of our love-struck wanderings?
do you remember august, in gramercy. the fight
with your mom- how you were "happy" but she pushed you
over the edge and it scared you how everything was good
and you still wanted to die.
or late january, in essex. your dad
wrestling a gun out of your hands. and how you'd begged me that very day
to come up early. and i couldn't. i should have known, or-
that big fight, april?, when you fell away
just to enjamb yourself back ever so slightly to let me know
that yes, you'd had to go to the hospital. because you wanted
to hurt yourself. but you didn't want to talk about it.
for days.
again. and then that summer.
it was always as if i was one step behind you,
never seeing what should have been so obvious.
when you tried to end us in june- because you didn't know how to be happy-
what a fucking cop-out (even though it's true). and the shitstorm of georgia:
the yelling, the mania, the constant fights, the ruin of two summer weeks.
enter october, 2007. someday i'll ship you a prize
awarding you the esteemed award for contributing heavily
to the worst month of my life.
i guess you can't understand (or care) that every time i open my closet
i see you there, cross-legged on the floor, your eyes wide and stark
blood and bruises caking your arms, epi-pen angled toward your veins,
scratches and pin-pricks spotlighting where you'd already stabbed,
empty pill bottles next to your feet. how i held you that night,
my arms a vice grip around your trembling form. we couldn't stop
the shaking: not then, not ever. and then-
no, it wasn't over-
how weeks later you tugged me into your grasp; we were standing
in a door frame, essex again, you said how sorry
you were, and how embarassed
you were. how that wouldn't happen again. and truly, it wasn't until months later-
april again, 2008, when you called me and ranted, bitched,
threw a fucking fit and ended us. then checked yourself into the psych ward
not two hours after that hang up.


that's just it.
those weeks.
that's where
we are now.
not us, but
time. and it
shakes me
to my core.
april-may.
i won't give
you my tears
my heart
my lifeline.
not anymore.
you had
your chances.

Fuck You

"Fuck you" doesn't cut it anymore. They're just words,

language strung beneath the gritty shit

that truncates my soliloquies and tequila-capped one-liners.

FUCK you doesn't tell you what I feel.

The vowels can't reach around their horse-shoed roundness

to slap the things-I've-never-told-you across your face,

and the consonants, hard and thick against my teeth, swing

open-hinged in the bluster of (what I intend to be a) frozen

downpour of tucked-away truths. But honesty never floods out that way;

it sneaks behind years of calm cool steady and fuck YOU

sounds too much like i hate you leave me alone you don't mean fucking

shit to me and these aren't lies, not anymore. And if I had the vocal energy

I might scream and whisper FUCK YOU fuck you FUCK YOU fuck you

over and over again, till my throat breaks raw and danger-red,

till my mouth and arms seize and spasm, and till my nails

snap off clean from clawing boundaries

and barriers, leaving new skin scathed and pale,

but there isn't any blood because blood is red

and red is love

and love was you

and you were blood but

fuckyou is boiling and endless, sworn like a furtive groan-

like a scalded wound peeled open again (and again, again).

Fuck.

You. 

This drops like dead weight, and "fuck you"

doesn't mean anything to me.

Not anymore. 

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 

Sometimes I take the fishing line that is twisted around my neck

and tug a little harder, testing the cut against my skin and I

pick up scissors, weigh them against gravity, slide my fingers

into gaping plastic holes. Open, close. Open, close.

Today I'm thinking about time. Twelve hours
every weekend, strapped into my car. 360-odd miles,
the ones I counted to the music breaking into my wandering mind,
and the ones that escaped me in a mad blur. I don't know what this means:
my drive, metaphorical and not, my pull to your push, the serenade
of touch and go, check your brakes, don't get too close and
why aren't you coming closer. 9:00 or after, picking up my feet
when all I wanted was to drag- the mess of your existence
scattered over every spare space. The dust was intoxicating
and I liked it best when you were awake, reposed
and smiling, your small hands outstretched to draw me in.
Sometimes you slept, your mismatched form twitching
and your mouth slack as I stood in the doorway, listening,
waiting, my inner battle of fear and hope pummeling against
my ribs. We were a tragedy, puppets strung out
in interrupted consciousness, jerking our own strings as the stream of life
passed neatly as though nothing outside existed.

can it make you feel love, love, love, love

Again, in my dreams. You're always there, on a semi-schedule of something like every other night. Sometimes you're laid up in my bed with the flu, and I'm bringing you water with a scoop of chocolate ice cream foaming at the top of the glass. Or you're sitting in my living room, two little sleeping bodies nestled into the furniture, and you're kissing their heads and looking at me. Or we're breaking into each other's personal space, the break-in, the rush, the almost-maybe-we-should. And we have, in my dreams, maybe twice. Mouths pressing into passion at the very least, and I can bring to memory at least one dream in which I fucked you- endlessly, wordlessly, wrapped and bathed in the curiousity that never fails to make me flush when you enter the room.

Last night, you were across the room, sitting on a chair on band concert risers. I was sitting in a folding chair on the floor of the room. Girlyman was there, or at least 2/3 of them: Nate and Ty. They were going to perform, but they had this weird extra band with them, and I wasn't happy about it. Then everyone else there said they wanted Nate and Ty to play Christian rock songs, and I started getting pissed, and I looked at my phone and you'd sent me a text message but I don't remember, now awake, what it said. But I got up and walked to you, behind you, and you turned ever so slightly to see me. I don't know what was said, but somehow, as dreamland tends to do, we were fast-forwarded without motion into my kitchen. We stood at the butcher block island, and the back door was open: the air was spring. You took my right hand and said, "I want to see the wonder," and I showed you what remains of the mystery stress-related mess on my fingers. The one purple dot still puffs on my pointer finger, and you ran your thumb over it in the most natural of ways, then flipped open your palm to show me a small purple circle scar. The same, somehow, but nothing of it. It was then that our foreheads bumped together, pausing within an inhale, the skin warm and smooth but the moment broken by my body stirring awake.

Almost maybe we should.