Orange County Disorder

Look, I love you and I think that means I need you. Or maybe I’ve just shoved those statements next to each other for so long that I think they are a part of one married sentence.  But without you, I go on breathing. My lungs may slam into my chest and whine for awhile, but they work. Without you, I still work.  I go to bed, I cry to friends. I make myself dinner as usual. And if the absence of you keeps me in bed for a few nights with a growling stomach, it is okay. I get up. Eventually, I get up.  Look, I love you, and I don’t need you. But I want you. How I want you.

He told me I was beautiful right after he asked if he could push me against the bed and call me bitch These men are so good at using the same breath to hate me and want me And I can’t say I blame them He was there plucking the fists from my cheeks and insisting that because I told him that I bruise easily did not mean I had to show him. I wonder if he learned this hatred from me. If he saw me punchingbe more into my skin and then whispering I love you in my knees and just wanted to show me that someone else can turn my stomach like I do Maybe he followed every I love you with be more because he wanted it to sound familiar

We are friends for three years before I see you cry.  It is while eating a sandwich. Fried chicken and artichoke hearts. Later, when we meet up with  our other friends, you joke that you  cried earlier over how good your  sandwich was. All of my friends have hidden pains  that they cannot articulate. I love them all enough to want to  carve them open and freeze whatever  hurts them in poems. But still I don’t know how to call them when I’ve been crying for three years and can’t stop. None of us talk about being young. We just say, see you at the show? Or, do you need a ride? Or, In n out or burritos? We are friends for three years when you tell me that things are getting bad and you’re scared.  I love you enough then to want to stop it all - the streetlights, the pedestrians, and all of the noise humming on the street. I want to make some grand gesture to show you that I’m your friend and am here. Instead I nod. And stay still in the passenger seat. I know there is no real way to stop the noise. But I want you to know that I’m your friend. And I hear it all too.

I’ve gotten my heart broken by boys I never even loved, I’ve tried to die over boys I never got to kiss I let the 2,000 miles of winding roads between us wind around my neck I was too young to know that when my best friend said your skin burns when you touch someone you love, it’s not supposed to feel like fire You’re not safe from anything anymore, The moon only ever wants the ocean at night And the waves still stand on the tips of their toes to be tall enough to kiss the sky Even though it means slamming down hard against the shore And drowning the lovers it sucks out to sea Clouds love the rain but they still let it fall to the ground, dripping down car windows like blood and smacking hard against pavement.

I am a lover without a lover. I am lovely and lonely and I belong deeply to myself.