intoxicate

It’s okay that you leave  toothpaste on the bathroom sink and skin on my pillow because it’s all the more of you that I can inhale, all the more to make our lungs  take the same breaths and I never told you this but late at night once you’ve already fallen asleep I slow my heart down so your heart will keep time with mine, like clockwork.

It’s okay that sometimes you forget to call because you’ll  always, always, always show up with some cheesy  99 cent valentines day card  that you probably bought from  the gas station on the corner, but I’ll swallow the I love yous like they’re cups of chamomile tea and you’ll watch me like I’m the most beautiful girl in  the entire world.

It’s okay that nowadays I only see your syrupy eyes when we’re having sex or when we accidentally bump into each other on the dairy aisle because romances are always better in your head, and fairy tales  are the stuff of tween poetry.

It’s okay that your goodbye  note was simply the spare key I had made exactly six months ago left on top of my collection of half-hearted drawings of you that you told me you’d had  framed, but here they are,  charcoal smudged with some  other girls fingertips and I wonder what you told her, if anything at all.

(ii) tree tops are for kissing & mountain tops are  for running towards (not away from)

(iii) (breathe.)

you raked and brushed my body like it was something rotten and ugly, something to be cleared away so you could see the dying grass beneath.

by the time you were through, i was more the color of  violets and oceans than autumn.

time passed, as time does,  and my skin was the marker; purple, blue, green, yellow, then finally ivory.

(i never thought i'd be so glad to see ivory again)