Alien Space Babe

Leaving is not enough. You must stay gone. Train your heart like a dog. Change the locks even on the house he’s never visited. You lucky, lucky girl. You have an apartment just your size. A bathtub full of tea. A heart the size of Arizona, but not nearly so arid. Don’t wish away your cracked past, your crooked toes, your problems are papier mache puppets you made or bought because the vendor at the market was so compelling you just had to have them. You had to have him. And you did. And now you pull down the bridge between your houses, you make him call before he visits, you take a lover for granted, you take a lover who looks at you like maybe you are magic. Make the first bottle you consume in this place a relic. Place it on whatever altar you fashion with a knife and five cranberries. Don’t lose too much weight. Stupid girls are always trying to disappear as revenge. And you are not stupid. You loved a man with more hands than a parade of beggars, and here you stand. Heart like a four-poster bed. Heart like a canvas. Heart leaking something so strong they can smell it in the street.

and I know I speak like my heart was broken last night even though it happened last January, when I thought I was numb from the cold but I was numb from you and sometimes everything you left behind cuts into my tongue and I find myself choking up your name even though it’s been 3 months since you’ve called and I’m not sure how your voice still plays in my head when I can’t even remember how it sounds and there are scars and bruises all over me that I could’ve sworn had faded but everyone looks at me like I’m about to collapse and sometimes I kiss boys who grab me like they want to break me and I let them because there’s nothing left to break and sometimes they taste like you and I used to smile like I wasn’t empty but you’re stuck in my head and in my heart and underneath my fingernails and I’m so sorry but you can’t stay here