#breakuppoems

I.

I turned your voice into a seashell for the last distant echo, farther here I searched for us within all of the alternate parallel closer aways I have loved you through too many sometimes...

II.

he has no clue how to kiss me but the newest-new guy can’t stop smiling,

is it contagious

enough

to catch me?

his lips on mine tick 10pm in the basement and I can’t remember if I forget what your mid-kiss laugh tastes like

III.

I want to make peace with our magentas and ultraviolets the colors while lingering on the edge of misery

only two people this insane

would

actually see, the psychotic goose-loops we went on to chase more

loose ends, the beauty as we flat-lined through mid-air for five years but still haven’t fallen out of anywhere I can’t forgive how your lips on mine

struck

midnight

at

the...

IV.

the newest-new guy looks into my eyes and

intentionally pauses

but

the

clock

has

lost

her

whimsy...

she lays herself down

on a lime-green couch

in this

exact

literal

minute,

this

present

plane of existence

and

un-figuratively

sinks

down

into

the

comfy

cushions

I

wonder,

what

time

is

it?

V.

it was just so different

back

then,

you

holding

my skeleton

hand...

no

need

to

breathe

an

eternal

lallygag

strolling

along

dawdling

about

moseying-on

through

a

dilly-

dally

of

our

last

moment...

(I just can’t say the word meadow again.)

VI.

the rippling distant echo

of your strike

dying

down...

and

he has no clue

how to kiss me

but

I can taste

this newest-new

guy’s

smile

at 10pm in the basement

as our clumsy

mid-kiss-teeth

clang

the next

tick

after

your

midnight’s

Tell me why the bandaids never stick

Desire makes me sick

To my stomach

To my core

My being

My presence

Tell me why your absence fills the room

My fingers still feel your dark tousled locks

Your quivering lip at the hint of laughter

My naivity navigating before and after

Growing up was in part by your side

20 21 22 23- little words still usher my thoughts

I want you to know that they all fell flat on their face next to you

Attempted comparisons are laughable

They are all minor distractions

They arrive in waves

Ebb and flow and I let them go

Ebb and flow and I let them go

Nowhere near my heart

But I say yes I love you too

Keeps them from turning blue

I.

this morning a really cute zombie fed me breakfast in bed

but maybe that’s just an obscure South African sex ritual or maybe the word “girlfriend”

really means “side-hoe” in Swahili...

he also speaks Italian, French, and better Spanish than me and my mom was born in Venezuela, there’s gotta be a huge mistake in his translation because last night he even made me dinner and we didn’t actually have sex...

like,

at all (we should both learn German or Russian and yell at each other from across the room “YOU WANT TO FUCK?” and after I’ll make him sleep on the couch... just to keep it 100)

II.

the word “love”

in Urdu

translates to

apparently,

after circling the world

for 80 infinities

it plateaus,

because

all I found

was a flat-edge

where

you are the moon on my horizon

I’ve looked for you

inside all of the eternities

within each alternate dimension

of the parallel universes

where

you are forgiven

and

I think I’d rather just stay angry

you mean too fucking much to me.

how many times can I be

stood up

within my own fantasy

(meet me at the meadow)

before I leave you there?

III.

Dear Hassaan,

I’ve written you endless letters

under my pen-names

like

The Moon Escaped the Sky

Wildfire

Where Time Begins

Circles

Hello

and

Goodbye

and I wish this could be the last

but

I know it won’t.

Love,

I. 

I miss dangling

on the edge of your cliff

grasping at straws

“riddle me this,” you say if I were suicidal why would I put a trampoline at the bottom and outline my path of two loops to jump through?

II. no matter what language is whispered into my ear I am not well traveled but I have big dreams to live in my car 

just so you know the newest guy is from Zimbabwe, just another place I’ll never see

in a way I get lost in the tiny universe every guy gives me and the girl I’m in love with drinks more than my father

maybe my straight line extends to everywhere.

III. the ultimate yin and yang of life is a plateau

and plateaus tell the lie of perfect balance

the world is at my fingertips but you are only an arm’s length away grasping at straws trying to figure me out, this is the static

of survival

IV.

“you deserve the world” so many men say before they blast off to somewhere else and girls don’t believe it for themselves

in my own mind I am disabled, my fantasies consist of you us

planting a trampoline in every city of the world, a secret we keep in our back pocket for when we fall through infinity

make a joke of time or just stop trying

my newest guy attempted suicide and was pronounced dead for 14 minutes

I think we laughed about it for 14 minutes, God I made fun of him so hard

now I’ve fucked a zombie is there a word for that in Zulu?

and

i. my big-mood is slapping my clit hard wondering what you’re up to practicing a stand-up comedy routine for no reason researching how to formulate a memoir dreaming about the perfect wife or a polyamorous relationship for the first time are there twelve bisexual-brother-husbands waiting for me in the afterlife? and the monsters i see when my paranoia gets this bad was that a random hand i just saw out of the corner of my eye handing me a blood-soaked wedding dress? anything but you only you and not being able to finish despite no impulse control ii. we both weren’t prepared for your bad aim but thank you for your ounce of kindness just the same it’ll never be the same iii. sometimes, i just need a good cry and what better way is there? my emotions are wound so tight my own arms i cannot reach someone else must unravel me if i have any hope of a release sometimes, i just need a good cry and what better way is there than

with a stranger holding me afterwards?

if only i had three wishes...

iv. the faint noise of your stupid-fucking-obnoxious car to make up for your pathetic, meaningless existence in the distance of my memories and i still wish it could be you in that mustang driving away from me v. god, that summer in the back of my cavalier with a guy who was six-and-a-half feet tall he cheated on me with fourteen-year-olds and when my depression gets this bad

i need to be fucked in a way you can’t unblocking the thirty-some-odd numbers in my phone who will run me over? vi. i am the sleeping beauty a feminist least favorite but i slayed my own dragons

without you and i know

it’s just our characters you are your own protagonist

well, fuck you i wish upon a star that you were at the bottom of my ivory tower, holding me close with one hand slaying my brother husbands all the strangers fantasy of perfection and fairytales in the other your dragons burn him to a crisp and bury the cavalier in a moat somewhere bringing all the other lost princesses with us for me to have fun with they are my audience but you laugh the loudest mice sewing my wedding dress searching for other worlds to get lost in because you found me noble steed revving us off into the sunset and  

a new layer of skin emerges like pages

as i shed tears

i’m ready

for my next chapter,