#listpoetry

I am learning:

-the difference between goodnight and goodbye

-how to let go

-where my breaking point is

-what happens when feelings get in the way

-to care again

-the value of a genuine smile and a good laugh

-the difference between love and suffocation

-the difference between love and understanding

-what it means to love the idea of someone

-that the real thing is usually better

-to voice my opinions

-to be selfish

-to shut my big mouth

-that I should scream it from the rooftops

-how many times I can get back up

(more than I thought)

-that sometimes whiskey does all the talking

-how much can be said with no talking at all

-to take nothing for granted

-to never let the past anchor me

-that I am more important than I thought,

iv. you’ve dealt with my cruelest of flaws. i’m sorry i couldn’t deal with the fact you wanted me so much and i wasn’t used to being loved in the ways you wanted to give to me, but please understand that now you’re teaching me how to love somebody correctly i would never have done any of the things i did to you.

v. theres been times when you’ve been in such a dark place and i fucking ran. i guess i was afraid of making you more like me, i’m sorry.  vi. i never hit you or cursed at you or used one of your flaws against you but dammit did i hurt you and i hate myself for everything i put you through. it’s unforgivable and again, i’m sorry.

vii. i know we didn’t get to be officially together for our year anniversary and i’m sorry i didn’t even kiss you on new years. i didn’t even get to start a single day of this year with you, but since then please know that all i ever did was kick, scream and cry for you to come back. i'm not even back home yet. viii. not only did i kill your heart, i killed my grandfathers when i begged him to let me die on the night he picked me up at 4am. i don’t even remember much, but i remember you crying on the floor promising me one last forever cuddle. the sparkle in your eyes officially died out that night jesus fuck i hate myself i can’t even tell you possibly how much either. words don’t even come close. ix. i’m sorry for my mistakes but that isn’t all i’m sorry for. i’m sorry that i made you love me when i knew it was your first love and that it wouldn’t be easy. i love you and i lost you. countless times. i will always be sorry.

I wanted someone to lie next to me in my bed

At night

So I could fuck them.

So we could mash our bodies against one another until our brains were content.

So we could together see the color seep as drips of sweat from each others souls to fall unnoticed for lack of want on the mattress where they’d dampen and die and never again trouble us with the idea of “conscience,”

So we could be, if only for a moment, set free from our carnal cells to wander around the small prison and think: such freedom!

It has happened of late

And by of late, of course,

I mean yesterday,

Without saying a word of challenge,

You tasked me to leave it behind.

The sweat-soaked sheets

the before, during, and after,

the ugly wet smack of colliding pelvic bones.

In an instant I am aware

that the need behind the need

for colliding pelvic bones

is simpler

quieter

and less guilty than the aforementioned.

And I realize that need is

to have not just a warm body on the mattress beside me,

but to have a single warm body that returns each and every night

to have a single pair of lips to kiss

a single nose to steal and throw into the corner of the kitchen

a single set of

two

four

six

eight

ten fingers to slip effortlessly between mine

a single set of as many toes to brush past mine underneath the light linen covers

a single set of decidedly perfectly-sized ears, even though you might refuse to admit it…

and one set of green-gray-gold windows to stare at, aligned with mine.

You might, by now, know that this is about you.

But that's not important.

What's important is what will happen tomorrow,

And the day after,

And all the days between this moment and the next one in which my eyes look into yours

What's important is what we decide to do with those days.

Because we could choose to pine after one another

And ignore the opportunities that throw themselves down across the train tracks of our lives to be sliced in three by the left wheels and the right

We could choose to forsake the company of a red rose to hold close the tattooed ghosts of one another in the night

We could choose to be sad.

Rather, come what may.

And depart what will.

And if in a day, or a year, or twenty,

Your hand slips into mine

I will be happy.

I will not mourn the loss of time,

Rather I will be glad knowing that even complete willingness to live our lives apart

Did not stop us from living them together

And that when I had the chance to choose a thousand roses over you,

I did not.

a jar for me

a jar for you

my jar of course,

you can see right through.

*

jars of jelly

and jars of jam

you left one open

and didn't give a damn.

*

jars of bugs

crickets and fireflies

to liven the night

but I open these jars