BeneathTheStars

Like folding laundry with you

it's exhausting, getting you to look at me

maybe I'm delusional, maybe I'm never really alone

but the pain lives in the marrow of my bones

I feel everything all of the sudden and all day

my childhood haunts the narrative at play

and I think you're a good man deep down

even as I'm buried in the ground

even as you blame a heavy crown and hide what lives in your frowns

even as you tarnish what should've been an engagement ring

and I cling to every pinky promise I've ever made

I cling to the frayed fabric of us

and try seeing past your impatience for trust

your resentment for my questioning and the pain on my face

it's not that I'm giving up, it's hard to be full of grace

to be the only one that has to be patient with the ghosts of what your hands did

and villainized for fearing further skeletons from a man that always hid

I thought I knew you, how didn't I have a clue?

how did we both run from the truth?

and how aren't you sorry until your tongue turns blue?

I am.

Sorry I'm sad, sorry I'm mad, sorry for doubting you even when I have reason to

So I know it's inconvenience

but that's not a reason at all

You come home to my crying, sometimes, feeling small

and tell me I've ruined the night

that I've wasted our time

like that's not what you've already done with all of mine

the knives you dragged don't exist inside a vacuum

and my spine of glass isn't always shattered

all I ask, is to be told I matter to you

that you love me enough to heal yourself a bit

It should be much more than just confirming what logistics are true

I shouldn't be texting my friends that I don't want to live knowing what you did

but in July, it still feels like June

and the pain is sweating through my skin

and I fear I'll never lose the taste in my mouth

of your sins, of betrayal, of knowing what you did

and knowing id still rather stay than live

I forced your cards on the table

and you dealt the final blows

made the fatality my fault and then held me close

and choking on your non-existent bouquets

I wished I had a singular wants-the best, standards over codependency bone

that could objectively dissect what's portrayed

pulling skin from teeth, pulling you out of me

but why couldn't you just make it easy

give me some manner of consistency

I wish you had cheated differently

I wish you had done more to hit me

strike me with a deliberately heavy hand, strike me as a bad man please

stop flipping over the goddamn sand

leave me shocked to the marrow

shot with a much more precise arrow

give me a safest place rest

or take the air from my chest next time

give me the poison in my pineapple wine

or really try - TRY - and be unwaveringly mine

If you can't get us off the ground

if we can't be found, and you hate the sound of my voice telling you the stupidly limited choices

I think I've given you too much of my heart

and I fear I've given you too much of my time

but don't tell me it's true

when you say you don't know why I wasn't easy to choose

and spent years bending the truth into something obtuse

how am I hard to let loose if I'm nothing to you

OR how am I so important if I know you told her I'm not

after all our shiny things, after promises to tie the knot

how do I know the future is real this time

if it wasn't really mine before

how do I know that it's kindness in your eyes and sincerity in your heart

after you admitted there was a lie behind every door, that there was never any clarity

& I'm expected not to be torn apart

but I have a death wish and I wish you were different

I wish you had never said it if you never meant it

I wish I wasn't picking myself apart doing your dishes

wearing your clothes and trying to let the idea of another woman go

I need you, I do

but the image of it is digging grooves into my brain

and we'll never be the same

I'll never understand how you could treat me like nothing to lose

I'll never understand how you could treat me like something to use

I'll never understand how you do and do not feel

but you decided a long time ago not to love me

I might never be able to choose the same

but I know I shouldn't stay

I'm a ghost in my ribcage

tracing the floorboards to a bolted door

and to stop saving my fights for later

and I did run out the door, more permanently than any other time before

but I'm not the traitor

the pyre spun in your throat

ran up your pants and your coat

your fires climbed the walls

consuming and consuming and consuming all

until the roof caved in, hanging before my eyes like your broken promises

and I was consumed, too

freed only by the light of sky breaking through

the holes in our roof lead my eyes to the holes in the truth

the holes in my holy perception of you

your virtues in disguise are lowly crimes

and you know that

why else would you have said you weren't surprised

you know... they haunt the backs of my eyes

but too late or not, you opened the blinds

and although you burned a hole through my heart

you're the deepest I've let anyone in

and I took what I took but I'm your favorite sin

so I sit with you, digging through soot

not sure if we're just building up or collecting wood

if breathing you in is still breathing in smoke

but I'm all in on this ending somewhere good

and betting (begging?), judgements aside

bleeding our witnesses dry

it climbs into the cracks of the concrete

the walls you built, that now sit incomplete

but you don't deserve the greenery

the so called growth that you see

when this garden of ours is built on the soil you spaded over me

when it tries to mend the cages you made

redig the ground where I was laid

I stare at it, petrified, afraid to climb

afraid of losing what's not ever mine

afraid to accept the notion of wasted time

you stare too, ruing the day you planted this moment

I am dying to ask you: what part do you hate more?

that it's truth that I see

or how every action was you slowly choosing losing me

do you hate me as much as it hurts to see me leave

do you hate how I'm not her as much as you wished that she were?

do you really hate me?

(can I leave?)

tell me, please, so I can stop saying it's love on both sides

you hold my heart but I don't think yours is mine

and I'll stay if there's hope

If you make me, If you let me, I'll waste all of my time

and that's wrong but how do you do it

how do you shoot me with a twinkling future in your eyes

and how does one forgive the wound, or get through the surprise

when the walls come down and the truth is out

falling like open floodgates, sinking with me to the floor

and the petals haven't touched ground enough to kill my doubts

but you're already asking for more

I'm trying to be good but I don't know how to exist right now

and you're the blowing smoke still clinging to the gun in my teeth

you're my only hope in this love I say I need

my only one, a blazing burning sun in the eyes

a brighter world, a scorching burn

I am a house burned to the ground

I am without choice

the embers of you are all that's left to keep me warm

I swallow down smoke and trigger pulled to keep the peace

so that you'll keep some loving for me

because how else do I forgive these burns

if I don't call your fires home

the only way not to resent it, is to deserve it

so I try to fall in love with our castles again

I try to find beauty in the fallen fortresses we made

knowing now, it was just a set of walls to aide and abet my heart betrayed

knowing now, that in the end, you built them up to keep me blind

but why do I crave the taste then

of metal in the air on floors covered in hair

why else can't I stop myself from staring it down

white knuckles on an empty white stove

by the drawer of knives, by the choice of substance or lies

deciding if the shower later ought to sting

I'd be washed, but no longer clean

hands steady against the glass

deciding if I want to just go out stargazing in the grass

or see them every time I stand, night or day

I stare it down, standing in this imaginary doorway

counting the days since I surrendered to my bones

convinced no number could ever turn it into bygone days I don't call home

it lurks in every pain and brighter day

I'd be free of everything for a moment

and what a sweet moment that'd be

while proving I'm never free of something deep inside of me

I'd prove some people right, others wrong

and myself, what I always was

In control, only ever momentarily

Incapable of prosperity and clarity

looked at like I need saving

from the loops I put myself through

and the constant states of unverifiable recovery

I know I'm the one liable now, for how unreliable It is

How undesirable I make myself

but it's indescribable how badly this feels good

flirting with the fall, a starving, a carving

now, I don't know how to see anything but thin lines and stark lies

in two years, where have you been

that I have not seen, at all

I grew a spine of dry autumn leaves

jumped on the wind of it all

held together by nothing, certainly not you

just the hope that I could stand alone

and the brittle bitter history that spun me around

to crumble into dust in your hands again

It's not fair to me, nor you

that my permanence in any sense feels so paper thin

It's not fair to you, my tethering is fraying at the knot

I'm a guest in our home, coat still on my shoulders

bags still on the floor, tongue hot and cold

but it's not fair to me, you've put this knot in the rope

there as never any hope, in trying to let you go

there was never any hope in trusting your words

we throw weight at the anchor of love

but is there any hope in it not weighing us down?

is there any hope in us now?

how much can we bet on In the marriage and narrative promised?

I want to say everything, but I don't know a thing

My friend says, "you’ll have to learn to defend him if you stay"

but there are things I cannot afford to put away

shadows out of closets and skeletal kitchen drawers

I would've never cast upon anyone else

but you put them on us

you were the catalyst to every bit of rust

the pushing point to our lack of trust

I didn't say enough, but you never even tried to open up

what if the man I love is the reason I can never love him as much as I did then, again

what if you ask again one day and I say no

what then? and what now?

even when you're mean

and it's because your pants are on fire

but I've known no love brighter

and the bed is made

I fight you tooth and nail until I'm convinced

I hardly deserve to stay

my dreams are all eclipsed

all my realistic options are worn out

and it would happen anyway

you hand me the solar viewers I need

you remember the smallest details of me

it's sweet - wonderful and strange

your transition from broken promises

to flowers plucked right out of these pages

even this shitty city looks soft tonight

on blankets, we watch pink lemonade skies turn into starlit ocean

the horizon blurs, with the line between us

man-made metal whales cut through the clouds

the way man-made lies cut through my trust

I start to count and, from the ground

there's more whales than the stars they surround

but I remember a cosmic sea from countless window seats

the low hum of solitary memory

the high of potential in another version of me

I blink.. and the flashbacks recede

we're still playing cards on picnic blankets

I'm still praying your perfect image is not a gambit

I teach you cribbage with the one set you forgot to throw out

I struggle to keep score without doubt

you struggle to play long, until it's casino games

I beat you at blackjack, I hang on to every glimpse of your laugh

and I hope you know, as I sit here now, and later in your arms

I still stand by every written reason on these 54 cards

The ones I miscounted over a year ago

because the box says "52 reasons I love you"