as a young child,
i suffered from asthma every day and night,
but it appears i’m out of breath
for an entirely new reason these days,
because i sure can’t breathe whenever i think about
you and i
me and you
us.
whatever it is that we have is eating me alive,
and not in the way that the morning sun eats the monsters
every sunday morning,
but in the way that my sadness eats your happiness
every single moment of every waking day.
and if there are a thousand ways to say desperate
then how come i only know of two:
one is the way that i cling to you
and the other is the sound of your voice
whenever i pull you too close and our bodies tangle
until you and I are one very broken thing
that can never be fixed
and you have to force out the words
you’re doing it again, darling, you’re killing me
like a whisper in the wind.
i don’t mean to be terrible and hopeless
just in the same way that you don’t mean to love me
it’s just something we do,
our own little tango
and i know that it’s not enough for you,
because when i told you that
for years i had been trying to collect all of my misery
so i could knit it into a sweater for you to wear,
but i eventually had to quit because i always ran out of needles
since i've been using them all
to carve the word lonely into my poor wrists,
you didn’t even flinch.
