Poems and Heartache

Thirteen

You look back somedays.

For the most part though, you don't

talk about it.

You don't tell your friends

about the dream you had last night.

Where I come knocking at your door

three years from now just to tell you

that I haven't ever stopped loving you.

Or the one where you call me in the

middle of the night just to say that

home doesn't feel like a place,

that it's a person

and that it exists only

when your heart is in my mouth.
So for the most part,

you don't like to talk about it.

Except sometimes you drink

a little too much and in between the

silence that lingers

you talk about how much it hurt then,

how much it hurts to remember it now.

Then the next day you go back to what

you know how to do best.

So you play forget until

there's too much alcohol in your veins

and you play forget

until it's too hard to stop thinking

about all the ways that love was bad

for you.

You curse it for the ways it didn't stay

but you never curse at yourself

for all the ways in which you were

too much of a coward to fight for it.