one day, i met a girl
who didn't know me as the dead machine walking
i knew myself
and since i didn't really like sneaking out at 2am to have
concrete walls tattooed into my palms i thought
maybe i could make myself a stranger too
so i bit down on all the air between us, millions and
millions of gallons of it
and told her
my name is sara
watching the air shrink to a handful of dust
i didn't expect to see her the next day but
i found myself wishing that i would
because with her—
with you—
i'd no longer search on my hands and knees
for a way to forget / ignore the heaviness running through
the centreline of my body
and the nights got later but they never felt late
never felt like the ones i spent
crawling through lighter fluid doused alleyways
made up in my head
the street lamps like collections of moths
and the imaginary crackle of condom wrappers on tarmac
that only existed so my head would just
stay quiet
the day i met you i swallowed down the key to all my daydreams
(didn't need them to cheer me up anymore)
and it's like you saw each root
of each thought
colonising in my eyes before i even opened them
but one day i found myself ripping apart an old folk song
oh, don't deceive me
oh, never leave me
because you did—you said you had to—
and—
i thought that maybe you wanted to
and it felt like missing a
step
but your eyes are so blurry you don't realise
it was never there in the first place
felt like splitting yourself open and sealing it in two
heavy
glass jars then shattering the one that you left your
heart in
with all the crying turning your head upside down
pounding, rattling
stirring blood and
disconnecting nerves
frazzling their cores and spinning them up into a spider's web
that can't hold you in place
because it's the first time in two years since you've cried
take that
bitch
but you're crying out of love 'cause that's all we got
i have poems and poems of him
printed on tiny post-it notes and folded into paper swans
strewn around the neighbourhood; i hope they blow away
get torn to shreds
each
fucking
one
they were never about love
words wrapped up in sleeves and double sleeves
of seduction, salvation, sex all that shit
but never love
this, this is more like love
and it's with love that i'm counting down the days
till a flatline connection
is no longer a threat.
