Trip

I can still remember

Every detail

Of our trip to Japan

That we’ll never take

Smoke

You tell me

I can get clean

If I just stand

In the smoke

Billowing

From the bridges

We’ve burned between us.

 

So I do as you say –

Stand coughing

And naked

And exposed –

 

And am cured.

Thoughts

She tells me to stop thinking.

 

But for a moment,

The drugs have rendered me

Mellow,

And thinking of you

Is remembering sunshine

And forgetting you

Can take it

away

Trust

You punched me once.

A normal hit,

One that should have bruised

Or maybe cracked a rib.

 

But you forgot that I am paper,

That someone took my flesh and blood

And left a cutout.

 

Your hand passed straight through,

Tearing my parchment organs apart,

Papyrus bones shattering into dust.

And we both stopped —

You couldn’t even look at me

Just pulled back,

Shreds of pulp clinging

As you fled the scene.

 

I took shoji

And did my best to cover up

The you-shaped cavern in me.

 

Now you’re back,

And the every-day way

You move your fingers

Looks just like

Your fist

Going through

Me.

Fix

The only thing I know for sure

Is that you’re broken

And I’m broken

And I wanted us to touch each other

And see the broken bits

And make kintsugi out of them,

Create Beauty out of Broken.

 

But you broke me instead.

Please

We never finished those DVDs.  I don’t know that we ever will.

You came back into my life with no explanation, no apology.

You shake when I get too close to asking about what happened.

 

I still miss the boy you were.  I don’t know this stranger who wears his face.

Please come back.

i ache for the want of your skin

Seasons

Sometimes I wonder if our love is seasonal. I’ve known your kindness in winter, your rejection in spring and summer, and your cruelty in autumn.

Maybe we cannot survive the warmth.

I don’t know if I can love you only three months of the year.

Dear Therapist

I am finally doing what you wanted.

I am writing about him instead of to him.

 

I still want.

Bus

The inches between us
Feel like miles
And even when the sway of the bus
Presses us together
You are still untouchable