the words the words they have come and gone and gone
never to be seen again or maybe trapped maybe never there to begin with
all i ever wanted to be was a poet a writer, but no,
i am neither instead i could teach you how to become sorrow
how to consume what is left of your existence
to swallow the words that should have been mine (yours, i mean).
but i can’t
where are the words i need so badly
to explain what it is that destroys me,
takes the calcium from my bones the blood from my veins
the words are too light to leave any marks but their impressions are buried in the folds of my mind
there is something in the way you speak which lacks stability
and something in the way i stand which lacks understanding
so, it’s just you and i
lacking in every aspect except for
the space which pulls us apart
syllable
by syllable,
heavier, even, than the sound of
your name slipping past my tongue
(knowing I can never take it back)
i left impressions of my skin on your fingertips
you only left me with
the spaces between lovers on wednesday afternoons
skipping clumsily over words and quiet
touches (that never mean what i need them to)
and your scent clings to me like cigarette smoke in small rooms, collecting and dispersing, disappearing
but only until your fingertips meet my skin once more and
it becomes a game of who can hold their breath longer,
how long will it take before i walk through that door?
i am made solely from parts of your existence
your memories built me from the ground up
and i sit before you as fragmented pieces
Of, of, of…
the universe carries all the lives you lead so i etched your name in my veins and hoped the galaxies would remember me
you grew weary, so i learned to speak in quivers
but, (like with any lost language) my tongue skimmed over the intricacies,
lost the meaning somewhere in translation
i spent centuries teaching my bones how to differentiate between the lost and the forgotten and
we became transparent,
all i could do was watch the way your body lingered whenever your eyes lacked radiance,
the way your index finger brushed the bottom of your lip whenever your eyes lacked radiance
the way you were always so weightless, always counting wholly on the wind to prevail
i outlined you in chalk
salvaged the pigments of your skin and encapsulated them
in hopes that your light would stay with me
(maybe to reveal who i was to begin with)
but i forget the way your hands try to grab more than they could ever hold;
like the thursday nights i spent watching you,
trying to figure out how your radiance could evaporate,
leave me with outlines of your existence,
hoping it would rub off on me, stain the soles of my feet
because, your name found its roots there,
branches of the alphabet entangled my legs
rigid consonants settled my insides,
settled in the depths of my lungs and fluttered for eternities, but the vowels,
the vowels crawled to the back of my throat,
found their way out only when sailors craved darkness disguised as formosity
(when i craved you)
I can feel it slipping
Me (or you, I could never tell the difference)
i think all the words left me when you did and i feel this vague emptiness like the universe collapsing into itself and i feel like i should apologize for being so crippled and tired but it won’t leave me it won’t leave me
