i am inside her skin. i am her fingertips, her kneecaps, the back of her throat -- and i feel everything. like liquid i pool and congeal where the surface gives way. her skull is a quarry after a rainstorm, thick, indiscernible.
i want to hear every word she has ever spoken like it's being said to me. the tension breaks. i feel her breath on my ear all the way across the country. i can't imagine her doing something like that. you know, being human. she is enslaved to the cycle, reeled back in like a world record muskie.
this will not be the last time. again, i will feel it. her tongue meets the roof of her mouth.
i remember the first time i cried into another person's skin. it felt a lot like shame, probably. there's something so embarrassing about vulnerability; she had left and returned, left and returned, etc.
i can be as gentle as she'd like. i can be mean and nasty. i consider everything for a brief moment. this is it, right? this is all there is. i wake up on the floor again, in the bathroom. she sweats her concealer off.
i feel her fingers digging into my ribcage, bones creaking like an old staircase. somewhere along the way, i have learned to come to terms with everything unfathomable -- "make sure you're quiet when you leave."
5 am peaks through the blinds; every house is unfamiliar to me now.
i want your indistinguishable dreams and memories. your tongue speaks nothing but words i have already written down. i'm always talking about coming home and half-open blinds, speeding down the interstate.
i feel like i am a child again; the hum of your engine lulls me to sleep. it's good in the light, it's good.
my limbs go numb and my fingertips swell like moisture in a doorframe.
it was a scorcher out yesterday; the sun burnt holes in our skin, turned us into paper-mache. we bonded over the fact we missed that feeling -- missed the glow behind our eyelids, the light sneaking through the blinds at sunrise.
i open my arms and accept it, swaying, falling. i am a collector. i house these memories in my soul, every summer since i was seven. again and again, my eye catches a shiny thing in the sunlight and i slip it into my pocket.
i talk to my mother periodically in my head; "that girl i used to love, i haven't written about her in months."
as it all passes, i find more and more words for the things my mother never taught me -- the trees, god, the window in the bathroom that faces the street.
we creep around each other the way we both creep around mirrors.
i think my fatal flaw is leaving things unfinished. i leave the parts of me that are mean and nasty on the forefront, a disease that only she can cure.
half of the sandwich rots in the fridge. the feeling suffocates me; hunger and wanting and everything else disastrous.
there is something disgusting stuck in my throat. the dogs are barking. i gnaw on the joints of my hands to the beat of their dissonance. i secede, urging, marveling in the irony of it all.
i go over it in my head like i will say it, but i don't. i love you. let me in. she says she misses me, but only after the sun sets. let me in. i fester at her doorstep, under the table, everywhere i am not allowed anymore --
i bite, growl, split my maw on my chains. she does not look away.
in sunlight, she turns corners; i never know what's real and what's not.
she wheezes and scratches, laying dead like roadkill in my bed, nothing left that isn't grotesque. something terrible is happening to me and i can't sleep or eat. words fall dead from my lips, dry rotted, caked in filth.
what's wrong with you? is twenty three years not enough to heal? she says this to me when we fuck. when i wake up, she is back to floating in corners, oxidizing in real time, kissing the edges of my vision.
i swallow my disgust and stare. i can't shake the feeling, but i keep trying.
we know this place and all its weaknesses well. we've spent summers spitting and nodding in park bathrooms when our parents yelled far too much. i barely have anything left of you — a yearbook, a conversation on my old flip phone, a few polaroids. wedding invites turn into radio static. i turn into an evil man.
it's summer again now, the third since my rebirth. mom says she misses the old me, the me before i spent nights on couches and the backseats of cars, before benadryl and musing to basement floors. she always said the first girl you'll ever disappoint is yourself. i feel it in my bones and every ridge of my soul. i chase every feeling, fleeting or not. you said that's my fatal flaw.
i guess we can be rich, but we can't all be wealthy. i have five dollars in my pocket and a lifetime of nosebleeds, rib fractures, dirt caked under my fingernails. these are the things i keep remembering that i shouldn't; all of the girls you took home that i never saw again, you, the paint on the walls. life is a sulk of mystery and i belong where i put myself — alone, cross-legged on the floor.
your dad asked me when i moved if i wanted your old mattress and i felt my insides twist. i have a video of us laughing in your bedroom that i’ll never show anyone. i still cry the same way you did when you told me there was nothing left for you here. i tried to call you in los angeles, but the lines were dead.
in time, all of my friends will become martyrs; i keep counting mistakes instead of blessings. i don't want to be your best man.
Spoiler! :
bad bad bad awful bad. i can't write anything of substance anymore.
i guess we can be rich, but we can't all be wealthy. i have five dollars in my pocket and a lifetime of nosebleeds, rib fractures, dirt caked under my fingernails.
THIS >>>>> your poetry is always something i look forward to reading when i get the notification, & you're always an inspiration for me mr. big brother figure <33333
doublr posting here, but i also love the second stanza. if someone who didn't know you read it, it may have meant something elsr but to me the meaning is so clear, and this poem is so idk... you? it's hard for me to explain in words, but the way it's crafted just reads, well, "chi" like, i couldn't see anyone else writing this poem like this, and that's something iblove abiut your poetry too, is that it's so strikingly unique. the final stanza is a great contrast to the first, from wedding invites to best man-- and this poem is such a sense of yearning and lovesickness that i personally enjoy. so, yeah i like this poem, and all of your others too, chi. never stop writing >:3
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