Milk and Honey (6 page)

i came all this way
to give you all these things
but you aren’t even looking

the abused
and the
abuser

- i have been both

i am undoing you
from my skin

it wasn’t you i was kissing
— don’t be mistaken
it was him on my mind
your lips were just convenient

it always comes back to you
boils
circles
itches
its way back to you

i was music
but you had your ears cut off

my tongue is sour
from the hunger of
missing you

i will not have you
build me into your life
when
what i want is to
build a life with you

- the difference

rivers fall from my mouth
tears my eyes can’t carry

you are snakeskin
and i keep shedding you somehow
my mind is forgetting
every exquisite detail
of your face
the letting go has
become the forgetting
which is the most
pleasant and saddest thing
to have happened

you were not wrong for leaving
you were wrong for coming back
and thinking
you could have me
when it was convenient
and leave when it was not

how can i write
if he took my hands
with him

neither of us is happy
but neither of us wants to leave
so we keep breaking one another
and calling it love

we began
with honesty
let us end
in it too

- us

your voice
alone
drives me
to tears

i don’t know why
i split myself open
for others knowing
sewing myself up
hurts this much
afterward

people go
but how
they left
always stays

love is not cruel
we are cruel
love is not a game
we have made a game
out of love

how can our love die
if it’s written
in these pages

even after the hurt
the loss
the pain
the breaking
your body is still
the only one
i want to be
undressed under

the night after you left
i woke up so broken
the only place to put the pieces
were the bags under my eyes

stay
i whispered
as you
shut the door behind you

i am confident i am over you. so much that some
mornings i wake up with a smile on my face and
my hands pressed together thanking the universe
for pulling you out of me. thank god i cry. thank
god you left. i would not be the empire i am today
if you had stayed.
but then.
there are some nights i imagine what i might do if
you showed up. how if you walked into the room
this very second every awful thing you’ve ever
done would be tossed out the closest window and
all the love would rise up again. it would pour
through my eyes as if it never really left in the first
place. as if it’s been practicing how to stay silent
so long only so it could be this loud on your arrival.
can someone explain that. how even when the love
leaves. it doesn’t leave. how even when i am so
past you. i am so helplessly brought back to you.

he isn’t coming back
whispered my head
he has to
sobbed my heart

- wilting