& poems about the boy who tried to pick up the pieces – of me and of himself.
~
EVEN TRAINS DON'T FEEL THE SAME
I am on a train with a boy
with a trembling heart and
an unsaid need to be loved. I am not
the one who loves him. Or can.
The train doors open and
I am on the train with you, a boy
with a killer smile and hidden
sensitivities. Your eyes read me.
Your hands undo me.
The train doors open.
Close. There is hate in your eyes.
The doors mock me. I am unable
to move. Your eyes hold me.
Your hands heal me.
~
THIS IS HOW I LOVE YOU
I like to use the words
shattered, or broken, but
that is not what I am inside.
Inside me is an emptiness.
Inside me lies pieces of you.
In your footsteps lie
pieces of me. Dirt-tainted, soil-
stained pieces. Even then I can't
bear to throw them to the wolves,
because
in every piece of me
there is you.
~
THIS IS HOW I LOVE YOU PART II
Hands. Fast food.
Movies. The sun.
You echo
in every corner
I try to run.
~
THIS IS HOW YOU LOVE ME
Only you know me
as a blind man
knows colours:
without seeing, but
with feeling.
~
THIS IS HOW YOU LOVE ME PART II
If bite marks are love notes
written in the flesh, the one you left
on the curve of my inner thigh declares,
you might not be mine anymore, but
this is mine. No other man can
touch you here.
I fucking love you.
~
THIS IS HOW I DON'T
He looks at me with
tenderness, as if he can't get enough.
As if I am beautiful.
Somehow I am not
blown away.
I want to lose myself in his touch but
you hold me back. No, I hold myself back
for you. I do not want to forget
how your hands feel on my skin,
how your lips feel on my lips.
I do not want
to wash the memories
I have of you with the touch
of another boy. But
somehow I am too weak.
To go. To stay.
His lips burn mine. I hate myself
for feeling something. His hands touch
me and I shrivel. I hate myself for
starting fires and trying to drown
in the smoke.
I hate myself for leaving you.
I hate myself for wanting to.
~
ON SMOKING FOR OBLIVION
It is romantic to trace the lines of
cotton candy smoke as it curls
at the corner of his mouth, and
think about kissing him.
It is less romantic to kiss a boy with
smoke-stained teeth and a cigarette-stained
heart, whose breath I smell
in the rancid old man beside me
as he coughs out a life
drowned in phlegm.
It is even less romantic to kiss
a boy whose hands I know I cannot
place my heart in, whose lips send me into
darkness and not light.
It is not romantic to kiss a boy who
is not you.
~
I KNOW NOTHING EXCEPT I LOVE YOU
I write poems about him and
it circles back to you. I am unable
to write poems about you. I don't know
what that says about
my heart.
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