Mouthful of Forevers

I think I like myself a little broken,
with rough edges, a little harder
to grasp. I like poetry
better than therapy anyway.
The poems never judge me
for healing wrong.

Press your stories

into their skin and forget

you ever knew his name.

I am not the first person you loved.
You are not the first person I looked at
with a mouthful of forevers.

It’s Just So Strange
He used to love me,
and now
he’s just a stranger
who happens to know
all my secrets.

Every Time a Man Yells
I am seven years old again
and he is packing that suitcase
once more.

But My Heart
Is an old house
(the kind my mother
grew up in)
hell to heat and cool
and faulty in the wiring
and though it’s nice to look at
I have no business
inviting others in.

I said, I love you
when I meant something much
more specific, I should have said,
Please don’t leave me,
I’m afraid to sleep alone.

I am afraid he crawled inside me
and never really left my body.

I picture him waiting,
crouched in my throat
for the moment I am most in love
to reach his hands back out
and strike again.

The truth is this:
Love is an organic thing.
It rots and softens.

Boys like this are a dime a dozen, but I don’t know that yet because tonight I’m with the first one.