If you see her...

We carried guilt, folded up
And buried in our closet,
in the shoebox where we kept
Our letters, which were never
Signed 'love' because we
Never wanted to be that vulnerable
Or that taken for granted.
I kept your pictures folded
Into tiny little squares,
Inside a seashell, held up
To my breath like a bullhorn
Calling for last hope.
I tried to bury you..
But I always double back to
Sketch your gravestone and
Pretend you're not lost,
and pretend I'm not lost too.
The things we carried
Are hyphenated and split into
Poised corners of mistrust and
Remembrance, daring our
rigid lips to open up and
say something true.
Truthfully, I never wanted to need you
I never wanted to breathe you in
and use you as my balance beam
when nothing felt like Justice
I didn't want you to hold my hand
and tell me I would never stop writing
There were so many nights when I
drew the letters they laid on top of you
and hoped that they would
reassemble into something more
beautiful. They never did.
So now I carry this rugged note
that only says your name
over and over again
like I'm holding my breath
and dying to wish it true.

Tell her, when she comes, to bring a remedy.

Yes. I bet it stung.
like forcing those last words
to finally slip from your tongue
Don't worry, love
You are no more or less broken
or resilient
than you pretended to be
Before I met you, I was known
by some other girl's name.
You know, the one that made you
feel like you had to fix me
and that one that convinced you
that you could. Someday.
So you see I'm just the same sad song
on repeat and I know how it feels
Believe me. Or don't.
The endings never made sense to you anyway
so you stuffed my
book of poems inside your
book of questions and expected
me to give you all the answers
like they haven't been there all along..
But what you've been reading is
all half-hope and half-lies--
the white kind. They seemed
purer. Or simpler.
But I've never done simple,
never wanted the neatly trimmed
forgiveness and solid lines
I'm attracted to the complications
that formed the boulder sitting
on the tip of your tongue.
I wasn't the only one to sting you
wasn't the only one to leave you
in your dust of mourning
and I won't be the last
So when you ask me why I'm running
I will probably say I'm a fan of history
and I don't want to
break the pattern
'cause it hurts too much to
rip the stitches, love.