☹ ☹ ☹

i met you by the water and carried you back home
your arms around my neck, you lightened my load
birds shook leaves from the trees, sang songs
worthy of breaking your weak heart

i’ll never forget the smell of your hair
or the way your fingers met around my throat

i was always so close to choking　 

when i was twelve, my world went black. the trees turned upside down and stole the oxygen from the air, leafless limbs clawed the sky for life support. i watched it happen. i stopped seeing.
my mother died. the body i was born from was emptied and swept away. she turned to sand and slipped through my fingers and watched the dust float away with the wind, and i watched the ground swallow her up, and i watched as new life began to sprout there months later. i was still warming towels for her in the dryer every morning.
my mother was sick but only because she was sad. she was sad because she was scared. my dad, before he left, told me that her fear was because of me, that her pregnancy grew anxieties deep in her belly that never existed before.
that was before it was bad, when her neuroses still lived beneath her skin and leaving work on her lunch break to come pull me out of school because a storm was supposed to set in that night was the most extreme things got. i didn’t mind it. i loved being around her. she was my hero. i could never get enough. she carried chocolates in her pocket for me and i often imagined myself there, wedged between her scent and the sweet. when i heard her crying through the wall i felt every wail to my ribs and maybe they weighed me down so much i could not move because i never went to her. i never went to her with heavy limbs and a heavier heart, old enough to understand her hurt but too young to know why; i never went to her and feigned wisdom beyond my years to stroke her back and hold her hand and feed her candy from her own pocket.
i will never forgive myself for staying.
my mom was sick because she was sad, because she was scared. she was scared of the bad men. she was convinced they would take me away if she left me alone for a second, she was scared of the father she never knew, who she swore following her everywhere. my dad left and she became scared of not being an adequate parent for me on her own, and the fears build up, pooled behind her eyes and drummed against her skull. she shut all of the curtains and turned off the lights and tried to exorcise her demons with a bullet to the brain.
i hid in her closet and ate leftover chocolates from her pockets and sang myself to sleep.
she didn’t kill herself. if you ask my dad or the police or anyone who knew her, that’s what they will tell you but it’s a lie. my mother was murdered by her nerves, her weak and irregular heartbeat. her sadness consumed her, turned her weak and frail. 
she withered.
she went away.　 

My dreams are filled with memories of the few places I have been, set up like landmarks atop land mines in my mind and if I focus too hard they’ll explode - constant reminders of my humanity, of reality - you can never go back

To columbus
Where you met the family you never knew, beautiful new leaves on the tree of your life. You counted them and whispered to yourself “this is where I came from” and you held them to your chest every time you remembered your former roots, the tension between four walls, a “home” you could never call your own; dirty dishes and I hate you and what am I going to do?, the scent of alcohol like fucking potpourri, but maybe if you could just bring them back with you…
But when you arrive “home” the leaves have gone brown and crisp.

To montana
Where you fell in love and got stupid, where you smoked dry weed under the sky and dove into a lake and eight months later you still hadn’t caught your breath, and she was long gone before you even came up for air. But you felt peaceful there, you grew, and you could close your eyes and see you’d been there before. The woods enveloped you and you gave your heart to the trees and decided there must be a God and so you prayed for them and they prayed for your return.

To st. Louis
Where you stood next to the best friend you have ever known and took pictures of houses you wished were your own and made up stories about who lived in them. You wanted them to belong to you but you know everything goes in time.

You’re reassured by summer’s heat but winter always brings snow to wash away all the places youll go.

the night my bones waged war against the flesh concealing them, trying so hard to break through and tangle me to parts of you, I spilled my blood on your hands and pressed my own to your chest and promised you that you could rest easy. I have closed this cage around you to protect your weak heart in ways my love for you can not because no matter how many times I say it, I can not wish away your past. out there, somewhere in the midwest, an evil guilty man walks free. in his hands he holds all proof of your existence; he could set fire to your life so easily but when the flames come I will be your sea. my love for you is vast and deep and riddled with waves but I love you, I love you just the same.

the snow turned everything white
and sky clicked from black to bright
I rose up every morning to meet
(you)
the sun above the mountains
(your hands)
acres of trees
wrapped around me
to chain me to the ground
for now
(for always)
just for now.

felt your feet falling on frost,
fingertips pressed to tender lips
I was innocent then.
I remember when
I knew I’d be taking you with me
out to sea,
past the rocks
we turned all the clocks backward.
Never found a language
with enough words to say
all the things that really mattered.

three: time

time is a funny thing, a foreign concept that i will never understand.
seven years ago, i drove forty-five minutes out of my way to check out a vacant apartment.
i went back for days. every single day.
a man rented it.
i moved in with him.

we hated each other, but i stayed.
i loved that apartment.
slowly i grew to love him.

we learned each other’s secrets. we learned each other’s bodies.

he took me to the mountains. we made love in the snow. we forget where each of us began. we forgot ourselves without each other.

we held hands.
kissed.
went to the movies and pretended to barely know each other.

time is a funny thing.

we ran into each other on a crowded street.
i smiled.
walked backwards. away from him.
we cut the crosses between the lovers and their stars.

the world explodes.
we never even met. 

two: remembering

i pieced myself back together from the ashes of who i used to be. i ran my fingers through my dusty hair and decided i had to live.

that was a year ago and i still feel the ache in my smoke-filled chest, my irregular heartbeat a testament to the truth about how i am doing.

i haven’t slept with anyone else.
i’ve barely slept at all.
the deep cracks beneath my eyes, dark and sooty circles have turned me in to what i always feared he thought me to be: an ugly girl. undesirable. dirty.

“i miss you.”
i had said that, my first attempt at getting him to stay. those words hadn’t been true anymore until i knew he was leaving. until i knew we would never have the chance to be okay.

i’ve taken up smoking.
i chopped off my hair. i couldn’t stand the smell of burning.

i spend most nights trying not to think of him. or wondering if he’s thinking of me.
i’ve become that girl.

in my mind, it is still august eighteenth, 2004.
my calendar says otherwise: november twenty-third, 2005.
that’s the funny thing about time: it passes - usually when you aren’t paying attention. next thing you know, you’re looking in the mirror and your hair has grown longer and there are new creases around your mouth and eyes, valleys in your forehead dug in to the inches of tighter flesh.

in the mornings, i get out of bed. i brave the sun on my short drive to work. i grew so small in his shadow. things are harsher now.

i go to work.
i hide.
i read.
i don’t speak.
i spent months with him, not speaking. i got good at it.
headphones on. smile pretty. nod. nod.

i’ve forgotten the sound of my own voice. i lost it to the fire. too much ash. too much smoke.
the heat took everything.

he wouldn’t recognize me now and i’m mostly glad for that. what would we even say?

for a while i convinced myself it was okay to make the forty-five minute trip out of my way to his apartment. eventually a sign appeared on his door: Vacant.

once i even called his phone from a blocked number. my heart leapt to my throat when i heard what sounded like a female voice.
“i’m sorry, but the number you’ve dialed is no longer in service. please hang up and try your call again.”
click.

i took her advice.
thirty-seven times.
sometimes love makes you crazy.

that was three months ago.
i measure my life in days spent without him.
sometimes i count the hours.
i have thirty saved messages from him in my phone’s inbox, all different variations of “u busy??”
it was our signal.

april twelfth. april thirteenth. fourteenth.
sixteenth. seventeenth.
twenty-third.
thirtieth.
may first.
may fifteenth. sixteenth.
twentieth.

only two from june.
one from july.

august first. august second. third. fourth. fifth. sixth. seventh. eighth. ninth. tenth. eleventh. twelfth. thirteenth. fourteenth. fifteenth. sixteenth.

i thought things were getting better.

august eighteenth.

he came back and went away again.
things change.
time is a strange and foreign concept that i will never understand.

i remember the mountains. the snow. a ring pop on my finger and a fake proposal, but we both knew he meant it. his awful cooking. his scruffy, scratchy face. his secrets. his middle name. his deepest fears. the life we created, the things we dreamed.

i remember being so sick of him, so fed up - and now i’d give anything if his snoring were the thing keeping me awake at night.

i remember everything and am forced to live in that time and place because my brain and senses are filled with him. 
there’s just no room for anything else.

time has passed. i look nothing like i used to.
but i am stuck.

i rebuilt myself merely to continue existing for him, for this, and no force can stop me now.  

one: leaving

he took a drag of his cigarette.
the end burned red hot and i imagined myself engulfed in flame.
i smelled burning hair.
he looked at me through the smoke.

“you can go now.”
his voice startled me. i’ve been listening to it for six years and i can’t ever remember how it sounds.
we don’t speak much anymore.

we were holding hands, our fingers loosely intertwined, neither of us fully committing to the embrace. it had been an afterthought, an accident.
i had been on the edges of an orgasm and needed something to cling to.

he took another drag.
cleared his throat.
i closed my fingers over his knuckles and squeezed.

he sighed.

“don’t do that.”
“don’t do what?” i hid behind my hair. i was so convinced he thought i was ugly.
“act like this matters.”

i shut my eyes. squeezed them. pressed my lashes tight against my cheeks.
loosened my grip on his hand.
let go.

he was right.
this didn’t matter anymore.
we had moved so fast, i hadn’t even noticed when it stopped mattering.

he stopped calling.
i stopped staying the night.
we stopped talking altogether.
what used to be six hours spent on the phone in the early morning hours, hushed giggles and confessions of attraction and, eventually, love, became a two a.m. text message that didn’t even use full words:
“u busy?”
it was our signal.

our relationship, if you could even call it that, had become an obligation.

he was sick of making me tea, of comforting me on bad days (and the bad days were certainly becoming more frequent), of accompanying me to weddings and reunions. i had gained weight, severed ties with most of my makeup, and replaced my leather pants with long, flowing skirts and loose, gauzy tops that left almost everything to the imagination.

i was sick of his snoring, his cock in my mouth, the urgency and lack of passion in our lovemaking. he had grown hard and cold, careless; his eyes and most likely hands wandering when he thought i wasn’t looking.
or maybe he knew i was.

he rolled over, off the bed. started to put his clothes on.
i stayed where i was, tracing shapes on my stomach, my bare thighs. my own fingers against my skin were the most intimate i’d been with anyone in weeks.
months.

he looked at me, only for a moment, as if he were afraid that looking hard enough would cause him to remember why he loved me, and all of the time we’d spent throwing rocks at each other would be for nothing.

“i need you to go.”

i sat up. pressed my knees to my chest. looked right at his face.
i will not let you be a coward.
“i miss you.”
and it was the truth.

he closed his eyes for a long time then.
i had his entire monologue planned in my head. i knew what he would say, how he would wrap his arms around me and whisper in to my hair.
he opened his eyes.
i shifted my weight so i was a fraction of a centimeter closer to him.
he didn’t move toward me.
he turned away and walked into the bathroom. i heard the shower running.

he came back.

i stood, moved toward him.
we would take a shower together. everything would be better.
had i really thought that?
when i got close enough, he put his arms out and pressed his palms to my shoulders.

“there’s someone else.”

i imagined myself engulfed in flame. i closed my eyes. opened them. breathed. my chest hurt.
i smelled burning hair.
sweat pooled between my breasts.

“did you hear me?”
“no.”
i had. or maybe i hadn’t. to this day, i have never hoped so hard that i was mistaken.

he turned. opened the closet. handed me a bag.
“there’s someone else.”

i moved my mouth. nothing came out. we didn’t speak much anymore. maybe i had forgotten how.

“please go.”
his voice cracked and suddenly, he was human. i could save this. there were so many good pieces left to salvage, if only the flames didn’t get to us first.
my voice still wasn’t working, but he had weakened. i dug through the wreckage with my eyes shut tight.

“do you remember our weekend in the mountains?”
“don’t do this.”
“you wanted to show me the snow.” i had never even seen snow before. we made love in it.
“that was three years ago.”
“you loved me.”
“that was three years ago. longer, even.”

he turned. closed the bathroom door. i heard the click of the lock.
i smelled burning hair.

i put my clothes on and gathered my things. i left the house and convinced myself he would come after me.
maybe he didn’t think i was ugly after all.

i wondered who she was. i still don’t know.

i got in to my car and drove away.
the smoke was in my eyes. it filled my lungs. i coughed up tar. my tears carved lines in the layers of ash on my face.

i didn’t turn around.
he didn’t come after me.
my phone didn’t ring.

that was how i left.
that was how i burned to the ground.