intoxicate

[inebrio]

How to Convince Yourself that You're Okay

It’s okay that you leave  toothpaste on the bathroom sink and skin on my pillow because it’s all the more of you that I can inhale, all the more to make our lungs  take the same breaths and I never told you this but late at night once you’ve already fallen asleep I slow my heart down so your heart will keep time with mine, like clockwork.

It’s okay that sometimes you forget to call because you’ll  always, always, always show up with some cheesy  99 cent valentines day card  that you probably bought from  the gas station on the corner, but I’ll swallow the I love yous like they’re cups of chamomile tea and you’ll watch me like I’m the most beautiful girl in  the entire world.

It’s okay that nowadays I only see your syrupy eyes when we’re having sex or when we accidentally bump into each other on the dairy aisle because romances are always better in your head, and fairy tales  are the stuff of tween poetry.

It’s okay that your goodbye  note was simply the spare key I had made exactly six months ago left on top of my collection of half-hearted drawings of you that you told me you’d had  framed, but here they are,  charcoal smudged with some  other girls fingertips and I wonder what you told her, if anything at all.

It’s been one year, two months, and ten days, but it’s okay. I’m okay.

[inebrio]

this is my 2am poem for you because when i see you all i can think about is how your eyes look in the rising sun and the time you wrote your name in braille on my fingertips so i’d always be able to feel you even when you are ten thousand miles away, gazing at stars while the daylight burns  my eyes.

[inebrio]

you must be a doctor or some fancy machine because i swear every time you look through me  instead of at me, and you see all my bruised bones and sickly veins and you notice the way my heart skips a beat when you come too close so my question to you is this:

when you look at me, do you see someone alive or do you see a walking skeleton.

[inebrio]

you can take a scalpel and dissect my poems like some 9th grade biology project, crack the bones and scoop out the marrow and sip it through a thin straw but  even after all that destruction, you still won’t understand why i left my goodbye note in the breadbox and kissed your forehead before turning the locks.

[inebrio]

does it ever feel odd watching people weave in and out of terminals brushing, bruising, biting back their tongues as girls apologize for their bones spilling out of carry on bags and boys eyeing them, hoping they'll get a chance to graze hip bones and tell them that they have matching scars and that they don't have to carry around all the bits of broken glass &  broken promises threatening to widen  their already flowing veins.

[inebrio]

you glance at me, eyes blazing and lips curved into letters i don't even recognize, begging to immortalize you between parchment pages, dried flowers, and  drops of my own blood.

[inebrio]

(i) don't trust sunrise, it's really just fool's gold in disguise.

(ii) tree tops are for kissing & mountain tops are  for running towards (not away from)

(iii) (breathe.)

(iv) tea always tastes best made in the sun.

[inebrio]

infection

there are twenty four ribs that supposedly protect your heart from damage, but i swear you know the precise location of each 4 cm gap, know how to nick the arteries and slip into my circulation, virtually undetected until the x-rays show you lighting up my body like a christmas tree.

[inebrio]

hand in hand, down the  oxycodone goes, our own twist on russian roulette. 

(you won't find  happy endings here)

[inebrio]

there is no love greater than a parents for their child.

[inebrio]

if you gave me  a map of the world, i could pinpoint the exact points where your back curves and your fingers rest

(even with my eyes closed)

[inebrio]

the last of the autumn leaves fell, and you took my innocence with them.

you raked and brushed my body like it was something rotten and ugly, something to be cleared away so you could see the dying grass beneath.

by the time you were through, i was more the color of  violets and oceans than autumn.

time passed, as time does,  and my skin was the marker; purple, blue, green, yellow, then finally ivory.

(i never thought i'd be so glad to see ivory again)

i planted daffodils and lilies in the same spot you lay my child bones to rest, and i  spend my days thinking about when the autumn leaves fell.