I am cut open for you.

I am empty.

Pulled apart.

You are everything that hurts.

And to write a long sentence for you makes me gasp for air.

Only fragments until I can understand where your love went.

I'll let you come back if you don't take too long.

We can pretend I am all better.

We can stuff me with cantaloupes and mangoes.
We can fill me with discarded National Geographic magazines.
We can animate me with strong coffee and discarded teabag strings.

Move me anyway you'd like.

My smile sewn with good intentions and promises that you won't ever leave me.

And I'll cut my eyelids away, so I will never blink. And this dream will never end.

Lets talk the way we talked before you hated me.
Before I lied to you.
Before I broke your heart.

And you sit looking at me with a closed mouth.

My dog buries her head underneath my thigh. She doesn't know I'm a bad person.

But I was good once or twice before.

When you knew, me when I wore sandals and complained about baroque art. I didn't know what baroque are was, but you liked the way the word fell out of my mouth. And I did anything to please you.

Before you loved me, I loved you.

And we would listen to violin solos and you would hold me while I cried.

You would press your hand on my shoulder and trace letters and ask me what you had written, I would answer, "You wrote the letters, L-O-V-E." even when you didn't.

You wanted to be the first to leave. 

I carried our love with a clenched jaw. 

Every tear begging you to stay. 

I've forgotten how to breathe.

Our always has gone away.

There are no harsh words to send your way. 

Because I love you. 

I will love you always. 

You held my souls attention with every beautiful word you ever spoke to me. 

You engraved my heart with every letter you ever wrote me. 

And in my clumsy way I became yours.

A story I can't tell. A word I can't spell. A memory I can't recall. 

My ache.

My other, my unknowable, so lovable. 

My always. 

Begging

We had a conversation about your birthday. We made plans to have dinner this weekend. We said goodbye.

I never ask what I want to ask. 

I never say what I want to say. 

My fingers slide from one letter on the keyboard to the next. Tears fall on my chest. And I'm wondering if my music is too loud. I'm wondering if the neighbors will complain.

I want to ask you if you could ever love me. 

Could you ever love me? Even for a little while. Just for a few days or weeks. Do you think you could love me?

and then, when you don't answer right away, I want to beg.

Please love me. Not for very long or very much. I just need you to love me for a little while. 

But I won't ask. I won't beg. We'll have casual conversations and I'll be distant while you're distracted.

I held my breath for you and waited. 

But you were nowhere to be found. So I listened to songs men wrote, that women sang, about broken hearts. And I cried, because I couldn't sing-along. 

I watched a movie and learned all the lines, I'll recite them to you, when you ask me to come back. 

There was an article in Time magazine that said someone could die from not breathing.

I listened to Amazing Grace and remembered when you saved me. 

I was so grateful and you promised to stay. So, I wrote your name on my thighs. 

It was my mistake to believe you. 

No one really belongs to anyone, especially if they belong to someone else. 

Again

She asks me my name.

I tell her.

We sit quietly and watch Little House on the Prairie.

I warm up a t.v. dinner for her. She asks if I've eaten already. I tell her yes. She says that she is warm, I offer to turn on the air conditioner, she declines. She asks my name again.

The episode ends and another one begins.

I turn on the air conditioner. She says it's too loud. I turn the air conditioner off.

She asks for dinner.

I sit quietly and think about tomorrow. She says she is tired and goes to bed.

I sit on the couch a wonder where everyone went.

And then I remember that I am alone. I say my name in an empty room.

Brown skin, warm to the touch, 

soft thighs, 

my thighs.

Excitable words are all I have of you. 

Heated and devouring. 

Control and controlled, 

the binary so close to synthesis the harder I loved you. 

More you begged. 

Pleaded. 

Past tense is all I have left of you. 

Pulling turned into aching, 

Begging turned into resentment. 

Your more turned into less. 

You have become nothing, and that's all I have left of you.