Your fingers found their way across my spine like raindrops on windshields
Without regret and without belonging there. They only stayed for a little while.

But you're still lingering in the living room
Where you drummed your fingers on his table because something I said was funny
He sets his coffee on that table every morning
It's the table that I've set his coffee on each morning for longer than I remember
He doesn't think I'm funny

My body doesn't remember what it feels like to be anything but his
And I hope it felt like being yours
Being beautiful, being touched, being held
Held is an action, it's a feeling when it's you
I feel held

And are you as tangled up in my feelings as I am?
Because they're sticking to me with static resiliency
They don't want to go
I don't want you to go

And now your teeth are on the tops of my ears
Nipping at my secrets
Because you can't kiss my scars

And your love has found its way into my life like rainclouds on summer skies
With purpose and with hesitancy. Where it will only stay for a little while

We curled up in the cheap glow of cheaper Christmas lights and swallowed romance down like English breakfast tea (your favorite), taking in gulps of candy colored warmth
That's how we kept this thing alive, if you're wondering
We wrapped ourselves in winter scarves on winter nights so that we could see the snow swirling, the Earth breathing, and not each other
You looked at the outline of my shoulders while I looked at the sky, and I wondered whether snowflakes jump from a home they don't feel like they belong in anymore
I'm floating through this dark expanse at the mercy of gravity, I'm pale, I'm different, I'm a lot of things
And when the holiday displays are tucked away and you're finally looking at me
Shedding my layers and naked without the blues and greens of tiny plastic lights
I'll hit the pavement and disappear
They'll be looking at the outline of you and you'll be looking at me
As pale and pretty as I ever was in the flurry of my melting winter melancholy
And in the blizzard of the way you can't quite explain to people what was beautiful about me
You'll think back to Christmas lights and tea
And you'll wonder why it couldn't keep me alive

Breathe in, don't forget to breathe out
Even the streetlights are tired tonight
We're wrapped up and naked in your sheets
And I can't untangle my legs from the soft cocoon of your ivory melancholy

Your breaths are cold, and I wonder how that's possible
Maybe it's cold inside your ventricles tonight
Maybe that's why I've been feeling so numb
Maybe not

Neither of us are speaking, only you're breathing
And I wonder where the thud of my heartbeat ran away to
I think you wonder too, but neither of us want to break the silence
So much is already broken

Breathe in, and we're both picking up on subtle notes of apathy and dissonance
It's a floral blend of apologies that neither of us owe each other
Breathe out and this whole room's on fire again

I'm too tired for this, and I'm too fragile for you
The moonlight is all caught up in your hair
There's a world out there dancing across your answering machine

I wonder who thinks of you when I can't anymore
I wonder who thinks of me
Breathe out and this will all be gone

Pale blue eyes and to do lists on my arms
I guess I'm not everyone's type

Crossing off miseries like milk and eggs
I'm wrapped in another stranger's sheets (again)
I take it back
I'm everyone's type but yours

Poems on crumpled napkins
Red lipstick and tipsy confessions
I guess I could if I wanted
If it would make you love me

As if anything could make you love me

Just bad music that everyone else grew out of
And cold hands from only being held in cold hearts
Why does loving myself feel like an affair?

Cinnamon tea and Splenda
I'm a certain flavor of je ne sais quoi
Good for winter nights, but not my favorite

Apparently not yours either

Your hands are on her waist now and my head burns
Oh, these steady, even, licking flames that tickle the linings of my heart
The sky's gone black and blue tonight

And I think it's a little bit sad, isn't it
That the way your fingers kiss her skin sets me off
Like an alarm that was never unset
Even after our funeral came and came again,
And we all put away our condolences on a shelf that only I'm still keeping clean
And empty

When your mouth is on the lines of her neck, the curves of her mouth, on her
My heart implodes
An inky, sticky stain that drips down into my bone marrow like rain, a deep and apathetic life support
A midnight blue promise that streams into the bullet-holes in my shoes
Promise me that this is not what morning looks like

And I hope this is how you feel
Battered.

When I find hands to fall on me too, and I really hope someday that I might,
I hope your blood gets viscous and gets caught under the edges of your skin
Just black little blurs peeking out unabashedly from behind your paper-thin touch

We all fall down, but I collapse quietly
Beaten to a small, smiling carcass that you can put away on a shelf
Discard me until the Spring thrashes against the frozen ground and strangles our winter
I'll be here, despondent

Her skin is warm and clean, I suppose
Yours is not. The ash will find you too
And I'll be here.

Search all you want through the strands of her hair
You'll never find it
And morning may never find me again

We both can only love me drunk

There are hands all over me, searching for something I'm not sure I have to give, something that's no longer mine to give if it's even there at all
There are these scathing, tracing, imploring hands all the ******* time, and their grasp tightens when I pull away, whispering "what's the rush, sweetheart"
And then kissing my shoulders, my neck, my hands.
God, these hands. This burning.
There are hands that are constantly touching me where I can't even touch myself, where I can't even stand to look.
Don't touch my stomach. Don't touch my thighs. Don't touch my scars.
Just don't. *******. touch. me.
Please, just... please?
They're in my hair now, on my waist then
around my neck
And still they're always wanting more. What part wasn't enough, I wonder.
Or maybe it was just all of me. But I'm so soft.
I'm so beautiful.
I'm so ****.
So I go back then, shameful, shameless, so **** ashamed, back into the dark, caressing cold
To spend another night shaking in another pair of hands to hold me
Please, just.... please
Why can't anyone please just hold me?