A Lapse in Time

I hope you never introduce me to another person.

I hope I never escort you anywhere, 

that I’m never your date or your coroner

I’m no Virgil.

I hope you forget about my crooked toes

and the crooked way I stand.

I hope I can forget the way your face always looked like Summer.

I hope you never learn how to grow bell peppers, 

because they’re my favorite.

I hope I never roll onto you in the middle of a nightmare, 

but I hope you have nightmares every time you close your eyes,

and that you wake up right before they turn pleasant.

I hope your days are long and your nights are reminders of how good I was at brushing my teeth.

I hope your bank accounts are all overdrawn, usually.

I hope that if you call a girl ‘baby’ in a bar, she gives you an unnecessarily lengthy feminist lecture, reminding you that you’ve grown so out of touch with your own body- you’re a woman with a hot air balloon for a mind. 

I hope you never get a good view of the mountains, 

that there is always construction outside of your window.

I hope your dog runs away and is adopted by a lovely family, consisting only of content adults with master’s degrees.

I hope you try to write a song but can’t remember how to shape your fingers around the neck of your tiny guitar.

I hope you are far, far away from my front porch.

I hope you gain twelve pounds, and they all show up when you try to button your favorite jeans. 

I hope you know what it means to reach for your jar of fancy honey and watch it slip out of your hands and onto the tile floor-

what’s more, 

I hope you learn how awful it is to try to clean honey with a mop.

I hope you lose your wallet full of money at a bus stop,

because your car had a factory recall and you won’t have it for a couple days…

I hope your job pays ten percent less next year, because they had to cut back.

I hope you step on a tack. 

One that I left on my desk when I walked out of your life.

I hope you miss me tonight.

I didn’t realize how beautiful you are

until I saw your face on someone else

And don’t forget

you are the heartbeat that I never meant

You are the day after I killed myself,

when I blinked in the morning sun

so fucking confused.

I’m writing you a poem. 

The kind that never ends.

First line: your laugh, 

second, third, fourth

your hands, your eyes, your black

shaggy

hair.

Part your mouth like a promise

kiss me like a question

let me wrap you in something holy

that I made with my

hands, eyes, brown

shaggy

hair. 

I don’t care if there are stains on the walls 

of the motel room.

I don’t care if you can see her eyes through my tears.

I know she stapled your gaze to her headboard for years-

If I could fit the reasons on my palm, 

I would utkatasana

offer you all of them, while putting myself down

it’s just what I do somehow. 

Smile when I don’t mean it. 

But this poem won’t write itself

and you look like you need it.

Fingertips pumping 

around my paper mache heart

yes I made this for you

yes if you drop it I’ll fix it

yes I wrote down the pattern I used

I can be recreated

if you don’t want it, throw it away-

don’t return it all faded

and smelling

like your best friend’s perfume. 

I’ll paint your bedroom with crying sighs and unanswered questions. 

I will trail your chair rail with dial tones. 

Tonight, I don’t want to be alone. 

The first time I washed the sheets after you left, 

I may as well have bleached the inside of my mouth

I didn’t want to rinse you out. 

The first time I headed south, I kept thinking

loving you is a hot shower on a cold day.

When I’m in it I swear my corneas tint rose.

But as soon as I drive away

as soon as I step out

it’s hard not to forget what we are about. 

It’s hard to remember the seconds between our breath

we are not in sync

yet

When you broke up with me,

I wanted to hack into your facebook and delete every last one of your friends. And then post on your wall, which no one would see, and say ‘now you have no friends.’

It’s like Momma always said:
“Never take shots of red stag with a cute girl in a parking lot.”
Actually, she never said that.
But it would have been a lot more relevant than “Don’t take candy from strangers.”

I hit you where it hurt. 

I saw the raised marks on your shoulders and wanted to make you feel what I felt, 

so that’s where I struck. 

I wanted to dig my fingernails into your scar tissue and pull out the first time I told you I loved you, hold in in my hands, and crush it. 

And I didn’t want to cry. 

I wanted to love you and leave you so that I

could feel like some of the choice was mine. 

Because truth is- 

if you asked me, I’d wait. 

I’d wait until you stopped loving her, 

until you thought I might fit into your ventricles the way you’ve been fitting into mine

since the first night I met you. 

But I don’t belong there. 

I’m the circle to the square of your openings, 

we both held our breath and tried to squeeze me in-

but all I did was break some of you in the process.

Also: get your heart off of my elbow.