i.

My adolescent heart echoes
a conga drum;
I cry soapy tears, sinking
to the dusty kitchen floor, scrubbing
a fork. 

how are you? 

fine.  

I watch your eyes on the train
in an attempt to read you; 
it is impossible, as always. 
You are incomprehensible
like a furniture manual 

and I am asking you

to shatter me again.

ii.

Overnight

listening to the rain looped with white noise.
You don't know where the planes are from
but they're going to LaGuardia-
you pulled away from me in your sleep.

Reluctantly

I leave with the droplets; a good sport.
The barista at your coffeeshop asks
do you have a punch card?
I am only a visitor.

Paralyzed

standing on the subway platform at 8am
sober and afraid all you can give me are bruises.
Never knowing what I am, except
that it is never enough.

iii.

I wear the clothes you held me in*

*the clothes you removed like a shell
wolfishly, searching for remnants of yourself
in the hollows of my face, between my ribs,

behind wisps of hair at the nape of my neck

I wear them until they are stained with
longing.

You inhaled my soul in one gulp
and now it lives inside of you
inside of the voice you cannot hear.

Every attempt to retrieve myself is
futile.

iv.

You’ve made a habit of creeping, creeping
like a snake behind my eye when I begin to forget
the red lightbulb in your desk lamp caressing
our faces in my memory as my thumb grazed
the indent in your chin like a puppy tongue.

I wanted to swallow the room whole
socks on the floor, bookshelf overflowing
to preserve us in this state like raspberry compote
sickly sweet, saturated with devotion, fuming
eighteen and twenty, caffeinated yet numb
to our parents and politicians and professors.

In unexpected moments my heart finds itself
tangled up with you, always throbbing
outside of Sunshine movie theatre and
in the cereal aisle where you mocked
my affinity for Weetabix.

I’ve realized
finally
that to feel

normal
is to feel

constantly

unwhole.

It was unfathomable to me that one person
could define a place, but these days, running
on the Promenade, I recall we never went
after it snowed. 
Hurry home, honeycomb.
Lately you are the one leaving me in places
coining the word ‘seeya’ and pressing
half an apology on my bottom lip
goodbye.