Today I held two bananas
over each of my shoulders
and presented myself
as a quotation.
I’ve been a cry for help mostly,
sometimes a joke.
When you stirred from
your sleep you wanted breakfast
but it was too late.
I had become the urgent
prayers of a desperate pilot.
I had become a marriage
proposal blown by a strong arctic
wind across Lake Ontario.
I. I wondered why I was so
goddamn proud to be an
atheist in middle school cause
right now I wish I believed in
anything.II. I like the byzantine icons and
every painting of jesus being
crucified and how the virgin mary was
only painted with the finest paints but
I can’t believe it.III. you can’t tell me anything is more
beautiful than a romanesque church at
daytime with the sun glowing through old
stain glass windows, that looks like
faith to me.IV. if I believed I’d probably just
resent god for killing my grandmothers and
still wonder why my aunt thinks they
went to hell and how can I believe in
god today when she made it out of the
holocaust but a minor heart attack
stopped her heart forever?V. I’m not proud to see no
higher power anymore and I’ll still find
the beauty in church objects but I know I
can’t be saved and maybe I don’t want
to believe anything is greater than
me.
Two months into our relationship you once asked me how much I loved you and I just said “From here”. You didn’t get it and you got mad and thought I was playing around.
Breaking up after almost two years together, I sent you a message 6 months later saying “To Here”.
You still didn’t get it.
I. fuck me until you
love me, until you really
do love me, okay?II. kiss me until you
miss me as much as I do
I always miss youIII. touch me until I
feel like a goddess in a
world full of mortalsIX. kiss my nose and tell
me I look cute with lipstick
smeared across my faceXI. when you say you love
me I want you to mean it
I can’t see the starsXII. touch my fat thighs and
imagine the clouds they are
from another god.
Love isn’t about
fucking each other
at any opportunity.It also isn’t about
how many months
or years
that you’ve been together.To me,
love is about
being able to see light
inside of the person
who knows nothing
but darkness.
Find what you love and let it kill you.
Let it drain you of your all.
Let it cling onto your back and weigh you down into eventual nothingness.
Let it kill you and let it devour your remains.
For all things will kill you, both slowly and fastly, but it’s much better to be killed by a lover."
I have to give you. I am busy still living in the city where we
fell in love. I’ve papered the walls of my bedroom with maps
of the places that leave your name on my tongue. This is not
the best way to forget you but it’s better than drinking alone.
This black line snakes across the river from my apartment to
your dirty kitchen. I miss the way your breath felt on my neck.
I can’t say I miss you without flinching
The blue dots are the bar stools where we drank whiskey as
I apologized for being a world-class bitch. The green star is
the diner where we got coffee the first morning we woke up
together. I want a tattoo of the first morning we woke up to-
gether. I want the memory to hurt.
There is a burn mark at the center of the Hawthorne Bridge
and you know why. We don’t need to talk about it. I am so
sorry. I am the wrong kind of strong.
I am mad at you because these days being mad at you is as
close as I get to kissing your forehead. It keeps raining but
nothing looks cleaner. Everything in Portland is a postcard
saying “Wish You Were Here!” So many of the books in my
bedroom used to be your books."
i listen to cee-lo and drink hot chicken soup
until i feel like throwing up
because if at least one is good for the soul
maybe i’ll feel better in the morningi dish out advice like i throw around insults
like bits of confetti made out of ripped up paper
and zero fucks left to give
i pile up books issued from the library
until they’re two weeks overdue
and unopened
like the last two oreos in the packet
that go soft because no one bothers to close the tin
i don’t know how to love
but expect love in return for what?
the absence of physical contact
the complaining that kind of resembles the moan
of a dusty old vacuum cleaner
that should have been taken to the dump
a few years agoi’m like a pair of old man slippers
that no one would ever buy second-hand
because they smell like death and sadness
or something in betweeni act like i’m better than everyone else
but that’s only so that i don’t drown
in a thousand feet deep pool of self-loathing
i am so terribly sorry that you eat
sadness for breakfast every morningearthworms come out when it rains so
they don’t drown and then end up
getting stepped on anywayi feel like shit when it rains and i
remember this so i always tip toe
down the street you broke my heart
oni think the time spent with you was the
happiest of my life but i’m too sad to
tell you that
