01/20 Library

I would love to be alone,

would love to be alone

in the library

and not lost in the library,

alone in the library 

with Foucault

and Croissant

and Breakfast tea

and Night

in the library alone willing myself

to read more and think less

of my romantic aloneness 

And I would be alone,

loving being alone,

and not lonely,

and not lost but alone

not staring into the eyelids

of the friends I haven't made

as they walk the other way,

not lost in the library,

but alone when I could be anything else

and not lonely for lack of options

and not lost for lack of knowledge

of a space and a community

that have no need for me

and I could concentrate on the book

I was reading

if I could find my place

or the place where I was sitting

We're too young-
it's done,
you said,
like to podium in competition-
break my heart in five words or less,
fourth and fifth put you through
two and three made you best- you won,
said young, done.

I felt so Eve,
felt ripped into chest like rib retrieved,
I felt you took all of me.

Love- you didn't make it easy.

I learned to carry the weight
of restrained "hello"s in the bags under my eyes,
until my head was too heavy to look at you-
learned to forget how your sandpaper thighs made me smooth,

I wrote you a two word love letter

I don't know when you met her-
Kristen, but it only took a month for y'all to get together
and I wondered how you could sleep at night,
Like if you're gonna find yourself some new woman
at least have the decency to pick one that isn't my type-
I wasn't sure who to be more jealous of.

Love- you didn't make it easy.

I really came to resent you
for a two word love letter I never sent you,
for not one last chance,
"you loved" -- past tense-
I scissor-scribed that into my hip
made dialogue with my feet, thighs, and wrist
sometimes we're too fragile to love
and too alive to resist-

Don't tell me I'm too young,
I'm the oldest I've ever been.

Hey-
I can hear your name now
without the rattle of pulse against skin,
I can listen to The Shins again,
I can look at you, not entirely out
but not in, love-

Don't tell me I'm too young,
I'm the oldest I've ever been.

I never stopped calling you friend.

I am lying

I am lying
covered in the dust
our past makes
to remind us of how far
we've not gone,
asking you to [lay] [lie]
with me with the
strength left in my brow-

I'll be then what I was now,
longing for the future
and thinking of forgiveness.

you cannot convince me that people are unlike a drug.

XIII

It's

the

semblance

of

belonging-

that 

gets

me

every

time.

Semester's Alarms

2:50 am
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1:10 pm
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Monday
4:46 pm
4:47 pm
4:47 pm
4:47 pm
4:47 pm
6:58 pm
11:00 pm

I should have been more like Amanda Palmer.