&

&

I hope she serves you dinner in plates made of paper, 

With a heart full of shit, and a smile full of pain.

I hope she opens every door when you crave solitude,

And turns on every light when all you want is darkness.

I hope she never makes your bed in the morning

And leaves without ever wanting to hear you say ‘stay’.

I hope she doesn’t care to know what makes you feel alive….

And that she spits on your manhood every time

She thinks of someone else while she comes.

I hope she only pleases you out of desperation

Because you are better, far better, than having nothing.

she made you feel like you almost found home.

almost.

I hope one day you can tell me that

you went through hell and I can tell you

how I did too.

&

&

..you shook the darkness out of me.

You made my writing turn to shit and in return, I fell in love. 

&

&

“It is November and she is here. Her eyes, old canvases of last night’s make-up, still look like they belong to me. Her hair smells like she just washed it…just for me. 

It is November and she is here, in my arms, tangled up in me, in my fucking web of bullshit. 
she is here, and I love her.

In a month, she will leave.” 

&

&

I swore I would stop writing about you. 

But a long time ago, I almost thought you were home the way you opened the door and let me in. 

I told myself I would stop writing about you.

But you became my home, and it was no longer a matter of an invite.

XXVII

I wonder if her scent lingers on your pillows.
I wonder if she knows I am imbedded in the threads,
That no detergent or alcohol could ever help you forget.
I wonder if she senses me when she feels you lift up your arm,
If she wonders about me as you gaze away for a second,
trying to mistake routine for comfort.

I wonder how offbeat your heart thumps next to hers…
I think about her grabbing onto your sheets,
As you make pleasure out of pity.
Her moans -louder and sweeter-
But mine are penetrated in the cracks of the walls…
In the layers between sheetrock and paint,
carpet and wood.

I wonder if she wakes up in the middle of the night
And sees you’ve let go her hand and drifted to the other side,
To daydream of waking up to me,
To fucking me in the morning after breakfast sandwiches in bed.

I wonder if she ever notices the shape of my hair on the headboard.
…..if she grips you hard enough that she reaches your soul.
I wonder if she knows I am in your thoughts as much as I am in hers.

Tell her I clung to your sheets every night,
that your bed is home to my darkness and not hers.
Tell her the scars on your heart have your last name next to my first.

I hope she knows I devoured the God in you and made a Goddess of myself.
I hope she knows she will wake up everyday and you will still wish it was me.

XXVI

She started getting tired, I saw her become unwelcoming to the nurture I tried to bring. A few months back, I would open the curtains in the morning to watch the light dance on her face and she’d curse at me and laugh, half angry but half in love. But the season had changed and in many ways, she had too. She stopped laughing, stopped waking up to sunlight and instead would get up to close the curtains without hinting anger, without even acknowledging that I stood right there. At that point, even her anger would have kept me sane.

She became cold – like someone took her blanket away in the middle of a winter night and left her stranded…almost like she had known warmth once but painfully had learned how to live without it. Her attention went to books, to shitty tv, to finding anything to do but me.

She didn’t rebel against my affection, it was more like she didn’t need it.

The more I reached to bring her back, the more I loved the idea of who she had been. The more I tried to talk, the more I became boring and annoying. My efforts became lost in the unraveling of love. When I stopped hugging her at night, I could hear her sigh – no longer of anger or pleasure but of liberation.

The woman I loved had slowly detached from me without warning, without telling me that her love was not unconditional, without explaining that sometimes the people you lose can never be found again. She forgot to tell me that once I lost her, I would never find the same woman again – in her or in anyone else.

My real life Eternal Sunshine Of A Spotless Mind.

XXV.

Sometimes you’re driving, and you can’t figure out how the road exists and how it is paved in a way that seems as if it was always there. You can’t figure out how they mapped out roads in the first place, how someone thought of every intersection, every exit, names, streets, avenues….you can’t figure out why distance even exists. But you’re driving and you cant wander off so you change the music station because some songs can’t put a smile on your face if you really don’t believe in them.

But it happens again….and here you are, having a conversation with yourself about the last time you saw that person. You start to think about how it could’ve easily been fixed had you taken the time to think about the logic of feelings as if love has anything to do with rationality. You remember when they used to adorn the passenger seat, excited to greet you, excited to do anything if it meant spending time with you. You remember driving with them during the holidays and watching the colorful lights reflect in their eyes. You remember how they touched your thigh when the light turned red, as if they wanted to keep your heart beating when the world seemed to suddenly pause.

And yet, the world in your daydream is much different than the one you are driving on. In your mind, they still love you…they still want to be in that car, driving aimlessly with you and music…they still want you to smile when a song comes on….in a different world, that person is still thinking of you and wondering where the fuck it went wrong.

But back you go to reality and in the distance, you can see your driveway is coming up. You have no idea how you made it home but there you are, home…or whatever it is that they call the place that one lives in.

You don’t turn off the car. You don’t turn off your lights. You just sit there in half darkness and think about the dumb shit that still lingers months later. You can’t help it but find it hilarious that others have touched that seat, the same old passenger seat that someone you once loved gave meaning to. You feel sick. You’re still confused on how routine makes you forget about how you got from point A to point B,C, or D. You’re still unclear of how love happens and how unfair it seems that one day, complication seems beautiful and challenging – a breathe of fresh air – and then a few months later, complication just kills everything without reason, without logic, without caring about anyone’s feelings, and without a single thread of love to try and put it back together.

you look up. you’re home, but you’re not exactly home.

XXIV.

“He loved me but sometimes people like him confuse comfort with such things. He loved me like I was a childhood sweater – something, or rather someone, that brought him temporary happiness – someone you can hold, smell, and put down again because though it holds magic, it no longer fits you. He loved me because I was a reminder of who he was deep down inside, loved me like I was a symbol for what he needed but not exactly what he wanted.

When he touched me, he took every shortcut he could, never taking the time to let his fingertips feel what made the destination so beautiful. He touched me as if my body was Sunday and he was an atheist.

Sometimes even the thought of him felt empty. Like he was someone, who in my mind I had known but over time, forgotten…someone I had created all my memories with alone. With him, there were never any surprises, never a random gesture that made me feel less of a routine.

He loved me as a whole, as a being, as a woman he had just grown to be comfortable with but I was never the one that made him lose his mind.

I was predictable. 
I was the bread at the dinner table he took a bite of but never finished entirely. 
I was the book he got bored of reading 36 pages before the ending.

he loved me but he had no idea what it was that he loved. 
he loved me but he had no idea who I was.”

XXX.

Summer isn’t always sweet to me as it is to everyone else. It reminds me of the things I once lost…of the lust it brings to those that claim they love you. It brings me back to sleeping in a hot room with you..to making love to you in the shower and once again before I put my clothes on. It brings me back to the nights we parked in the darkness and I moaned into the still air.

Summer smells like flowers but all flowers die. It feels like freedom but it traps you once Fall’s night breeze arrives. Summer should make me forget. It should make me release my love relentlessly on all those men that find me attractive. Summer is my winter; I feel cold and alone.

Fuck this season for reminding me of you. For opening the wound that I keep closing. For reminding me that I’ll never feel your skin sweating against mine, and that in a weird sick way, I liked it. Fuck Summer for luring you away, for taking your attention and dividing it so beautifully for another woman.

Fuck Summer for reminding me that I constantly love people who are not ready to love me back…for feeling like I’ve been loved, only half-way every time.

Papi.

My father taught me how to swim, how to ride a bike, and how to keep quiet. He’d bribe me to mow the lawn, to rake the leaves, to shovel snow, and to pick the dandelions when age began to slow him down. He taught me how to open a beer before the age of 14. He threw out my make-up at that age as well, taking a kitchen rag and scrubbing the residue of my blush until my cheeks naturally turned red.

At 16, he opened the door, saw me crying over a boy, and closed it. At 19, he told me I needed to go back to college. At 21, he found my heels thrown on the lawn from a night of drinking that I do not remember.

But at 23, I saw my father cry for the first time. I held his head while his tears hit my shoulder and while his pain was also mine, I wish I could have done something more. He sobbed like a kid, and in return, I cried at the thought of finally bonding with him. He cried at dinner that night as well, with nothing but a fucking beer and a daughter who had no plan on how to fix what grief had done to him.

I wish that somehow in the rubble of all the things he had taught me, he would’ve taken the time to teach me how to console the person you love the most when their whole world is falling apart.

I wish I could have fixed it. I wish he could have known how to teach me, but he didn’t. My dad knew logic, not emotions. He knew how to fix a broken chair, but not a broken heart.

He knew so much and yet so little