Patches

—

Some nights I have to slip Ativan in my tea,
just so I can sleep as soundly as I did in your arms—
Because the Chamomile alone is not enough
to burn the taste of your skin from my taste-buds.
Because I can still recite all of the dates of all the days I wanted to slip into the skins
of the names you muttered in your sleep.

This is the first time I am being honest with myself—
The words I speak are no longer borrowed and bent to look like my own.

When I was with you the words came like waves
crashing against the inside of my skin—
until they were leaking out through my pores,
and I was sweating out, nervous paragraphs
in puddles all over the floor—
But you still didn’t understand.

Let’s try this again,
You were the oath I made in the light of a smoker’s kiss.
You were the first sip of red wine.
You were the first hit—
Too harsh and far too real.
I could feel your realness in my marrow—
reminding me that we could die tomorrow or next Tuesday,
So we better make these moments count.
You were the first lazy light of spring—
springing to life lazy bodies.
You were last second I thought I could hold my breath—
and you were the first breath I took after.
You were the cigarettes at 11 and 3 am.
And I’ve been sticking on strangers like nicotine patches—
But none of them have kept me from craving you.

You see, 
I wanted to hang you in a museum,
but you shoved me in your back pocket—
Like an old recite or a bad peach
shoved in the back corner of the back row—
too bruised from too many rough hands,
always grabbed at—
But never good enough to take home.

In the same way I was never any good at writing love poems,
I was never any good at loving the right things.
Like a kid with 26 cavities loves candy—
Each time you bit my neck I fell in love with the bruises.
Some nights I still press my fingertips hard against my collarbones
trying to re-create your violet imprints.

Some nights—
The only things that get me to the morning are cheap whiskey and bad poetry.
But not even all the slant rhymes and slurred words can keep me from writing of you.

These days—
I’ve been writing so much they’ve been calling me unstable—
like a half-broken table.
And I keep trying to shove things under the too-short leg,
But nothing seems to hold me up—
like the way you said my name.

I still shake each time someone tries to lean on me
I used to be someone that people could lean on.

And these people,
they keep telling me to just forget. 
To stomp out your memory like a dying flame.
But it’s the beginning of November
And I want to remember,
so I just keep blowing on the embers,
because some days, it’s the memories of you that are the only things that still keep me warm. 

We need our memories like we need our bones. 
Let them build up under your skin until they form zits on the tip of your nose.
Poke at them until they burst, for everyone to see.
Even though your mother told you to use lots of cover up and let them be—
I am so fucking tired
of trying to cover up the things that I cannot control.

So call me crazy one last time.
Because I do not want to burn like the sun, darling.
I want to glow like the moon.
Until I can hear all the howls,
of all the lonely people, 
fill the air.
So I would know I am not alone.