Seeing my name written in another’s hand

is a kind of strange intimacy

I don’t think I’ll ever fully understand

I want to be loved I want to comprehend

How I felt from the beginning all the way to the end

Opened my chest like the cardboard box I keep

In my parents house on the top shelf I can't reach

Books, pictures, notes, folded memories

Black t-shirt on his white neck 

Reminds me of you 

And all the love I’m searching for

I could turn blue

Holding my breath

Standing at the door

Every gain I lose a little more

What remains?

What to live for?

I always thought you made my world divide

Parallel universes multiply

I lost you in one in all of them

I was too good at hiding

My fatal flaw is never deciding

What I should do

With all the love I have to give

I could turn blue

Standing here

Fingers like a sieve

Every day I have to live

What can I say?

What can you forgive?

tonight I remember listening to your heart as you fell asleep

you the first person I ever saw jolt into it

the intimacy of that transition

mine and new.

I poke myself until I cry,

over and over,

and yet there is so much

to cry about.

I want to hold things that you have held. I want to touch your letters on the page. I want to feel the depth of the love and the pain, something that was everything our relationship represented, that drove me to eventual exhaustion, that made me have to turn away. Am I stronger now? Am I far enough away to bear it? You would have killed me I think had I let you, but I could not let you.