denial and uglier aftermath

i drink to you, raising my glass and
choking down the things you left,
ignoring my gag reflex and waiting
on the buzzing in my head, white cotton
lullabies for the weak of heart.

it kills me that we are just a
collection of vignettes, that soon
i might see your blossom fingers
and bleeding sunset smile but
only as a memory gone static with neglect;

this summer, i became a rebel. a
martyr in a child’s game, a vagrant
with boxes of dead poetry to call
a home, and when i asked you to want me,

it’s only so you’d take the sanity and consciousness
with you when you left. i miss
the days when personality disorders
were not graceful.

do you even remember taking me to the moon?

you were so fucking tripped out on acid
and weed and love and other drugs
that you thought we were a portrait.
midnight blues and sober grays
breaking even for a story,

but every planet we landed on
was already dead.

and trust me, i know you wish life was
a one night stand, because you
can’t keep looking it in the eyes
when you roll out of bed in the morning
with a hangover and a little less time. i know
you dread it. i know you dread me

when you collapse onto me like
a pile of lovesick letters from
teenagers dreaming of leaving home,
like a pile of all the first stars
that appeared to our naked eyes throughout life
dragged down by the wishes they didn’t bring,

like an anchor labelled “never sink.”

god, i miss the emptiness of me before
you came in like the morning tide. before
i told you all my fears and you
asked me to wake up.

i would’ve loved you dry, and then some.
i would’ve been your most belligerent stargazer,
your most honest narcissist, i

could’ve rewritten you so well.