tiny wreckage.

i had first read his poem in a cold, dank room in the middle of a miserable building.  cockroaches scuttled across the floor with a sense of urgency but no real direction, and i empathized with them.  the air in the room was musty and stale, reminiscent of ancient mothballs and attic-bound stuffed animals.  but despite all of this, i had fallen in love in that room and so i recall it fondly.

the words have stayed with me over the last few years, even though The Author has long left my life.  they have sat with me, a strange call to a person i once was but can barely remember - the kind of person that someone writes poetry about.  good poetry.  hemmingway-esque poetry that tugs at sadness and nostalgia and deep, unencumbered love all at once.  i was the kind of person that inspired poetry.  i was that, once.

too much time has passed since i was that person.  bit by bit, that persona dissolved, flaking away slowly until i became a peculiar version of myself.  plump with years of experience - fat with the weight of the world, but emaciated emotionally - starving for the affection i once elicited from an inspired young writer, The Author i once knew.

i often consider the path i've made with my haphazard footsteps, trailing and chasing the wrong kinds of friends, men, dreams.  it's hard to say where i've even been, my memory a fog of the last few years since that poem. we don't talk anymore.  we don't write.  we don't acknowledge the existence of the other any longer, not since the end that we whispered that day.

for the first time, i remember the poem, and think less of The Author.  i think more of this newfound friend i'd wronged.  our blossoming friendship, crippled too soon by a moment of weakness, like a flower trodden by the boots of a careless gardener.  i, unhappy with the hollowness growing inside me, and he, denying the irreversible weathering of a relationship taken one step too far.  the circumstances gave pause, as is customarily the "right thing to do" in these instances, but it feels so desperately wrong that it consumes me, and so here i write.

my overreaction - the consequence of a softened heart, touched with a level of infatuation not seen since The Author.  inexplicable and all-too-soon, i focused on filling my emptiness with his warmth.  the glow of alcohol - chugged, not sipped - illuminated each of us across six inches of tense, magnetic space.  eyes perpetually fixed on his single raised brow, i let myself become enamored by an idea i'd thought i'd never again bring to life.  i silenced his mouth with my own and ruined it all.

now my mind travels to the poem, the tiny wreckage of our friendship sinking to the base of my brain.  and i want to resurface, greedily gulp in the fresh air of a new start, to begin again. the girl i once was claws at my ribcage, rattling from within my chest, asking me to try again.  but she is vain with the hope of a love that can never take shape, and my fear is what keeps me drowning in the loss - the loss of potential love, wrought with a possibility that i can no longer have.

i vow to not let more years pass, as the-girl-i-no-longer-am fights to be heard.  i wrap my fingers around the bit of promise i saw only weeks ago, forget The Author who spoke the words i call by heart, and free my old self.  to be the person living a hemmingway-esque dream.  the person who inspires again. who remembers the accidental arch of an eyebrow as the most beautiful thing.  the person who finds love in the most unlikely places.

sewn.

I tried to sew us together
with pillow talk and Tuesday date nights –

a twine, twisting around our half-empty hearts
like a boa strangling its prey.

It began with a sidelong glance,
a quick white lie settling on the edge of my tongue,

and you, wrapped in the enigmatic smile
she wore that day in the office.

You tried to glue us together
with our ancient conversations –

adhering us weakly to long-broken promises
that we strived to forget.

It was clear from the repeated arguments
about your ugly comforter,
too small, too patched, too thin,

how much I'd grown to hate your love.

Together we chipped away
at the foundation laid years ago,

when I confessed "I love you!"
that hot, windy night in Aruba.

I could see it: the look of terror

when you lied and said you love me too -
a look you didn’t think I saw then,
one you still sometimes wear.

And I know the days we live
are drifting us farther apart –

wedging themselves in the cracks
we’ve made with each biting word.

It tightens, the fraying tether that binds us,
as we stretch further and further,
and although we know it will someday break,

we hold on to each other for now.

silk.

the way that his mouth
twisted against hers

told her that he wanted to be
anywhere but in the moment.

yet his body
moved into hers
flawlessly,
as if it had always been there

as if they were seeing each other
for the millionth time,

and he laughed, realizing
the ridiculousness of it all.

she looked at him as though
he was the most lovely thing she’d ever seen.

a thousand times
she told herself that
she was not bad,

but she was walking a line
and toeing it
less and less carefully.

selfishness flooded though her,
kicking his reservations
to the floor,
stomping on the respect
that grounded him
from touching her.

and they realized that
there’s always another line somewhere.

when he finally spoke,
he spoke as if
he was talking
through a tin can
and string,

grainy and mottled
strained with brooding guilt.

he mumbled,
“can’t... wrong...if only”

but his words were
underwater echoes
vibrating against her brain

she wanted to scream
but instead she said nothing.

she breathed
hot air
against his neck,
rejecting his requests of pause.

she touched him,
her fingers grazed his side
grazed the flat, smooth
skin of his stomach,
creating static movements
under the covers.

a fog of memory.  unreal.
unreachable.  

yet, there he was,

more clear, more real than anyone she’d ever known.

all the “no’s” disappeared
into the sheets,
quietly overturned
by their undeniable 
attraction.
he unraveled her -

carefully stripping
off the layers
that made her feel
like she was good.
raw and uncertain,
she sank into his hands.

for the moment, when
his mouth twisted against hers, she pretended it moved like silk.

she pretended they
were threaded together

by something
bigger
than they really were. 

like all the bad
in the world was good.

good enough
to keep moving
against each other
in that hungry way:

silk. 

soft, delicate,
fine enough to tear -- and so they did. 

hunger.

it took a while, she realized,
for her to see his mouth
in the way it really is -
in the way its softness is illuminated
when it's busy with sound.
but she noticed instantly how
its corners tugged upward in an
ever-present smile, and in a
wild instant knew her hunger for it.