Love is like holding your head to an electric fan, real close.

“To survive heartache you’ve got to stay busy”

Well, I’m not busy enough
to dismantle all the sticky
stuff that clings and makes me weak

I met you

in our orthodontist’s waiting
room. A pocket of pain throbbed
against my cheek but I managed
a squeak, a hi, and you spoke
in vowels as your train
track teeth twisted tight.

Untangle the reel and yank it forward

YOUR SECRETS MAKE ME SICK
you screamed, the last time, and
I stood there, bloodless, blank
dry heaving into the rain
purging pictures of:

your damp curls – a liquid gold
cascading over snowy
pillow mounds and I lurch
forward a year, the summer
we went to Greece, toes touching
toes tickling turquoise sea

at night we moved like olive oil
through boozy tourist crowds in
a crisp red glow we flowed
to our room where we faded
into one.

Another image leaks out of my
memory machine: our bodies
moving without ease, my
nose began to bleed

“leave it”

you said as we tumbled through
the messy massacre in our bed.

Lovers more like runaways
shuffling down the bullet
hole corridors of Hotel
After Dark. We carefully
constructed Facebook statuses
to trick people into thinking
we were normal

typing in turns, holding our
cigarettes like ceremonial
weapons, watching porn on mute.

I noticed their breasts – shiny like
medals.

I dove beneath my shirt: “do you like
them big or…?”

A shrug, nothing else.

Now my fingers want to obey
my ache as they loom over
dangerous digits

0, 7, 5, 8 … –

a beat a breath a sigh a click

followed by
an emptiness

like the gaping
space at the end
of a book