liquid courage ✓

the art of unloving

i think i've always been the type of person to swallow blood and wonder if it will end up back in my veins or one of my abused kidneys. i'm not quite sure if there is anyone else who steals church wine after-sundays and feed bread crumbs to harbor pigeons. i don't think anyone has ever looked at the streetlight in your hair and thought about how you'd look seventeen times prettier if you were dressed in nightwear and not her poisoned coats. or that it'd be prettier to watch a firework show on a sidewalk than at a river park. i wonder if vandalizing gravesites weren't such a crime, how much happier people would look on monday mornings. 

there's a sick thing sitting at the bottom of my swimming pool. while you were grieving, it was begging to be drowned. i've never drowned anyone before so i offer my wounded fingers and it eats away the deadly disease in my joints that you always disregarded on tuesday afternoons.

i think about how sometimes we talk about friday parties and snow in tokyo and how we never talk about love but the absence of it would kill either one of us in a mere second. i tuck you in the pages of my poetry and only ever look at you when nosebleeds ruin chemistry assignments.

i always wanted to tell you that there were fleeting moments in abandoned parking lots back when the end of your cigarettes lit mine, that i thought over and over again about how i have a tendency to love more than i'll ever be loved. that perhaps if i eat enough lemons my stomach will rot beneath your feet and after years of neglect, lighting a cigarette and trying to be loved might just make it hurt a little less.

unmailed letters, unsent messages, and forgotten poetry. i place all the pain in an envelope and ignite the flame in my mouth from your nicotine giveaways. you're my muse, for better or worse.

tell me, muse. how do you unlove someone who has seen your soul bare?