once my lover, now my friend

'and i'll give myself up to your sharpened edges' – have a nice life, 'hunter'

you were the baby teeth i pulled loose as a child, but you came back in. i never grew familiar with the feeling of your return; i’m not used to its weight.

tell me who i was when you loved me.

my body was a stranger to the earth, always drifting further down in hopes your skin would eventually touch mine. i spent too long with my head underwater, now all your shoes are soaked. loving you always felt like a lesson in drowning. maybe siken was right: ‘…the one person in the world who loves you / isn’t the one you thought it would be, / and you don’t trust him to love you in a way / you would enjoy.’

you were the teeth i pulled loose and the ones i tried to put back in. there’s no replacing you. revelations rest on the tip of my tongue, it seems that you have my heart as well.

there’s a coldness in the shape of me that won’t leave your home. (how long will you pretend that this overwhelming chill isn’t an extension of yourself?) forgive me for leaving fragments of myself at your doorstep. there’s some of me behind the couch, under the stairs, in between the covers. let me stay there a little while longer please.

can we just love each for what we are: bruised bodies with anger stored in the mouth? fists meeting skin, teeth spit out as signs of truce; we’ve always been the rot resting underneath the floorboards.

selfish prayers flood my mind before i realize i won’t find you anywhere i look. (but isn’t that the point of love? to always remember it?) once my lover, now my friend… i am drowning in everything i feel for you; bring back the weight of your return, i’m seasick without the sight of you.

you’ve been dead before any of this started. you are my hometown tragedy, a ship silently passing through the night.