Month: October 2023

When she leaves the ginger ale and the bowl of fried rice

behind our door, I almost tell her she forgot

to bring you yours, but like the smell of cooked sausage

and broccoli we’d enjoy after a walk through the snow,

it strikes me like blinding lightning, the growling of

my stomach not unlike a cold rain that freezes

once it touches the skin of my hands— scarred but too soft

to be held, slipping through fingers like the grains of rice

as you stir it in with the eggs and the carrots and the peas,

garnishing it with green onions before you bring it over,

asking me if the fever’s gone down, only to check for yourself

with a kiss gentle as a snowflake on a winter night.

The smell brings back late nights holding hands and

watching stars, then the blade of the chef knife slices my hand

and my heart, the timer of ten years goes off, my hands red

as the little slices of pepper she’s added, her own signature touch,

growing cold as I sit there, my head pounding as you leave me 

all over again, and I drown in the sticky brightness, surrounded by

the ice cubes that won’t soothe this fever of the mind.

I sit in my chair, eyes drifting close,

Curtains drawing on the infinite stage.

I awake in our room, a vacant shell

Of the world before it all went to hell.

The sheets still smell like your orchid shampoo,

Your softer-than-moon sweater draped over

The chair, lifting up a strand of your hair

To the tides and the sky like an abandoned prayer.

A knock on the door, but it is not you,

So I ignore it and return to painting a portrait

Of the one and only person who ever cared,

Only to leave me behind with words unshared.

You call my name, and I stand, my tired eyes 

Searching for you, only to be met with a specter.

You hold your gift to me in your hand, one that I

Can’t accept, so I close my eyes and I try to lie,

But I can’t lie, not to you, so instead, we fall

Through the floor, through the ocean waves,

Pinkies intertwined as I jolt awake. 

He crosses

His arms, sister by his side, and as he faintly smiles

I remind myself that it’s all for them, even

If it means I’ll only ever see you in my dreams.

The ducks don’t come around here anymore.

The sun wounds the earth, the water hot.

You needed to make a swing by the shore,

For your kids to never sit in— let the wood rot.

Let the earth bake some more for your pleasure.

At noon, on the couch, you snore,

Dreaming about a dragon fighting a robot.

You can’t see that in my head, there’s a war,

One you started where only I get shot.

Like the ducks, your damage has no measure.

Zoë sits next to me in the bleachers,

The mask of shyness falling away

As the game takes root in the blue turf.

I am blind to understanding

what causes her to cheer,

But I see the flames of excitement 

In her grin as we take silly pictures,

And breathe in the cold, crisp air.

I sit now in a dorm down the hall

From where she now resides,

Surrounded by five, now understanding

Something beyond rugby.

I have a heart that should be of steel,

But it is glass, smooth and easily broken.

It is the reason I forbid myself from love,

The reason why I avoid talking about you.

My mother is a glassblower,

Hand-crafting something full of light.

My father plays baseball,

And he cracks my windows.

You say you don’t play baseball,

But you throw stones instead

And then lie about it afterwards.

I don’t throw baseballs or stones,

but I’m too scared to make something,

so I offer shards of myself to join the dustbin

Of other shattered things,

hoping they’ll use me and a soldering iron

to piece themselves together again.

Will the next person offer me a grinding stone,

or a hammer meant for a rage room?

Every word you text me twists my gut like a knife,

everything you do simply another stab with that

bejeweled dagger, all wrapped in the gold you’ve collected,

the gold you say I have to earn, like you have no duty to me.

Every single time you say her name,

a hand with knives for nails pulls my heart

from my chest and squeezes, my blood

splattering on my shoes, soaking into my socks.

Cold,

Arrogant,

Insensitive,

Tactless,

Late,

Infuriating,

Narcissistic to a degree,

That is what you are, just as intended to be.

A grown man of forty-seven, a petulant child who

shouldn’t be trusted with sharp objects,

as you only use them to wound,

and you’ve carved out your eyes so you don’t have to watch

me bleed all over your stupid carpet.