All Of Your Words Are Empty White Shells

All of your words all empty white shells
typed by fingers I don’t understand anymore
each letter shouts
I’m gone
I’m gone
I’m gone
I’m gone
Goodbye
I lay in bed at 6:33 am
and am robbed of ever knowing what it would be like to love each other
I feel small hands reaching inside of me and moving the ventricles of my heart open
it’s time to let go
he’s not coming back
I fight them away
with large sobs and tears that fall like pellets onto my skin
I’m at war in my heart
the hands reach for me lying on my back in a sticky Austin night
watching stars and an September moon
staring at your red barn
wondering if my white jeep will ever be parked there
what my toothbrush would look like next to yours for more than 4 nights
the hands reach for your face against my face in a white hotel room
what happens if we aren’t each other’s people
what happens if I hurt you?
what happens if the distance is too hard?
and you lay across from me
with eyes like mountains that do not know how to be shook and give me the stayingness my father robbed me my entire life
the maids are knocking
hello?
yes
we are extending the room
$90 for 1 hour, sure whatever
and that’s when I learned how to truly be in
right there
crying in a large blue hotel robe
nose to nose with you
kissing you gingerly and tenderly as you teach me what commitment looks like
I see your blonde ponytail across an audience
I am wearing black leather pants
my head is resting on my mothers shoulder
that one
I say
in a taxi cab
scrambling through sugar cubes
hoping like hell every one is you
FaceTime calls where you talk about big things like children and marriage and before the words leave your mouth I’m running down the road screaming
this is not an oven for any sort of buns!
Marriage is the constitutionalized equivalent of aspartame!
I almost left
you know
because the only thing that scares me more than a man dedicated to loving me and truly showing up
is children, marriage and Costco
My head on your shoulder of a black and white dress shirt in a coroner of a restaurant
like lady and the tramp
bubbles and calamari we didn’t order
too loud jazz music shouting from the left
the most sex I’ve ever had
the second partner
I’ve had orgasms with
in my entire life
the first is dead
the sweetest loving love my bodies felt
the most patience mouth and hands and lips
nipples that were sore for days after your mouth left on a plane to Texas
cheeseburgers with butter pickles
ahi tuna poke kisses in watermelon sliced shorts
our first kiss
in a tickle fight of white pillows at 2 pm
halfway off the bed
you ran the other way
I don’t usually kiss that fast
you say
I sat by the pool for an hour and a half
and I was sure you weren’t coming back
this liberal lover from the west
kissing you before you were ready
later you would love me before I was ready
and I would run away
and do deeper damage than I could understand
maybe if you would of asked me to stay
maybe if you would of told me
No!
don’t spend time with him
it will fuck all of this up
maybe if you would of yelled at me after
I wouldn’t be sitting on the floor in a crumple of my own tears reading these empty shells of words
then my phone rang
I’m sitting in my truck in the parkade a block away
I haven’t left
I’m coming back
and I held you
and we let each other back in
I’ll never leave again
don’t say never
never isn’t a promise you can’t make I say
maybe I should have let you make it
green snake boots and dirty blonde hair
I fell in love with those damn boots
when you start to fall in love with somebody
even glorified giant plastic gumboots
become sexy
I fought you every damn day to open my door for me
I’ve also had a lifetime of fighting away love and choosing the men who run away from me
I wonder what it would of been like to meet the people you love most
when your heart had not already forgotten me
I am not done writing this poem.