the lovedrunk cowgirl

break my breath at your bedside.

kiss me while I’m counting teeth.

if the feelings have to die

at least it’s not our first time killing.

hold my hand

with your phantom limb,

bite the towel

while I cut my name through your wrist.

there is a martyr left in me,

there is violence on your bedsheets.

you lied about a couple of things

and I lost track of a couple rings.

I touch you with calloused fingertips 

from your collarbone 

and down your thighs.

You say you’re not an artist

but you’ve never seen the way

color mixes in your eyes

when I trace your skeleton,

when you talk about home,

and even when you cry.

I closed the curtains.

I threw away the sheets.

There’s nothing to hold onto 

and there’s nothing left to make me bleed. 

Last night I drove with the headlights off-

I lied and said I didn’t notice 

but I sped up as soon as I did. 

There’s not much life in me- 

just your name, your eyes, and the heart of a kid. 

I’m wearing the sweater you gave me and

there’s a half-packed suitcase in the backseat.

A joint burns between my broken lips.

Metal lingers on my tongue.

All I taste are the words I want to say.

All I can breathe is yesterday. 

corre contra la corriente

llora con el viento

esperame en la entrada del cielo-

donde se parten las nubes 

y se enciende el tiempo

there are parts of me that hide

beneath dusty halos-

the parts that begin when my love ends.

of all the things I’ve killed and resurrected-

her memory was the one 

that survived the wreckage.

if she is the answer,

if my chest holds the key

I’ll sharpen blades for her

to count my ribs and

anchor my feet 

I’m twenty-eight years old

bound between minutes and miles.

she’s a few years older 

holding the universe together 

between glasses of tequila 

and her half-drawn smile.

we’re drunk in her favorite city-

she’s falls up the stairs 

and I bleed from my knees.

she licks her thumb and presses it 

over the torn-up part of me.

I promise myself to stay clumsy

if I can wear her hand 

like a bandage on my thighs.

I promise myself to stay dizzied

by the stories she hides

behind golden eyes. 

I set a fire with my hands tied

and no one was there to see it.

I bit off my own tongue

and no one believed it.

bury this sacrifice.

pray for something light.  

this the seed of everything

this is where wrongs turn right.

I watched you through boiling tears 

in my dream last night.

blood dripped from my hands

and I tried to be polite.

you stood in front of me shaking-

hair wet, dressed in white.

you’re too sacred to hold

and I’m too broken to fight. 

she looks at me like I’m a memory

and she traces me with drowning eyes.

I am twenty-seven in her passenger seat,

carving scripture into my thighs.

she kisses the scar on my forehead 

and speaks my name to the moon

to venerate the parts of me 

that were born too old and died too soon.

I light the joint she rolled for me

and we get high on borrowed time.

I told her when she met me 

that my dreams have a way of turning love into lies.

through the things that keep me breathing

and the violence that I’m feeding,

there are few gods that I believe in-

the tears that she cries

and all of her demons.

the sounds she made last night 

still echo in the ether.

she told me she’d been waiting on me

for the last two winters.

her call distracted my healing. 

her voice broke my breathing.

I wonder if she could feel me

getting lost in her city.

I’ve been hunting down a moment

that could make my sadness filling. 

I threw my map in the fire 

and prayed my way to black hair and green eyes.

I knocked on a red door and offered wine

for the kind of redemption 

that can only be found 

in familiar neighborhoods

and in the arch of her spine. 

I’ve never walked a bridge 

that I couldn’t burn,

I’ve never met an angel 

that I couldn’t turn.

and if I’m honest 

I’m scared 

that the only magic left in me

is the kind that lingers 

in morgues 

and under floorboards.

the devil on my shoulder 

keeps slamming untouched doors 

she makes me scared to love again

and to look in the mirror after four.

I’ll find a way to cope with it

as long as nothing is coaxing it. 

there are rings of salt around my bed

for the godless thoughts circling my head. 

I’ll resurrect myself every morning 

with love songs and scary stories

and in between them 

I’ll whisper your name

over the coffee I’m pouring. 

tonight at dinner 

I asked for tea instead of gin.

I traded in 4 am and cocaine

for weed and the taste of your pain.

in my dream I felt myself holding you

I jolted awake

and shattered the last glass

that your lips were molded to. 

I smiled as my finger bled.

I cleaned the floor and made the bed. 

you tell me that I’m restless,

you can feel that I am reckless.

but for the first time ever 

I’ve found a quiet place to stay.

I would cut my hands

with every broken piece of you

just to bleed for something 

that doesn’t numb me

or keep me awake. 

I wear your lipstick

on me like a bruise.

not to say that it hurts, 

just to show that I

fought myself for you.

I told you last night 

when everything changed

that you could take my heart 

and I would take the blame.

some things feel good 

when they aren’t supposed to.

but what am I supposed to say 

when your eyes haunt me that way? 

you chase ghosts and I do too

except the ones I want 

have heartbeats and tattoos.

last night 

I stared at you 

under the red light.

you watched the show 

and I watched your every move. 

I keep finding heaven 

in places where the bible 

told me not to look. 

who am I,

if not a slave 

to beauty,

illusion,

and stolen books?

I’ve got a burning jaw 

and I made plans for sunday.

I blame it on tequila 

and the landscape of her body.

her brown eyes and texas rain

break my bones and ease the pain.

surprises have a way of

shaking me to my core. 

every time I tried running, 

her tired lips asked for more.

I’m face up in a hotel bathtub,

reciting your address, 

and I’m wondering 

if it’s ever peaceful to drown.

Every flower shop is closed 

and these ribs are a ghost town. 

I licked the knife 

you tried to kill me with and

I borrowed your morals

for the evening.

how much will I have to bleed

before flowers grow beneath me?

how many teeth will I have lost

before someone opens their hand to feed me?

all she brought were motel eyes,

some stolen records,

and a suitcase packed with lies.

but I know I won’t question her.

(I like the way illusion feels).

I like bandaging up her melancholy

and her torn up heels. 

the stage is tilted,

the roses are wilted,

and I’m playing with my life-

answering her questions and

counting the goosebumps on her thighs.

God grant me no mercy. 

I know that it’s my turn. 

I kissed the devil’s feet

and I asked for heaven in return.

no, I’m not built of air and silk. 

but I rest in dark circles 

that hold your heavy eyes. 

my kiss lingers on unwashed glasses 

left on your bedside.

I am every 

scar, 

cut,

and bruise 

whose origin you cannot identify 

I haunt your body and your home indefinitely

my lipstick is a memory- 

you fear it every time you look at roses, 

watch the sunset,

and bleed. 

it’s true, I’ve made you too afraid to even blink.

my ghost is all that’s left of me.

the clothes you left have lost their scent,

the plants your sister gave us are finally dead.

if love is sacrificial, you made me her lamb.

if love is lost, I am an expeditionary force

charting old territory and setting new traps.

no one tells you how to how to find yourself

when they start burning the maps.

4 am and my hands are burnt.

my eyes are bloodshot 

and my body is numb.

what is it about her that feels like home

if haunted houses are all I’ve ever known?

I set the table for seven.

I pull up a mismatched chair.

I’m the lingering corpse-

I’m the party crasher in the corner

watching the seven ghosts 

of the girls I’ve been.

They all know each other.

They share inside jokes and recipes

while I wrestle with words

and all of their memories.

the smoke I stole from your lungs 

stopped my breathing.

I remember you well

but mostly I remember you leaving.

then came the house fire.

you know that one, don’t you? 

I remember.

I always remember-

just like I did last night

when the moon looked at me

and bled.

red.

in another life I would have met you in a forest fire-

one that made the sun feel small.

I hang my coat on the chair you made

and cauterize the wound on my chest.

I feel nothing- all I know is your name.

the spirits that linger over marble floors

whisper to me that there’s nothing more.

You’d eat the clock if it meant you could consume time.

You’d lick the dust off December’s bone

if it meant tasting something you’ve already known.

All that I feared is now an afterthought.

You told me last November that

when love ends, life must bloom in her place.

Your father’s tattoo shop smells more like you

than your sweatshirts do.

Everyone there looked at me like they knew

I ran away to come straight to you.

I make wishes over beat up records

and the eyelashes that linger on your face.

I told you somewhere between heaven, hell, and Colorado

that these love songs are acid laced.

I’m breaking through blue oceans

and I’m drowning in brown eyes.

We have no ship to sink,

we have no blood to drink.

I’ve run away from my city about a thousand times.

But I’d never found home in a stranger’s smile.

you ask me if I like who I’ve become

and I wonder why you’d whisper such a brutal thing.

to you this is an innocent question-

you ask it as you kiss my cheek.

you don’t know my full name

much less the damage i’m repenting.

we’re two strangers in heaven-

tangled up in borrowed tent.

(a traveler and a liar make their bed)

“yes, I love her” I said

you tangle your fingers in the cobwebs 

that shine above my spinning head 

and for a moment you think about weaving some of your own.

I can see it in your eyes-

the way you love to leave 

(fingerprints on my neck 

and on my suntanned skin).

you swallow and sell my story 

like the pills you stole from that party.

I am the final resting place 

for the secrets you bury in warm bodies.

the sound of her name is a battle cry-

it hangs 

from her mothers mouth.

it’s branded on her father’s tongue-

he bites his, 

I bite mine as I sharpen my knives.

I wipe my blood off the counter she stained.

my baby’s gone and my voice is lost.

all that’s left of her hides 

in a heart shaped box.

in my head plays a broken record

of a word I’ll no longer say-

the one they chose from a seventies song,

the one cutting through my lips and veins.

I have given you these eyes 

a thousand times.

I seal my love in messy handwriting

and I deliver it in poor timing.

I make myself known in the 

scarves I leave behind

and in the unwritten lyrics

floating on your jawline.

I bite the cross that hangs from her neck

as I search for deliverance in an unmade bed.

Salt rolls off my skin like the last 27 years.

Her body is gospel that brings the devil to tears.

She’s consecrated in the parts of me I’ve never showed.

Most mortals fear dark places

but heaven has haunted me most.

two things I never want to go back to:

the place that raised me

and the way that I was.

I’m learning to live again.

bartering sanity and silence

for something to sink my teeth in.

I’m giving it all up again.

I’m drunk driving at dawn again.

I turn to the mirror and I tear out my broken heart.

I don’t need overpriced therapy and organic drugs

to know that I’m scared to start.

someone once asked me

what is the highest price you’d pay for love?

I kissed their fingers and 

lay them on my chest.

there are dreams stuck behind the madness.

this thing inside me-

it never rests.

the trees are frosted white

like the old credit card in your nightstand tin.

and the street behind the house we dreamed of is littered

with carcasses of cheap cigarettes.

maybe I’m grateful that this neighborhood lost itself too.

maybe I am reminiscent 

of the things you’re still addicted to.

I never meant to fall in love 

with someone as fleeting as me-

someone with bags by their side

and lips that taste like uncertainty.

I’ve been through hell and back with thoughts of you.

It’s two a.m.

how beautiful it is to be this broken

over someone who pieces me back together.

I still visit the museum 

she abandoned in my hallway-

where the smell of vanilla lingers

and the last picture I took of her

hangs crooked on the wall.

her hips could have defined a century

and I could have been a historian…

archiving each of her goosebumps 

beneath cold fingertips

you mopped up my blood

with the clothes I left.

one cold winter and my dignity

spread over your kitchen floor.

I’m half naked in the drivers seat-

my knuckles are white

from gripping the door.

I wonder if this is the last time

I’ll have to leave you

running drunk in the rear view.

one last deep breath and I put the car in drive.

blood loss never made me feel so alive.

I’m twenty six and starting my life over

but most days I still feel like a kid

knelt up against an unmade bed

asking the floorboards where salvation is

there is more ash on the ground

than I’m used to 

and my sheets are still stained.

your favorite singer echoes

through distorted speakers

and I’ve been chain smoking

as if weed could turn to novocaine.

my lungs hurt

the way your stomach hurts.

two truths- no lies

I think I love you

but I’m not supposed to.

I’ll settle for a shower 

and your tan skin in Barcelona.

you’ll lick my wounds 

over a bloody sink.

we’ll laugh in whispers

as if joy could be sin.

and when the night wraps us 

in promises we can’t keep

I’ll pour myself one last gin

I’m a little drunk in Arizona

and i’m thinking that maybe 

I should kiss you.

you’re three drinks ahead of me

and the way you’re laughing

sounds like reckoning.

my lipstick burns a hole through your neck.

I play it off (I know, we’re just friends).

four familiar summers

and the names of your future daughters-

I’m thinking I should ruin it

as your champagne sizzles on my dress.

there’s nothing more romantic than the end.