This Is What I Look Like Today

Sometimes I think that if I was the only girl around you'd have no trouble in choosing me.

I guess I forget that the beauty in being chosen is that, to the person who chose you, you're the only one that matters. Regardless how many girls are around.

**

Excuse me for wanting more from this
Than a secret kiss
And dial tones.

**

I imagine you like the cloud of melancholy from every cliche cartoon. The ones that hover overhead or slightly to the side, constantly contributing to the woebegone atmosphere of the victim. I always thought that if the cloud would just go away and stop raining and reminding them of their discontent that they could get over it, move on, happy up.

But they always lingered. They always hovered just close enough; and that was the point. Out of sight out of mind. Perhaps. But even having stuffed you in the cardboard box I emptied yesterday, along with the residue of dust and fragments of lint carried by a season occupying space, even having wedged you in the corner under my dresser beside the stack of notebooks from junior high I can't bare to part with because some day I'll take the time to read the evolution of my literary tactics, even in the dark garnished in mistrust and seclusion you manage to materialize as a cloud. Even out of sight you find a way to my mind. Even, dehydrating in the dust, you find a way to vaporize and congeal into the little black rain cloud hovering over my honey tree.

I suppose it's my own fault. I doubt you sit across town in your car with binoculars trained on my window with the shade drawn and lamplight spilling out thinking to yourself memories to telegraph to me like Casper through the electrical lines. I doubt you're consciously the cause of this.

But this is the trouble, the trouble I've hit with celebrities and all of the "for sure" "romances" I've hitherto encountered: I've internalized you. I've taken all I know, all you shared, all the moments between us, all my overly optimistic hopes, and constructed an understanding of you in my heart. Enough so that you live there. You breathe there. You occupy space there and leave candy wrappers and dirty laundry there. You've moved in. I moved you in. I unpacked your dufflebag of video games and the boxes with the picture frames and posters and the bracelet you thought you lost. I helped you set up camp and then sheltered you in with a lean-to that eventually became a hope house because I didn't have the funding to build above the ground. And perhaps I sheepishly thought you'd stick around long enough for this to become something, for me to have causation to purchase the lumber and construct a castle where you could wander the airy halls and sing all the songs I know only well enough to recognize.

And in reality you are in your car, driving to some date with someone else, or leaving work or buying a pizza. You have no mind for me, you take no thought for me. And that's why it's not awkward for you. To you our relationship is what you apply to it, and as you apply nothing more than the occasional eye contact and half-hearted smile, there is nothing between us. Nothing to get in the way of your plans and ambitions, nothing to hinder your pursuit of everyone else of the female gender.

And that's the case, outside.

But I internalized you. I've taken you to heart.

So I'm shadowed by a cloud.

And it's been raining a lot today.

Heart To Ground

I can't figure out what to say.
I can't even decide how to say it,
But this jumble in my head
And in my veins
Is testament enough that words...
Words need to be spoken.

I'm too weak to do it.

I don't want to dig holes.
I don't want to find myself
Miles from where I want to be,
Miles from the surface,
Underground
Where the worms live in motion
And the soil's damp and cold.
Where they could bury me
And leave me none the wiser
But all the more better off.

It's a crime against my sanity
To love as much
As often
As I do.
I'd seldom encounter issues
If I didn't strap my heart to my sleeve
And tread where others go.

My heart sheds affection
Fragmentally
When I am bumped
In a metaphorical sense.
My heart, exposed to the
Toxicity of air and interaction
By its presence on my sleeve
Is weakened by its openness
To the relatable world.
And like a soft rock
Continuously bumped against one sharper,
It flakes away,
Bits of my heart scattering to
Whomever was responsible,
Or whomever is standing still.

I call it curse
Because I can't escape,
And with the likes of you it's worse.
My heart doesn't fit in my own chest,
It pines of the day I find it a place
To burrow itself for keeps,
To build walls of soft tissue
And lava lamps of blood;
To cocoon itself under clavicles
And beat for years to come.

I am not other girls.
Ignore the teenage meaning
Of other girls breaking hearts
And acting floozies.
I'm not other girls
Because you don't have to win my heart.
You already have most of it
From bumping past as often
As you have.
You don't have to win my heart.
Just let me know you want it.
Give me a sign you'll take it,
Keep it,
And lend me yours in exchange.