like a carpenter, you brought up blueprints:
"the disaster will unfold like this"
but you threw down your tools, preferring the brutality
of the weapons at the end of your wrist.

i had let you rip this hole across my chest
so you could face-to-face my heart,
not so you'd push your fingertips in and
spread out my purple blood like art.

and then you fell backward out of my life
into new-found juvenile good times,
standing around lamenting how awful life sucks
while i'm still singing how much i fucking love mine.

so when i said i was sorry, i only meant for
finding authenticity in someone that's just a tease.
i meant: tell your next girl ahead of time that
you only let your honesty out in degrees.

i guess i should have seen it coming as obvious
as the cold blank spaces between stars,
but only the bright ones caught our eye
when we'd lie philosophizing on the hood of your car.

you can keep calling me empty, hardly readable
because i choose to speak my words in red
and say all that heart i bear on my sleeve would
probably be better off in my head.

now your poetry's on my bedroom desk, a monument
to the amount of dust that settles there-
you wish i'd reread it & reminisce, and you know
i would some time if i felt like bothering to care.

but your eyes are dulled over like everyone else's
& not worthy to reflect the passion in mine.
for a few weeks you had an entire dreamscape in there,
but hell, those things fade all the time.

now i've got notebooks of dismemberment,
deconstructing this month gone past,
documenting the high ratio of healing to tragedy,
really, you'd be amazed scar tissue can fill in so fast.

so when i said don't touch me, you had to try
just to be sure my wholeness was something true-
no, i'm not afraid of boys or love or commitment,
i just never want to be touched again by you.

so when you ask what's up, maybe i'll say i'm okay,
or maybe i'll tell you exactly what i mean-
that i'm full of dreams you've never touched
and strengths you've never even seen.

(2004)