i ache to run my hands through your hair

and remind you of all the things your Instagram told me

we have in common

so you may learn, eventually,

to love me.

we’ll talk again of stray dogs

and how movies need more sex

and I’ll pretend you’re interested in me

and that your eyes seek out the dim of your phone

only because they’re too afraid to meet mine.

i hold on to the memory of

you telling me my poem was nice,

and you asking for us to meet before the sun could rise,

and your smile.

but these memories find it easy to slip away

when I don’t hear from you in two days

because heartbreak is my comfort zone but

i’m not going to know what to do

when you break my heart by mistake

by unwittingly telling me about her

or unwittingly telling me you don’t believe in love

or, worst of all,

unwittingly forgetting to say anything at all

to me.

my heart’s just healed,

is it time already for you to exhile it again

to that same old place behind the curtains

where it wept last time for him?

those curtains are getting old and mouldy

so is it too much for me to ask you

to spare my heart just this once?

or to ask if perhaps

you could take down the curtains and give them a wash

and kiss my heart where you see the silvery tear tracks

and will you please kiss my heart

in all the places it points to

when you ask where it hurts?

and if you cannot, I will forgive you

and you’ll become another one of my fucking poems

hidden away in the ratty old dusty notebooks

that never saw the light of day

like you

and i.

Thanks for joining me!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton