all the lost things

all i wanted was for you to mark me. i wanted you to bare your teeth at me and bite me, bruise my skin in black and blue from my neck to my thighs, and my spine. i wanted you to have me whole, to claim me as some ancient thing from immemorial times. i wanted you to grab me, put your arms around me, encase me.
(i always liked your weight on me.)

i wanted you to write on me so i could tattoo over the words and keep you on me at all times, so i could always touch with my fingertips what i meant to you, all those sweet things – i wouldn’t even regret it after everything was over between us.
(it would inevitably be over.)

“would you want to look forever at it? for other people to see it? why would you want to have it? it was never meant to be!” you’d ask me [if we still spoke to one another]. you’d call me mad, for sure, and hopeless and strange.

but really, how could i mind? how worse can it be to show on the outside what i somehow still feel? how can words to the world be any worse than the thoughts i carry in my head everyday, then the memories everyone has in their souls?

(it’s not painful. here, look at all these poems i already made for you. it is a process.)

a tattoo, in the end, is just a picture: a remembrance of a thing that will always be, a past that was a promise of everything, something i want to show everyone because, wether it failed or not, wether you like it or not, talk about it or not, it is part of who i am. your past is my past.
(the threads of our lives are entwined. bygones are bygones, but it’s all a happy place now, a cozy home where we once lived in.)

i am not ashamed and neither should you be. i like who i am becoming, and you have a share in it. accept it.
(write to me. let’s talk.)

i wonder when this will go away

you don’t know
how it goes
on the other side.
how your smiles
are ropes
that tie tight
around my heart:

when you talk,
the strings tauten
compressing, and clenching
until my breath leaves me.

sweet, delicious
pain
in my chest.

and, when you speak
I am reminded
of past scenes
between you and me
(and the phantoms of the kisses
we traded in a time far, far away).

in a mix of memory and dream
I am once again
pulled in.

these memories are
like a tide
that carry my body
into the water.

how did the kissing feel to you?

to me, it felt wet
and warm
and everywhere:
like drowning in the sea
while it rains.

milky way

you wanted space
so I gave you
this universe and back.

naiveté

I have forgotten
how your voice sounds like,
the feel of your touch
and the taste of your tongue.

but the saddest thing
isn’t really these forgotten senses;
the tragicality
lies in remembering
that I used to think
that this would pain me
more than anything else
in the whole world.

it doesn’t. really.

mauled

is being said “no”
worst than being said “yes” then, later, being left behind?
is “almost” more painful
than “goodbye”?

I don’t think so.

it’s just that now the pain is fresh,
the blood curls
& it flows out of the wound.

and it fucking stings.

I think it feels worse because the memory
of my past has being weakened,
time has softened
the horrible memory
of the bullet
that is lodged between my ribs,
dangerously close to my heart.

I don’t like to compare pains,
for it’s never healthy,
but yours is still second place in this whole mess, darling.
(congrats on the award, though.)

you came close to having it
-the prized heart in your fist-
the laurels of victory!
an arrogant crown for your pretty head!
however, I guess it’s hard to break a heart
when such heart
is no longer there.

it’s still easy to break a spine,
though.

also, it’s pretty easy to crush a spirit,
for it is a young, naive thing that,
like a liver,
seems to grow anew at every laughter
and every joy.

and I’m sure it will blossom again.
it does, every time – first, dead as autumn’s leaves
then green at springtime.

shit is having to,
in the meantime,
wake up with an aching head
and go to sleep with the shrapnel
and these memories of mine.

she wants so much to say please (but won’t)

At first, I loved you like an explorer. There was I, tiny me, out in the woods, barely a stranger and merely testing the waters, marking your uncharted territory. You amazed me like a pristine, untouched no-man’s-land, and I adored everything about that. I felt an earthly connection to you (so wired!), so I climbed your tall branches and conquered your obtuse, enclosed heart. Never had I felt so adventurous and victorious before; I came and conquered, I attracted you like a gravity, and you, me, as a magnet, thus, at every chance I had, I fused my lips and limbs to yours and, breathless – like in high altitude – did not, for a single moment, let you go.

Then, timed passed and a bit of the novelty wore off. The flame subsided and, at moments, it came to brief halts. Still, it was smooth and caring. And, there, in those moments, I loved you like dessert: mellow, sweet and savory, right after dinner. I felt content, sated, childish and with a bellyfull of friendship and warmth, and maybe a few tiny crumbs of wonder spread all over the bedsheets. My soul had just simply found an old companion and edges got smudged… in domestic bliss, we came down from our high and, in digestions, we confounded our hugs and words, hairs, books, houses and things.

Later, tranquility ceased to exist in a bang. Mind that I still loved you, only now like a bird with a broken wing. I was captive, monstrously misguided. My soul was darkened, tainted, pained. My head was the one that rolled but I still loved you, fiercely and one-sided, a prisoner of a fantasy, my own brand of Stockholm Syndrome. I fooled myself, and it was good. It was the love that could, in my mind, be replicated, recreated, taken. Made me a martyr, dragged me across and around, shamed me. But the years were gentle and I underestimated my wounds… it bled out.

Finally, I came to love you like salt. Not like Atwood’s salt, not cherished, palatable, but grain salt – so coarse! – burning on the red and soft, spongy flesh of the wound. I loved you like the pain that rubs raw, scratches and sinks deep in the nerves, cutting like a knife in a depraved, twisted pleasure. A teeth-gritting pleasure that scratches surfaces and scars to, at last, heal.

a taste of bile

she sees him from afar, coming down the street, balancing a ton of grocery bags on skinny hands and arms, a tangle of plastic and clumsy limbs. she smiles, surprised, pleased. and he, well, he is a little short-sighted, so he only sees her when their noses are practically touching. he is shy, too shy but she kisses him anyway, flushing down his flustered look. he finally smiles too.

***

he looks all adorable, fragile and hurt, a smile and a cigarette perched on his lips; she also thinks that, like this, cornered and big-eyed, he appears raw and feral, like a wounded beast that, even showing teeth and growling, is on the inside just begging to be held in a warm cocoon, licking its wounds. so, he is there, in the back of the room, on the floor by the bed, hands on face, so pained and pale, caught in the middle of his own torn thoughts. in the best of situations, there is only this spastic moment: fright, flight and surrender. it surely as hell is his best look and their best moment in a long, long while – it is the one where she’ll try to hold and to clench, to soothe, and he’ll try to give himself, give everything up, to her, but won’t, for he can’t; for he has loved too much and been hurt one too many times and she can’t understand it, no one can. it is his secret and he shall keep it quiet, the price of his pride, the collateral of his shame, the only forbidden thing he will allow himself to have and no one else, and he shall not give it to her, not because she doesn’t deserve it, but because he loves her way too much already and he won’t be played as the fool again.

so, in the end, there is only this, the silence and the surrendering, the pain in the back of the skull, the stiff neck and the love she will whisper in his ear, together with his’, his own, that he will only profess after she falls asleep so she won’t know, so she won’t tell, so she won’t fear her own reaction, nor his: so she won’t walk all over him like the others. so he won’t be bent and broken again.

***

“I did not kick you out. I gave you up”, she says.

***

she sees him from afar, his jacket too big, hanging from his thinned down body, his once flushed pink cheeks like sharp edges of unforgiving bone. he doesn’t see her, his thick glasses fogged from the cold and wind.

She crosses the street.