1:41 AM

a poem

I.

Don’t. Breathe.

I’m listening to the way your silence fills the space between our heartbeats. The space between us

leaks with something more tactile than mere understanding. More raw

and demanding. We are but sinners, after all. Or have you forgotten it all? We fought so hard to live by tiptoe glances,

futile dances around the system of our thoughts, across the blank canvas of our history.

Across the clean, sweeping lines of my misery.

So stop.

I need your lungs in a vacuum, null and void, nothing. So I can fill it with my thoughts and unthink.

II.

Go on. Walk.

As I talk of how my yesterday went, of how I spent five whole days without you,

a hundred and twenty hours going through the motion of

hiding my devotion, lowkey typing when I’m actually hiding

behind an iron curtain, uncertain if you’ll pick up the phone when I grow the balls to call you again.

Your voice reminds of home, sounding far away and foreign.

I can feel you nod when I fall silent, I hear parts of other conversations around you,

then you say bye, and hang up.

I hang up too.

But only after I’ve swallowed down the intensity of knowing you don’t want me.

III.

Tell me.

Tell me the way she makes your heart fall in love five times faster than the way we sped through the highway that one Saturday.

Tell me how her laughter is all that you live for.

Tell me all about her, the parts of her that hurt you most, the parts of you that she keeps close, the parts that just fall

into place. Tell me how she fits into your space,

remind me how I never did.