this is what happens when

...matthew neglects me for videogames

13

once you were gone
i crawled off of the couch
and into your bed

put on your best dress shirt
and lay there
petrified of wrinkling it

and i thought "i will live honestly today"
which means "i will not leave this bed ever"

12

the worst part about an incoming nervous breakdown
is that it's incoming

i don't know how to write a poem
i only know that i came into my bedroom
expecting to see me sleeping there
wishing i could put my guitar down gingerly
and kiss my own forehead--

is it possible for you to remember
a memory you don't remember
a brick fireplace in ann arbor

i've been remembering two things:
you & your impossibility

but mainly your impossibility
which i must always return to
not a washbasin or the smooth of a collarbone
under a hotel sheet

11

you were not a woman
or jesus or a dinosaur
you were not burning books
you did not believe in ghosts

you have not seen the apocalypse
why aren't you sharing the bagel

you were not rollover minutes
you were not hole punches
you were not laying in the grass and your shoulders were not a machine

10

you walked to my house from taco bell
that happened

9

the first time i slept next to you
i was amazed by your stillness

breeding mosquitoes
with your lakes

i could die slowly, i could eat glass
but only if you are there
and sighing a little

8

through inductive reasoning
i learned that if i apologized to you, i would get a response

i couldn't move you

i wanted you to wash up like a frozen baby mammoth
i wanted to unfreeze you so that you could finally walk away