i.

i think i lost you somewhere in between
the cracks of our fingers:
our own makeshift willow basket was never meant to sustain water
(or you.)
(or us.)
but was only destined to weep like its mother.  
maybe your hands grew too large for mine,
swelling like flesh around a broken bone.  
or perhaps my hands were the perpetrators
and shriveled while dancing alone in the rain,
tears fusing with those of Heaven itself
and recycling back into the indifferent soil:
my final destination.  

sometimes i lie in the trenches,
soaking up my own helplessness
and pray to the god of bastards
that you’ll come and finish the job already.

but you never come
and all i’m left with
are stains i cannot remove.
(some days, though, i know i am not scrubbing hard enough.)

ii.

i think i lost you somewhere in between
snow cone-flavored dreams
and apathy-colored nightmares.
our sweat still mingles within the lips of my sheets,
but i'd rather let the salt of my own sanity
slowly steal the oxygen from your memory
than add a little ohh-too
and burn you myself.

…and when you wrote on my mirror
that i was the girl of your dreams,
that you had to be honest –
you’d been waiting for me all of your life…
i hope you know you raped
my favorite Dashboard song
with your pornographic chivalry.

these days, i’m feeling more Bayside
than DC
…if you know what i mean.

iii.

i think i lost you somewhere in between
“yes” (you.)
and
“no” (me.)
my first “yes” was the innocent impetus  
that launched the domino Congo line
coercing me to dance to your tune,
but your harmonies were all in the wrong key.

the last piece collapsed
and an earthquake erupted
as i traced
  n
   o
on the dust-laden floor
with my bare fingertips.

but you scuffed my sandcastles
with your tsunami boots
and i’m still waiting
for FEMA.

iv.

i think i lost you somewhere in between
“i”
and
“love.”
it’s as if you fell through the cracks
and down the steep ravine between the two vertical slopes
of “i” and “l”
as i stood suffering from an il-lness of il-legitimate il-lusions.

i offered you a rope
and even a parachute,
but you leaped without looking back
leaving me cradling a noose
and broken wings.

…and what about “you,” you ask?
i. love. you.
(right?)

i guess not.

because maybe you were never there in the first place,
like the pot of gold at the end of your eyelashes
or the Atlantis beneath your Charybdis covers
or the choking organs jailed inside my ribcage
or the molten lava fevering through my cellophane veins.