blowing raspberries on the nectar of your skin

I never liked car salesmen

In my dream I ran into you
twenty-five years in the future.
A successful business owner philanthropist.
Classic.
You’d been married twice,
didn’t work out.
Infidelities.
Also classic.
I read in the newspaper that 60%
of marriages experience infidelity
at some point in their marriage
by one party or the other.
I cried at the breakfast table
over a cup of over-sweetened, under-creamed coffee.
Violent sobs.
Suicidal thoughts over coffee.
Led me to an idea for a column that
would remain a wish to never
get fulfilled:
A dear Abbey,
but instead
a dear Phoebe,
an ‘I’ve been feeling real down lately,’
an ‘I’m thinking about hanging myself above our bed so the next time my husband brings a woman home to fuck she’ll be traumatized by the rope and how tightly tied around my neck it is. How it cut into my flesh and washed blood allover our bedsheets.’
I want the honest letters.
The letters of every human
who’s ever been so in love
and so ravaged by their counterpart
that they want to kill.
A crime of passion, mind you,
the cut of betrayal,
and a final stab
that final “fuck you,”
to the one who broke them.
And I heard that those who are strong,
cannot be broken.
But everyone can be broken,
there is a god inside
a beautiful love.
But to much dismay,
some beautiful love
will uncover
wicked devils.

A mother’s obituary to a bastard husband.

Calm down,
the baby’s dead.
My presence speaks volumes,
but not to you.
My absence whispers,
you don’t hear a thing.
Every word I ever spoke was
choked out,
spit blood at your feet—
the fetus in my belly, crawled out—
killed itself to avoid your
awful example of “parenting skills,”
you want the truth?
Learn to fucking handle it then.
I left rosebuds on the tip
of your nose hoping you’d wake up
the next morning and be able to smell them.
Stop, rewind, try to relate
rosemary and thyme,
A simple elixir
that I mixed while trying to seduce you.
Rose-thorns and time,
what you used to push into my sides.
I’ve given you everything, but everything
is never enough,
not for a bastard.
Not for a cold blood.
To say I’m glad you’re dead
would be an understatement.
To say you deserved it
would have been an overstatement.
You never deserved a thing you had.
You never deserved to exist
in the first place.

I had a dream about a girl you fucked,
that you did it again.
I hunted her down and wrapped barbwire around my fists
so that even when I punched
them to her face, I’d bleed too.
I let her live,
hoping she’d know better next time,
to leave a taken man alone.

I had a dream about the ex we saw
at the hollywood 27.
That she came running back to you
crying and apologetic for
leaving you to pursue a child-like man
who’d bounced from orphanage
to orphanage as a boy.
She was so sorry, she said.
That she was so lonely without you.
That she took your hands for-granted,
that she took your love as a joke.
And I heard every word she said,
and every word she never did.
You wrapped your trust and arms
back around her for the second time,
so ready to forgive and forget.
So ready to forget about me.
I picked up a tire iron, and
threw it straight at her head.
Hoping it would kill her,
for the sake that she’d learn that
just because she was lonely
she shouldn’t be able to take you back on her own time.
That just because it was now
convienient, she could
have you back on
her own time.
As if the second time around,
she’d appreciate you,
when before, you know
she never did.
And just in case she remained
alive—
I shot two bullets
straight into her eyes.
I walked over to you,
and kissed you hard one last time,
then picked up the phone,
and dialed through to the
emergency line.
I gave them our location,
and instead of killing you
I drove a bullet through my brain,
I kept you alive, in hopes that you
would see
no other woman would ever
love you as purely, as
recklessly, as hopelessly,
as me.

Some people let others stab them, the knife twists in, their insides wrap around the blade and make it impossible to recover. They die, mentally, they become weak. Other times when people let others stab them, their wounds begin to wrap around the blade, only to slowly unwind. You can only stab someone so many times before they either die, or they learn that not everyone will present their knives, some will simply love them. When you tell someone something bothers you, if they respect you, they should see to it that it doesn’t happen anymore. Any type of human relationship, friendship, romantic, kinship, should not thrive as dog eat dog, but all too often, they do. People will feed on your weakness, it’s your choice if you lay before them as they feast.

Like puzzles, like prayers

What’s it feel like to be in love? Imagine there is a person living inside your soul, and you stay warm because they keep your heart happy. Imagine that every time you wake up to them you think of God. Not in a worshipping way, but a pure, “you-must-be-exactly-what-a-god-would-want-a-human-to-be-way.” Or what a god’s touch must feel like. Even during the most awful times I’ve had with you, the arguments, and fits of raging envy, I have felt a comfort. Like I’ve known you my whole life, and yet, a shyness, like I’m still smitten. And I wonder how long it will take for us to figure each other out, like puzzles, like prayers, like reaching for something out of reach and still managing it, grasping it. To cry in front of a lover is a crippling feeling, that said, once you start, it’s hard to stop, like sex, or any type of addiction, dependency. And when you feel low, it’s easy to have doubts. But I don’t have one. I’ve known people that would call me a friend, but I’d call them acquaintances. Girls who are all board games, bored games. They tell me how many men, and how little time, and they’ll never settle down, because relationships are a waste of time. And maybe I used to believe they were. But now all I can hear in those girls echoes: fear, naivety, youth. And yes, I have fear too, but my fear is aged, and I am and always have been a Rubik’s cube. You can’t figure me out or play me for just a couple hours. It could take years for you to solve. If you ever try to solve a Rubik’s cube, you better keep trying until you get it. If it takes your entire lifetime, at least we spent it together.

What’s it feel like to be in love? Like your heart is going to explode the second they step away. Like a fire on your tongue, bumblebees in your belly. Sometimes it fucking hurts. But once the sting is over, you want to pick each other back up. Maybe you’ll never completely solve the other, but maybe you’ll learn that trying was the whole lesson all the while. Like puzzles, like prayers.

And let it be known, I’ll never be afraid to let the world know, I love you from this moment until forever.

I’m not going to complain,
I’m just going to say,
“I’m not okay,”
I’m not okay.
I’m not okay.

Before your uncle’s surgery, your mother and I sat talking in the kitchen. She was trying to thread a needle to sew a button on her work shirt, but her hands shook. And her eyes were alert, but weary. I could see you in them, the worry, the sadness, in her eyes, is the same as yours sometimes. It’s so subtle, but I see it, and I can feel it. If you ever really, honestly, question my love—I’d like you to gander through my texts or journals to see all that I can speak of is you. Or the palms of my hands, cut open my chest and grab the map, any direction my heart chooses to go will always point in the direction of you. I hope you really do believe me when I say I’d never leave you. I hope you understand that my love for you could paint the sky purple and turn the grass cotton candy blue. I hope you understand me loving you includes loving your family. I hope you understand that I never want to look in your eyes and see pain, because if you feel it, I feel it too, twice as hard as loving you. If I could paint our future, I’d use permanent marker to color in the vessels of your heart. And I want you to know, before I saw that look in your mother’s eyes, I never fully grasped the future. If you ever left me, not only would I have to face saying goodbye to you, but to your family as well. To your scent, and cuddling into your neck, and your legs, and the memory of your ticklish left side, how you look in the yellow gleaming light around two in the morning, the sound of your laugh, the sound of you mocking mine, and the curve of your biggest smile - eyes squinted and all. I worry one day you won’t love me, but more than anything, I worry that you really never quite understood just how much I mean it when I tell you those three heavy words.

“Good thing I’m a leprechaun
Lucky…
Lucky…
Baby, I have no idea how this will end
Maybe the equator will fall like a hula hoop from the earth’s hips
And our mouths will freeze mid-kiss on our 80th anniversary
Or maybe tomorrow, my absolute insanity
Combined with the absolute obstacle course of your communication skills
Will leave us
Like a love letter
In a landfill
But whatever
Whenever
However this ends,
I want you to know, that right now,
I love you forever”
—Excerpt from How It Ends by Andrea Gibson.

It makes me want to die.
I only have eyes for you,
love seems as if it should be that way
that if I only have eyes for you,
you’ll only have them for me.
But I guess, I don’t understand
what your understanding
of love is.
Everything I want to do for you,
is harnessed back,
undone,
because I don’t want to do them
for someone who can’t sacrifice
even a glance
a subtle comment of temptation.
If I’m not crazy,
why don’t you seem to fully understand?
If you believe me when I tell you
“I love you”
you will believe me when I say
that the one man I loved before you,
never heard those words from me.
And somehow, from silence,
from being tossed aside - for another
woman’s touch,
it taught me a lesson.
And I knew if I wasted anymore time,
if I couldn’t tell you I love you,
then one day you would give in to
another woman, too.
But still, here I am,
weak,
hopelessly in love with you,
and I can’t handle seeing your
“likes”
because they are mutual.
Because each girl is a hint
that your eyes
are not only for me.
I believe that you love me,
but with each girl,
I feel stabs
of
you
leaving me.
I can’t help this raging jealousy,
I haven’t felt it before,
I haven’t showed a man my tears before,
I haven’t done so much,
that I want to do for you,
and I’m more afraid that if I don’t do
those things, you’ll find someone else
easily.
The only thing stopping me,
is that I need you on the same page
I need your eyes not to wander
I need you to stop being so quiet about
your unavailability.
They cannot think they can have you.
But right now, they all do.
If that is what you want them to keep
believing,
my heart is not strong enough
to deal with being
a closet girlfriend,
a closet love.
I’ve let my heart grow
with only love for you,
I don’t believe in a silent love,
only a raging love,
a passionate love,
an “I want the world to see our love” love,
no one needs to know our details,
I believe in privacy.
They just need to know,
we are each other’s.

When you are there and I am here
my body gets
an ache
a shake.
If on a night like tonight
you were to ask me
“what would you do to me
if I was there?”
I would say
my mouth could engulf
every inch of your flesh,
your loins could seemingly
melt into mine
my hands through your hair
yours through mine,
I would make you lay
bare
with me through the night,
and when I wake in the middle of the night,
with that same urge
I’ll kiss up your back
and hope it wakes you
so you know I want round two
or three,
and if that doesn’t work,
I’ll elbow your side
and when you wake,
alarmed,
I will get on top and kiss you hard.
What would I do to you if you
were here now?

I would ravage you.