You'll Never Love the Same Way Twice

Sometimes I miss you so much it hurts to breathe.

I think when you ripped your garden out of my ribcage,

you left some weeds.

And I can tell how much they want sunlight.

They need oxygen to survive,

but I cannot maintain their supply when they’re wrapped around my bones so tightly

that I can’t move.

I think of you often and wonder how many times you look at the stars

and count them.

I spend a lot of time thinking about if it’s cold where you are,

and if your hands are as warm as they were the first time you touched me.

Or if they still feel like ice,

like the last time you touched me.

There is a break in my heart where your name ought to be.

It’s stuck inside of me like a splinter, but

every time I try to mend it,

it tears even more.

You belong there, I think, somehow.

It reminds me of the way a tree will grow around an obstacle,

and how it becomes one with its roots.

The sound of your voice left scars in my mouth and bruises on my skin

where your lips marked the places you loved me most.

Sometimes I miss you so much I can hear you laughing

and I don’t have to cry.

I remember to be strong.

You brought me war and made me a warrior.

You brought me pain and made me a heathen.

You brought me love and made me a martyr.

Sometimes I miss you so much I can still feel your cheek against my palm,

I can smell your chest and the heat that radiated between our bodies in moments of passion,

and nothing in this world can compare to the way you breathed your promises down my spine

like dust off an untouched book.

Sometimes I miss you so much I’m overcome with whirlwinds of names you had for me

that made me feel safe.

But those words do not hesitate to pull a trigger

like gunfire in the Second World War,

hitting me in the chest so hard it could cause a gravitational shift.

And if anybody ever asks you about the formula for that scientific equation,

let me become a force of nature and recklessly collide with the universe until I collapse.

D.N.R.

I’ve heard it said before that you’ll never love the same way twice.

“You’ll never forget,” they said,

“but time changes things.”

And I cried for you last night

for the first time in a year.

I raged against tears and I counted the ways you let me down

on both hands.

It scares me to death that you’re imprinted inside of me.

But I know now.

I know now.