1. Would it help if I said fruit flies only live for a month, then they die
with bodies waxy as candles and wings that decay into dust?
2. You left canker sores in my mouth after you ate all those salty chips,
open wounds that were just gravemarkers for every place
you kissed me.
3. This is my final eulogy before the coffin goes in the dirt,
before I take an inventory of all the crosses I’ve had to bear
for the last three years and decide my heart was the heaviest
one to handle. Make a crown of thorns out of your scars
and I’ll wear them to kingdom come, before Noah pulls up
the bath plug and lets us drown.
4. Carl Jung said people will do anything to avoid
coming face to face with their own souls; I’ve seen mine looking
at me right in the eyes when we’re in bed and the only thing
I can see is you.
5. After your mom’s last round of chemotherapy you buried
all the bags of hair in the backyard, but I still find dark tendrils
in my morning coffee, between the sheets, once soft on your neck
where I put my mouth and could taste her ashes.
6. The next woman who falls in love with you has to wash off
all the colors that I left on your skin, violet for self-loathing,
gold for empty promises and indigo for the feeling of not breathing,
how you took them all and took them all in silence,
until they bled like a painting out your throat and stained your thighs.
7. 75% of you is made of water so I took a glass and I tried
to drink from you, but you were one of those fountains
that keeps pouring out its sadness until passersby
throw coins in its scarred basin.
8. Anne Boleyn had six fingers, all the more room to hold your heart
in my palms without dropping it; the last time I did the trash collector
had to bring the truck down to haul it away.
9. Let’s grow old together, you always have cab fare in your pocket,
you’ll always pay my way. I’d die before the nursing home took us.
10. Coda means the end of a musical section, coda means end,
the end, ending, but no, I just want this
to be the beginning.