Stop equating falling for someone with blacking out after
a night of heavy drinking; bloody Mary’s are not void fillers
and some voids cannot even be patched up with superglue.
Remember, drinking about someone is worse than
thinking about them. If you are going to try running away
from yourself, don’t forget to come back once in awhile
to collect your shadow. But it will cost you, because
self-love is like a toll booth that gets more expensive
every time the car rolls over the bridge, and even
the one person sitting in the booth hasn’t yet learned
how to love themselves either. You have wanted
and waited for men with hands like sledgehammers
and swallowed raisins soaked in oil like lozenges,
treated your birthmarks like grapefruit blood
if citrus fruits could commit suicide by shooting out
their brains with a handgun. Loneliness gets caught
in your mouths in the exact same shape as laughter
used to; you must have heard that it is possible
to choke on your own vomit, but it is also possible
to choke on your own loneliness too, rising like bile
to the top of your throat. There are always going to be
the women that go down to the beach and fall asleep
in the carcass of a dead shark and find a home
between its teeth, just as there will always be the men
that treat your body like a cheese grater and keep trying
to peel you apart layer after layer. Please, stop
with the onion metaphors. This tearing yourself apart
is not like coring an onion: it’s more like dousing
your own heart in lighter fluid
and setting it on fire without a warning.