I make to-do lists in which every other bullet on the list is another to-do list. As a result I never accomplish anything because each item consists of “Stop missing you.” Sitting in Chinese restaurants waiting for egg drop soup to arrive always makes me weep for some inexplicable reason and the fortune cookies are even worse. My hands hurt like improperly used commas whenever someone else utters your name by accident, I want one of those machines that sucks the breath back into speakers’ mouths so every syllable of your surname would go with it.
Fuck fall leaves for their emotional instability. Never Have I Ever not wanted to die without you here, so if you’re looking for a bargain, my next gravesite would be it. Never Have I Ever admired my hipbones for being able to hold everything in or wished to be only your rib like Adam & Eve; I’d rather be your spleen and liver too. The roof of my mouth shelters so many words beneath it that the beams are failing and they all have to do with missing you. 24 mangos are rotting in my kitchen cupboard but 0 of them are ripe. I know you love them, that’s why they’re still here.
I stare at bloody steaks in the meat aisle because I get them confused with the state of my heart. Vermont has one lake too many and catching gangrene sounds good right about now. Before hanging up the phone after our last call I asked permission to put your eyelashes in a mason jar on the windowsill where the moths would eat them, but it went to voicemail before you could say another word. In silent movies I wear earplugs in order to pretend to hear your voice before it fades into the loudness of the silent background credits.
Kissing people who kiss other people is wrong but I ignore the adage and put other peoples’ tongues into my mouth who have had your tongue in their mouths just to taste you again. It’s desperate and it makes me angry and sad but even their saliva reminds me of your P.O. Box. Don’t ask me why. I tried to mail my entire body there the other day but the postman said I had breached the carrying capacity.
Never Have I Ever been as scared of anything as this poem because this poem makes the absence of you real. I love paradoxes but I hate this one.