we grew closer as we grew further apart
your eyes like dollar signs and my
pockets heavy with devotion
and rage you sat atop a golden throne
back in Boston
your digital footprint engraved onto my own fingertips

i sat as water poured on from me from
the heavens above
unsalted and pure,
blistering and boiling my blood
sifting through the grime and gold until
all that was left was the precipitant of
what could have been
the anti dilution made the
thought of you that much
more painful

i draw parallels when we are
worlds apart but i thought of you when
i saw Cassiopeia tonight, vain as ever but
reminding me with the glint of a thousand suns that
she was still there and i could not forget
your precious vanity when you told me i had
the eyes of someone you once knew

i took down precious memorabilia of us
things that were irreplaceable as a
boy laid in my bed but i was proving it
more to him than you that i didn’t miss the way
we woke up in the morning to snow lining
the windowsills of your apartment
i never thought snow angels would sink through
the earth and line the landscape with
the craters you left when you touched
my skin

so i fill up the empty cavities with
a tooth that had an acquired taste
only for you and the boys that were
aspartame and sickly sweet

i hate the way my heart cradles you
delicately in the veins and white noise of
pumping blood, blood that you know only
pumps for you but the same blood that
courses through my temples when you lie through
your teeth, blood that coagulates and ceases to
run when i think of that one night
or that week
or that year

you were an iv, a deadly
bruise that never faded
spread through varicose veins like
spider webs brushed away by a
violent tidal wave i f*cking hate you but
i know that my blood is formidable and
temperamental, i can never despise you
it is in my dna to will it so
it is in those red blood cells that hold
the genetic code to loving you and it says that
i can never let you go