I used to write poems about how the small of my back

must feel in your hands—like china, the delicate bone, white

curve and arc. About how when your hair fell into your eyes it was like snow

falling softly on the pines outside your window. But then the snow turned into rain, the god-

damn unpredictable weather, and all the ink bled into blue

and black veins, the pages breaking like, breaking like

waves, and I began falling like, falling

like something terrible I stumbled out of the wake of you, away

from the shore of you, disentangled

myself from your thighs, your mouth

has left bruises on the insides of my elbows, they look

like little violets, they’re so beautiful, it hurts now to think about everything and I

am lonelier than pills in a sock drawer, the mattress

that committed suicide on the highway.