for what it's worth

Every time I loved you
Was another song in the soundtrack of my life
Found poems of
Missing beats,
Off key -
Strokes are playing on the radio;
Oh baby I feel so down
It turns me off
When I feel left out

Trading broken souls for records the size of my dreams
Piling up in the archives
Being scr-scr-scratched with my fingertips
Skipping like hearts that pump a little too fast when I’m around you
Cut grooves in my fingers from stand up bass strings
Just a little too heavy to bend without catharsis to the key of A minor

Every time I loved you
Was a story for each of the frets on my guitar,
Grinding down like my teeth at night
Hoping it’s not the last time I hold you

Lost souls
Step carefully over the broken glass now
The fish that swam in it are long gone;
Our years have become desperately held kisses

I know you’re leaving
Please don’t leave,
I’m quaking like the tectonic tremblings in imogen heap melodies
That the speakers next to my ears scream
As you try to drown out my pleas
With warfare onscreen

Every time I loved you was
A major city whose name I carved into my veins just in case
I forgot to visit them before we became terminal
Sitting in airports for arrivals that will never land

Because loving you never had false pretenses of
Chocolate and red flowers delivered to the doorstep
(but not roses, they’re too cliché)
And if I could cliché a romance it’d be
Flower petals with sonnets of stardust hieroglyphics written on the insides of pistils
Stamens shot up like heroin in hopes of getting high off of a better future
So baby, objectify my sexuality like a katy perry song


And after you
I sang myself lullabies of Joseph Heller and Aldous Huxley to stop from wilting
And I saw it as an extended metaphor for all that could have been
Like metaphors that had given up on being great and settled for being a simile

After you
I found love poems to you etched as scars in my esophagus
And the ulcers that stomach acid should never cause in my mouth
Because I loved you past your expiration date
And the putrid stench of sour milk still lingers in my nostrils when I lean over the toilet
Purging thoughts of you that comforted me like laxatives never should

After you
I found solace in early morning emergency room visits
From bleeding you out a little too much
There are cuts so deep on the insides of my thighs
They sing romance and objectification like r&b songs


But now I cradle self-affirmation as my prophecy
Holding confidence between my fingertips like rosary beads

I am self-improvements from slashing you out of my veins with optimism
Sonnets written on the insides of my wrists like stigmata
Telling stories of triumph and survival from deconstructing myself
until I had broken down to rock bottom
Whistled breaths of confidence between buckteeth waxing nostalgic
Waning moons pulling in tides of change like loose coins stuck in childhood piggy banks
Cashing in every time I loved you
For what it’s worth