My Best Friend Keeps My Heart In Its Cage

eager years

i love you forever because / i saved you / i wanted your life / more than you did / and like spring / gave it back / when you wanted it / once more / we shared jeans / a notebook like a spare brain / listened to sade / burned the lawsuit money / i get jesus / and his big expectations / of the living / because we’re all out of wishes / when we’re dead / i love you / permanently / i’ve never forgiven or forgotten / my whole human / life which is / longer and dumber and / tenderer / than we ever imagined / tender like a new bruise / bad voicemail / a picture you can’t see / without your heart falling through your ribcage / today / you stir the oil into peanut butter / wearing creases at the corner of your eye / like it’s nothing / and i am so moved / see i wasn’t built / for any of this / freak lightning behind my face / in the future you / entrust me with your kid / for an afternoon / the smallest life / a sparkplug brain / it’s totally different / we eat sushi deconstructed / by tiny fingers / we walk laps / around monet’s water lilies / my lovers rock cd skips now / i’m still here / you’re still here / i’m still here / you’re still here / .

after the car accident

you picked me up from the hospital
we got giant diet cokes and
threw rocks in the river
the thuds and splashes restoring
my expectations of gravity and
the whole ride home i stared
at the guardrail hemming
the highway, that endless swath
of thin metal rippling like water.