unsinkable (titanic love poem)

i think i could be malfunctioning
my stomach is churning butter
patpatslapping away the seconds 
that you have been gone

i am filling my room with my things
piling them up on the floor
so when i get scared at night
i can curl up in them and sleep

i wake up with reciepts stuck to my elbows
and half chewed chewing gum 
tangled in my hair or under my nails
but it never makes the monsters go away

cigarettes and windows and bruises and glass
never were the me i wanted to become
warmth and sand and milkshakes 
and never being answered fit so much better

i get these headaches sometimes when
traffic lights and police sirens and rainy weekends
sprout words like flowers on the tv
opening and unfolding before your eyes

the letters of the words of the sentences
are crowding up in my head and the 
sharp M and the hooked
J catch and tear and oh it hurts

i write tiny ideas down squishing
fitting and folding all these feelings into 
one tiny idea like you fit our 
life stories into onelittlekiss onelittletouch

i remember in summer i would walk out across
the roads near my house
with just my bare feet and the hot black surfaces
eating one layer of my sole at a time

that was only one road and the black is shiney silver 
with rain and oilslicks but i promise to jump out the window 
and run to your garden gate tonight
if you promise to hold me when i get there