the last of my patience.

i was suffocated by the dawn of summer before spring left my pallete. i felt the heat of late april pavement and prayed that it wouldn't boil my veins like mercury. i promised a million times over to call and think and miss you to death.



maybe a part of you did die;

but it's hard to tell now.
august has already baked me into a porcelain fragment.




and chemistry can't save the best of us.




***



i wasted my last week of break wanting you to miss me a little more. you asked why exactly it was that i never tried to reach out and ask for your time.
i'm not a beggar.

no matter how desperate i look to you.




because maybe that's all that ever mattered:
how much i was willing to throw away.




***



i'd love to see how much you'd give for another shot at being human. how hard you would fall on your knees and how tight you'd clasp your shaking, calloused hands. i'd love to watch the way you bruise.



you'd ask the same way i'm sure jobe asked god; like a leper and a widow and a beggar.

                                      "dear god,
                                                takeme.
                                                takeme.
                                                takeme.
                                                my lungs are tight with cancer."




***



because i love you like the sea. like faded pastels and horror movies set in quaint valleys. i love you like the carbon coating my lungs, and you know as well as i do that it's
just

not


  -enough.


because your love isn't the same. it's hollow and chromatic. it ricochets off of my insides and breaks bones i didn't know existed. and i'd sit on any park bench painted sepia and gold to prove that i'm worth the time and energy.


but how many seconds did you burn thinking on me?
i could count them on my fingers.

and how many did i let pass me by thinking on you?
there aren't enough fingers in the whole damn world.




***



but this is the interlude to the end of the hot months i spent hating you. the twelve weeks i spent missing you. and the half hour i spent pushing these words out of my fingertips. because tomorrow is a new season. a new day. and a looseleaf promise.



i'll cry and tell them i'm ready for autumn.
i'm ready for the dying colors.

i'm ready for the fall.