A Voicemail for My Newest Ghost

Next week,

when you answer my text

all big smile and tiny ears

Trimmed scruff and kind eyes

I will use every particle of my being,

every feminist article I read off Facebook,

every you’re worth more than this bullshit pep talk

I’ve given my friends before me

to not answer you.

I’m worried that still won’t be enough.

Because I want to answer you.

I want to be with you.

And that’s why this hurts.

Why I hurt.

But I changed your name to fuckface on my phone

And once I do that your number means

I won’t

I won’t

tell you how you set free the butterflies in my stomach

de-metamorphasized them into worms

I won’t

describe how I’ve felt more beautiful in your bed

than I have for years

of waking up mid-dream of someone holding me

to a padding cell of my own emptiness

Your head back

My legs tongue-tied around your back

I asked if I could do anything

and you told me to stay sexy

But these sentiments are now sediments

at the bottom of a drained pool

Why did I think that if I broke enough rules I could have you?

That when you laid next to me,

staring at my morning face

evaporated smile,

thinking rippled across your soft eyes

you just downed a shot of this bourbon heavy early love?

I’m punch drunk

An upside down cake in a cupcake liner

Dessert misspelled into desert

Thinking respect meant to be seen

You kissed me so many times.

This time I wasn’t a collection of broken veins

No ventricles that never reached fluttering atria

This time I wasn’t the girl waiting for the next man to leave

When I was five

I told my entire class that today I was meeting my daddy

Today he’s going to be my father

See,

I come from a world where fatherhood is worth bragging about

Where showing up seems like silly girl fantasies

My heart whispers paper airplanes that sail to the ground

I became a woman

when five-year-old me spent two hours alone

in the post-dismissal parking lot

and knew he would never drive me home

I won’t tell you that story

I won’t tell you I collect stories on the metro

casting for extras for my dreams

I won’t tell you that I’m standing in that elementary school parking lot

Your shadow all over me like sunscreen

I won’t tell you that it was mean

You were mean

Not playing it cool or causal

Fucking someone twice, then not having balls to say you no longer want them is mean

and I won’t tell you

That I am not mean

I am snowflaked eyelashes

Taking walks in the frosty rain

Bubble wrap in angry hands

I am blunt humor

New York pizza bubbled to the roof of your mouth

Sticky cheesy burning goddamn bliss

Knitting scarves out of yesterdays

The phone number you call in the middle of a human hurricane

I won’t tell you I’m beautiful

Because you already know I’m beautiful

You know the things you’ve forgotten,

they’re just misfiled in your brain

I won’t tell you that my brain reads like a dictionary

my memories come in definitions

I am a garden where every tree has a name

Every paper cut is dressed in poetry

I am poetry

The best book you were too busy to read

When you ghost a ghost hunter

You haunt your own tomorrows

And yes,

you’ll stay here,

a vague moment of tangible

of me feeling like I could touch infinity

or lullabies

or something that could hold me into sleep tonight

But I won’t tell you

Tonight I will still be as silly-sexy

Eating metaphors off the bar

That I’ll drink up half empty glasses until I’m full.