acrimony

i have spent too long loving you
like a store shutting down, slashing my prices,
hoping there’s something here you might
want to buy before i go under.

this is not your fault. i was told that loving
desperately and wholly was light years
better than loving practically, but you
have spent four years loving me like i am a siege
and you are worried that your fortress’s walls
are not high enough. i think i mean
that you love me cautious; you love me
circumstantially.

most nights i waste hours not looking at my phone
and trying to remind myself how much i am
worth without you by my side. the numbers
never add up. maybe this is because
you have never been constant enough to be an equation.

look here, i have it on good authority
that universes exist in my skin and stars have died
so that i could live. stars have died and i have
survived and you will not be the one to make me wish
my soul was nothing but a black hole.

i can’t shake the thought that you are my novel and
i am your parenthetical expression.

this will be the last poem i write about you.
it is similar to the first poem i wrote about you,
in that i am still afraid to use your name.
but i will slip in a couple of words that aren’t
coincidences. a piece of imagery that calls
back half of a memory of my smile.
you might understand. you might not.

don’t worry, i still think of you like you
are the stars but i gave up being an astronaut
years and years ago
and when i see you now all i think is that
you are unreachable.