broken bits

I'm tired of saying the same things. 

I feel myself pulling away and holding on, my shoulders snapping out of place and my fingers turning red and white on your arms. I'm coping with the death of our togetherness, relearning how it was before--cold under a hundred blankets, my skin moving independently of my limbs and my mind is here to everyone else. 

To myself, I am broken into parts and these parts of me don't work together, don't congeal like my blood is supposed to (though even my blood is moving differently, slow in my fingers and too eager to fill my scrapes). And before I know it, I'm carved away and snapped apart and my hands are gripping your wrists while my body bleeds like a rewinding sponge and I can't remember how many fingers stem from each of my palms. 

I think you're reading my lifelines, tracing the wrinkles with the same fingertips that touched my nose and folded into the shape of my back as we'd walk along the sidewalk before my atoms separated. 

I'm afraid my parts are shuffled jigsaw pieces, flipped and misprinted and swept into the dustpan when I clean the house. I'll need your help to put myself back together, so please, lend me my hands and I'll screw them back into place and our knees will brush under the coffee table as we right-side the pieces and match up the colors again. 

counting to nineteen

all that's in my head is leaving songs
our feet tangled in each other
because neither of us wants to step away

as we lay in our quiet eye
the storm whispering behind the door,
scratching like a thirsty cat,
I try not to love you
so it stings a little less, you see

I fix on our opposite breathing-
you push in my stomach while I breathe it in
and shy away from my skin as I breathe out-

but every nineteen breaths
our lungs fall into rhythm
our breathing in tune
and all that's in my head is this leaving song
and for a moment I don't mind the stinging,

but it's starting to rain a little harder
so let's count to nineteen a little faster
and hum this part a little louder