Our Numbered Days

I am just
carbon and bad timing.

I don’t know where I will get
the money, I don’t know what
I will tell my friends, I don’t know how
we will love each other in the nights of cold
and quiet, but airplanes exist and will fly
between where I live and where you are
so hold on, I’m coming.

I will have
fun like my life depends on it
because it does.

The first time I saw her, everything
in my head went quiet. All the tics,
all the constantly refreshing images,
just disappeared. When you have
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder,
you don’t really get quiet moments.
Even in bed I’m thinking
did I lock the door yes
did I wash my hands yes
did I lock the door yes
did I wash my hands yes.
But when I saw her, the only thing
I could think about was the hairpin curve
of her lips or the eyelash on her cheek
the eyelash on her cheek
the eyelash on her cheek.
I knew I had to talk to her.
I asked her out six times.
In thirty seconds. She said yes
after the third one, but none of them
felt right so I had to keep going.
On our first date, I spent more time
organizing my meal by color
than I did eating or talking to her,
but she loved it. She loved
that I had to kiss her goodbye
sixteen times, or twenty-four times
if it was Wednesday. She loved that
it took me forever to walk home
because there are a lot of cracks
in our sidewalk.
When we moved in together,
she said that she felt safe,
like no one would ever rob us
because I definitely locked the door
18 times. I’d always watch her mouth
when she talked when she talked when
she talked when she talked. When she
said she loved me, her mouth would curl up
at the edges. At night, she’d lay in bed
and watch me turn all the lights off and on
and off and on and off and on and off
and on and off. She’d close her eyes
and imagine that days and nights
were passing in front of her.
Some mornings, I’d start kissing her
goodbye but she’d just leave because
I was making her late for work.
When I stopped at a crack in the sidewalk,
she just kept walking. When she said
she loved me, her mouth was a straight line.
She told me I was taking up too much
of her time. Last week she started
sleeping at her mother’s place.
She told me that she shouldn’t
have let me get so attached to her,
that this whole thing was a mistake,
but how can it be a mistake
that I don’t have to wash my hands
after I touch her? Love is not a mistake.
It’s killing me that she can run away
from this and I just can’t. I can’t
go out and find someone new
because I always think of her.
Usually, when I obsess over things,
I see germs sneaking into my skin.
I see myself crushed by an endless
succession of cars. She was the first
beautiful thing I ever got stuck on.
I want to wake up every morning
thinking about the way she
holds her steering wheel. How she turns
shower knobs like she’s opening a safe.
How she blows out candles blows out
candles blows out candles
blows out candles blows out
candles blows out candles
blows out—
now I just think about who else
is kissing her. I can’t breathe because
he only kisses her once. He doesn’t care
if it’s perfect. I want her back so bad,
I leave the door unlocked.
I leave the lights on.

You will never be more wrong than the first time
you say “I love you.” You will
mean it, sure, but you’ll still be lying.

How to Kill Yourself without Hurting Anyone
Don’t.

And when your fourth love leaves you,
you will want to kill yourself but
you won’t. You no longer think of suicide
as a house you will build one day.
Your fourth love, who is your first
real love, who brought you peace
when your whole body was a gun:
when she leaves you, ask your roommate
to hide the knives because you will carve
her name into all of the food in your fridge.
Stop showering. Warmth will remind you
of her. Masturbate in public. Hope someone
catches you. You need to feel vulnerable
in front of anyone else. Try to burn her
clothes. Try to fall in love with strangers.
Try to fall asleep without her: open the windows:
she would have wanted them closed;
turn off the radio: she can’t sleep without
noise—you can’t sleep without noise,
but noise will sound like her whispering
you into the world of lights and breakfast;
make the rain sound like nothing, make
the rain sound nothing like her voice.
Don’t be alone. When you are alone,
you won’t do anything you did with her,
so you won’t do anything. Marvel at how she,
the patient gardener, the bringer of sleep,
she who draws the bath and lights the candles,
she who made you someone who could make
himself into someone, she made you want
to live more than anything else, and now
she makes you want to leave the world
because you have seen it. In her
you have seen the color and shape
of your perfect life and now the children,
the house, the arguments about tablecloths,
they are all fading like things left in sunlight,
like any dream left too long in the light.
For months—years—every time you see her
you will want to kiss her. When you do,
you will expect pain to come like the old dog
you could never bring yourself to put down,
but there will be none. You will remind yourself,
she will remind you, you will remind each other,
that this is for the best, that you are physically
incapable of loving one another, and in those
moments you will be lying, your heart screaming
I CAN I CAN I CAN. But you’ll stay silent.
Because of her. Because she asked for this.
Because she filled something in you
that’s still full, even though
she’s gone.