At bay

crazy how just listening to music makes me want to break my promise of verbal disregard

Strident keys and abysmal base lines I find all too excruciatingly familiar

Reminded of you through every melody that passes my lips

You’ve infiltrated the very defense I’ve had against the likes of your poison

Sweet poison

I haven’t sang with purpose in weeks

Afraid to hear the sound of a resounding voice grown meek

You always hated it when I laughed 

w rigid eyes so sharp you’d yell at me to stop till instead of bursts of laughter 

it was tears I had to fight to keep from spltting my insides

But you were the funny bitch, the class clown 

& how you loved to wear your exhausted crown

No heads drooped down on your time you’d say 

Was that it? Because I recollect us just trying to keep ours at bay 

To let my head down was to drown

So

Take your tired metaphors of being sad

Throw them up into the air just to frantically recollect them

stuff them back into my mouth in a teary eyed self conscious frenzy

Look around, break down 

is this what heartbreak feels like?

Melodramatic circles I draw until I’ve lost the beauty in my erratic

dancing flame I recall with bittersweet laughter the 

complex equations you’d draw with your jutted hips 

as I danced and danced

to the rhythms I felt for and drew from your troubled heart

I just wanted you to hear that you were beautiful too

& what compositions ensued when the thumps and bumps of my own whispered sweet melodies into my ear

The song was young, self aware but painfully blind love

a cacophony of contradiction, retribution, assimilation and not enough inhalation

Remember when you mistaked my panic for orgasm?

1,2,3 was it more times?

A sweet memory of mine soured once again I no longer laugh

you, oh predictable you 

you always hated it when I laughed