Remember, you will die (watchface, slow ticking)

Poetics masked as years (beautiful, broken men)
--weeks old.
From you, I’ve cut fingertips
Pulled teeth
Lit fire, and of course…
walked shamefully from cinders.
I’ve called you “a lover…once”
A dozen or more times.
You as lover is he as lover
But she as lover is three weeks as
secret
--coded numbers, thousand mile stare,
crying in the shower lover.

and you said, “a lot. A lot a lot.” And
I wonder the half life
of that measurement. How quickly your
world must orbit the sun.

So Rare, Her Smile

When I get home,
I will hide the guns.
(at this point the person becomes dependent
on a romantic interest due to the slightest bit of attention
from the person they are attracted to.)

My lover--
a
be damned and die young,
James Dean leftover
put-a-bird-on-it sort of soul--
used to talk for hours (four hours) about my teeth.
To anyone who would listen.

A girl in San Francisco told
me so.

This poem is not
about teeth.
(the anxious phase is considered the relational turning point)
It is about
running away.