My back is breaking

The notches in my headboard are for nights I haven't slept through the chill of January drafting between the seams of my panes. I list all the names I'm sick of--the names I'm sick from. It's a list that never has to be written. At the top, a former love who traveled and returned a mute. He looks at me with the disappointment he felt in the pit of his bowels after every time we fucked. He reckons there's something to reconcile, but I've grown accustomed, fond of any look. His hands are rougher, calloused; I stare as he picks dead skin from between his fingers. At the top of alphabetical notches, his name fits like the pillow beneath my head.

I had every intention of writing good things.

Skin: absorb/repell
on/off

He lays on the floor, reading--his back angled over a combination of elbows and pillows. Nothing short of usual: the living room, but I'm picturing a fireplace. Turning the pages of a wartime memoir (Vietnam, 19--; the bloodiest battle), while I pretend I'm small enough to fit between his shoulder blades.

I sleep naked on the nights that I miss him and I want to feel his skin. Few and far between, and I reason the sheets will suffice against mine. My legs dissolve as I lay, melting; cotton fiber absorption.
Sinking. The draft from the window kisses my forehead, and my last thoughts are of words that are letters apart.

The closest I can get is hovering.

My father called to say he'd been praying for me.

I don't talk to my friends like that. But we'll stay friends.

I have nightmares about people I've left behind. The curly hair. The hands that couldn't open my jars.

I screamed all night, damning the cracks in my plaster walls,

forgetting which bed I slept in.

My friends never made curfew. I hid behind the couches they shared.

Walking in and out of dust.

Five years I screamed.

I know the mice are in the walls, refusing to be caught.

I'm close, I'm cheap, I'm the king.

I'm afraid that when I lay my head down nothing will happen.

Ireland

He'll leave tomorrow. Drinking at cheap bars, I'm anxious to see if I'll notice.

If I'll sleep better.

I'm not so small. Pound for pound. My tight grip.

He'll be sent off with the cookies I couldn't stomach. Used charcoal I couldn't handle.

My mind races for sport as I sleep upon piles of clothes--folded, sorted--that never quite made it back home. Maybe they're in transition--finding a new home because the old one turns their insides like weaves. Because the old one is too small to sleep.

All the wrong people kiss my neck.