Grace - Dear and the Headlights

Shaking my teeth loose on your table

The dullest white squares I’ll never be

Now that you’ve picked each one apart

You can’t look at me

I’ll probably lose you now

But at least the ones I have still sparkle

Putting on your make up

Every day before he wakes up

So he can stomach your face now

Easier than he could without

Yeah, this is love, this is all that you could want

Open equals heavier

Hold your hand out palm side up

Open, empty, light enough

Minutes all turn to months

This is one thing we have all learned

Equations make a sum but it doesn’t add up

Signing up for that second semester

Because you won’t marry without the degree

Once I fix things up right

You won’t be so embarrassed of me

But I’ll never make it now

At least looking in the mirror won’t feel like lying

Posing for your stilted vision

Academic postcard prison

Raise your chin love

Purged a poem I swore was finished

Heaping lines half chewed unconscious

Settle on a plot, chalk another loss

Stage set for

Breathing and choking on swallowed conversations

Clutching and crawling for constant validation

Still nailed in the ruins of

Corporate co-dependence

Still stuck on the thought

That you’re the one exception

All the while just the same

I’m worried that the purpose is

How I look not how I lived

Let’s get dolled up and play pretend

Cause nothing stays honest when

Every thought is cursed with intent

A pulse covered in skin and

Words covered in lips

Taste the regret as it leaves your stomach

Coating your tongue with every noun

Watery eyes the only thing that makes sense now

Spitting your insides out

Start over, start over start over start over start over