requiem to sad history.

You don't listen until your eyes do.

You're analyzing paper words and wire lines

but you aren't listening 

until it's screaming at you from these electric pages.

I can hear your heartbeat through cyberspace.

An ex-best-friend that never left on bad terms,

but never came on good ones.

Your petty silence.

I'm so glad I left this town,

even though I dropped my poems on your doorsteps

when you couldn't even make it to mine before I left.

I was alone 

the night before I left.

And she'll roll her eyes at this,

but she rolls her eyes around anything with a heart and hands:

raw love, 

feelings, 

throaty goodbyes.

She rolls her eyes when I talk too loud,

but I'm not crying wolf to the girls who won't listen

until it's screaming at them

from this electric page.

Those who pull a curtain of pretty hair

between anything with a broken heart

and wet eyes

(and pretend that it's blocking out the sound).

Too good at walking out of beating hearts.

The best at making silence and mourning nothing.

I'm so glad I left this town

with you in it.

I tried to die once,

eighteen years deep,

surrounded by pavement screams and birthday candles.

I had too many friends

and none who cared,

so I prayed for a birthday party

in all-black with broken shoulders and a bad goodbye letter.

You probably didn't know about that.

You probably didn't know about the mercy prayers,

the "take-me" prayers,

the December 12 facedown-on-the-pavement prayers

when it rained

and I begged for heaven to rip my soul from my body.

I wasn't brave enough to do it.

I wasn't scared enough to leave.

But now it's nailing every corner of this paper town,

so do you believe me now?

You probably would have stopped rolling your eyes,

if I had stopped breathing.

But you would have heard my cries like a hailstorm

if I'd taken my last breaths

on this electric page.

I know how it goes.

I know how you go.

I watch you go every day.

My body was soaked in gasoline

and my soul had matches for fingers,

but by the time I told you about my heart,

all you watched me with

was your eyes.

You rolled your eyes.

You always do.

So I'm glad I left you behind,

after being left behind.

Maybe that stone heart would have started beating,

if mine had stopped.

But I won't do it.

You're a sorry piece of sad history,

that I'm leaving behind in this halfway town,

along with the nights I quit breathing,

and the mornings that almost weren't.

And you,

the biggest tragedy 

of them all.