TRYING TO WRITE YOU BACK TO LIFEby Emm Roy

one.

Your absence

has entered

every room.

two.

I know you always liked

to make jokes I didn’t understand,

but please stop being dead.

It’s not funny anymore.

three.

I burned the t-shirt you gave me

and told all your friends to fuck off.

I don’t listen to your favorite songs

anymore because they paint pictures

of your face and say I love you

in words you will never say again.

I hate everything that doesn’t bring

you back to me, so I hate everything.

I can’t recall the last time I saw you,

but I remember every time we threw words

at each other like weapons, every time

we waved apologies like white flags.

Had I known our hearts were wars,

I would have surrendered.

I would have loved you better.

four.

I know it can’t

stay fall forever.

Soon November will

surrender to December

and sooner than later

it will be winter again,

but I don’t want you

to leave anymore.

five.

Interim:

the time occurring

between events.

See also:

our relationship.

Litigation:

the process of

taking legal action.

See also:

I am taking

my heart back.

six.

Loving you was like

worshipping an indifferent god.

It is hard to lose faith

on a daily basis.

I don’t want to be

a sacrifice anymore.

You are not my miracle.

Amen.

seven.

I can’t tell what’s worse:

the boredom or the thinking of you.

I bit my lips until

they no longer tasted like someone

I used to be.

This is not about how much I miss you

even though everything is.

This is about how I miss

days that never happened and

places I have never seen.

This is about how 2am

feels too personal

and personal doesn’t feel

personal enough.

I want the world,

but the world can do

better than me.

I wish I could

do the same.

eight.

This morning the clock tick tick ticks

to tell me what I should have always known:

It was never enough to love like a storm.

We needed to survive the angry winds.

We needed to melt winter into spring.

We needed to learn the alchemy of staying,

of saying the right things at the right time.

Loving you was always my favorite chemistry,

but I never meant to make something explosive.

When I saw you, my heart tick tick ticked

because we were only ever counting time

until we figured out it wasn’t enough

to always wait for something to be enough.

This is an apology for all the days I spent

trying to burn down bridges so you would stay.

This is an apology for all the clocks that

tick tick ticked the days into oblivion.

This is an apology for all the times I tried

to swallow the wind to see if I could fly.

This is an apology for the way my heart

tick tick ticked in my chest like a time bomb

every time you walked away from me.

nine.

When you first wake up

from a realistic nightmare,

everything seems fake.

Are you awake or asleep?

You bite your lips to make sure.

You check if everything is

where you last remember it.

When you find out the one

you love no longer loves you,

everything seems fake.

Are you awake or asleep?

You bite your lips to make sure.

You check if everything is

where you last remember it.

ten.

I’ve felt all there was too feel,

yet I haven’t felt enough,

and none of it

will ever bring you back to me.

Can you hear it: the failure of language,

the thunder of realizing there is nothing left to salvage,

the crashing end of believing in someone,

all this nothing and all the ways in which

it weighs us down?

Can you hear it? Can you feel it?

Look at me. There is nothing left of me,

yet I’m still breaking, and no, I never needed you

or expected you to pick up the pieces,

but you had no right

to steal them.

I’m still waiting for someone to tell me it was a bad joke:

knock knock.

who’s there?

you.

You who?

you fucker, what the hell

made you think you had the right

to die and leave me here

alone

?

eleven.

I miss you

but that’s just

a polite way

of saying

fuck you

for leaving

me here

alone.

twelve.

I know I said

I would always find you beautiful,

but I don’t want to look

at your corpse.

thirteen.

I almost bring you back to life

every time I speak your name,

remember your face,

or miss you,

almost.

fourteen.

There is a biologically immortal species of jellyfish

that could technically live forever if it never met

predators or diseases (another form of predators).

Technically, you’re not gone; you’re decaying,

and I have kept you in the form of ticket stubs

and old love letters you never wrote. Technically,

you didn’t die alone. You were with the summer,

the sky, the stars, the passing cars, the possibilities

and the moment when they all went to sleep.

There is another species of jellyfish that glows

in the dark, and sometimes when it’s after 2am

and I can’t sleep because my head is clouded with

dusty memories of all you couldn’t leave behind,

I look up at the sky and pretend I can see a million

glow in the dark immortal jellyfish dancing on top

of the universe. I pretend there are always second

chances and the world is always beautiful. I pretend

I can still see you. I pretend I’m not missing you.

Some species of jellyfish are older than dinosaurs.

You died at twenty-two. Sometimes, I marvel the

almost impossible cruelty of an indifferent world.

Sometimes I miss you so much it stings with venom

that would put even the world’s most dangerous

jellyfish to shame. There is a species of jellyfish

nicknamed after the moon, and it’s beautiful, but

nothing was ever half as beautiful as you, and none

of this knowledge will ever bring you back to me.

fifteen.

The year of three autumns is the year

you told me you were in love with someone else.

It’s the year I started smoking to see

how it felt to burn from the outside in

instead of from the inside out.

It rained candles, snowed molten wax.

The weatherman announced the news that everything

was negative space. The president declared war

against Greek gods and supernovas. You forgot my face.

It became nearly impossible to feel human.

I washed the coffeemaker with vinegar.

I repeated words like “over” and “sorry” until they

lost all meaning, until I lost all meaning.

Weariness grew from me like branches from an

unknowing tree. 11:11pm became a death sentence.

It was the year earth learned to live without winter

and I clutched at a lifeboat taking me away from you.

You moved away, became someone else somewhere else,

kissed lips that didn’t taste like mine, rewrote our history

with running ink in your head, and I tried to move on.

sixteen.

There is no room,

no house, no country

big enough to hold them:

The regrets that broke in

when we weren’t looking.

I picture them as solid,

as real, as familiar objects.

The places we wanted to see,

but never visited: a map.

The people we wanted to be:

a broken television.

Every time the right words

stuck in the bottom

of your throat: a needle.

A kiss that never happened:

a sheet falling off your bed.

All the days, all the lives

we will never get back:

there is no room,

no house, no country,

big enough.

seventeen.

Some silences

are harder than others:

the silence when you say

I love you

to someone who

doesn’t say it back,

the silence when someone

you love dies,

the silence

when the rest of the world

is asleep, but

you’re wide awake

with your loneliness,

the silence

after the storm,

the silence

that never ends,

the silence

that follows you

everywhere

like a second shadow,

the silence

that you hear

in every word,

the silence

so heavy

you can almost touch it,

the silence

that crawls into your skin

and flows through your veins,

the silence

that hits like a knife,

the silence

that never stops

screaming.

eighteen.

I still bite my nails

when I think of you.

My apartment is too warm today.

Can you believe that?

Years of winter, and

suddenly it’s too warm.

I know what I said

and why you left, but

I just want you to know

I’ll forgive you

if you ever want to

stop being dead.

nineteen.

I gave birth

to your ghost

in my head and

now you haunt me.

I will never

sleep alone

again.