Lauren Bullock/ Love notes [lyrics]

If my heart is poetry,

then the last love poem I wrote is a crumpled up memo and you 

are a journal I was hoping to fill my days with 

until the space ran out. 

But I must have cramped my writing hand because 

even muscle memory has forgotten how I used it. 

Were you thinking of her then too?

When I flipped through your pages, 

did you remember her fingerprints on your surface edges?

Was I just a creased corner pointing backwards for the place you saved for her?

And when she broke your heart, 

did she also crack your spine so you would always fall in her direction? 

I admit I never left you open on my nightstand, 

but I guess you were already stolen in someone else’s secrets and affection. 

There’s a reason I stopped using notebooks and pencils; 

at least the backspace is relatively painless 

when you enter into a document knowing it’s only temporary. 

And no, I’m not afraid of her ink stains, 

just my habit to Rorschach their meaning into tea leaf and palm-line predictions, 

reminders that all stories must have endings 

because I will always believe in the portraits of disaster, 

even if it never begins. 

So when did I become so bold that I scrawled my thoughts in marker, 

hoping they would bleed through your body and become permanent. 

But you marked hers first.

Said you would always be her diary, 

and I guess that makes me an entry on an off day. 

But see, I don’t care how many libraries there are in the world; 

I’d still look for you when I can’t find the right synonym for beautiful 

when other men touch me I am searching for your plot lines. 

Your papercuts are the first thing I was willing to bleed for in so long. 

But i’m not blaming you. 

I’m blaming me. 

Because if my heart is poetry, 

then I only want you to remember the lines about love 

lingering like my scent on your t-shirt 

that night you asked me over, 

even though we both had to get up early the next morning. 

Do you remember? 

You said you’d put it on later just to be close to me again. 

But I’m not trying to be more than your friend, 

nor am I postponing an inevitable end. 

After all, they say if you truly love someone, 

let them go. 

So please know that I’m willing to paper crane all your pages 

until they papyrus the sky 

like the stars we’ll finally discover when they turn out all the lights. 

And I may never be the one who sleeps next to you at night, 

but at least let me be the love letter tucked beneath your pillowcase 

to remind you that no matter what, 

you will always, always be worth the read, my love.

14 Lines From Love Letters Or Suicide Notes/ 14 lineas de cartas de amor o notas suicidas POR DOC LUBEN [lyrics]

1. Don’t freak out.

2. We both know this has been coming for a long time.

3. I have been staying awake at nights, wondering if I should tell you.

4. I bought the kind of crackers you like. They are in the hall cupboard.

5. Now that we have watched all the episodes of True Blood, I do not know what else to do next.

6. I have just been too afraid for too long.

7. This is the kind of thing where waiting for the time to be right would just mean waiting forever; it’s the kind of thing no one else can help you decide.

8. I came home on Thursday and found all of the chairs in the house stacked in a pile in the center of my kitchen; I don’t know how long they have been like that, but it must have been me that did it. It is the kind of thing a ghost might do, to prove to the living he is still there. I am haunting my own apartment.

9. My grandmother was still alive when I was five years old and she told me to check if the iron was hot enough yet, so I pressed my hand against it, and it was red and screaming for hours. Twenty five years later she would still sometimes apologize, in the middle of conversations, I feel so bad about making you touch the iron, she would say, as though it had just happened. I cannot imagine how we forgive ourselves for all of the things we didn’t say until it was too late. But how else do you tell if something is hot but to touch it?

10. I imagine my furniture in your apartment.  

11. I wonder how many likes it will get on facebook.

12. My dad always used to tell the same joke, but I can’t remember the punch line.

13. I was eight years old and it took three weeks (three eight year old weeks— imagine) to gather everything I needed to be Batman. Rope, boomerangs, a mardi gras mask with the beads cut off. I couldn’t find a cave near my house, so I buried them all in a bundle under the ivy. Four years after,

I tried to find that spot again.

          The ivy grew too fast.

              I searched in so many spots

it seemed impossible I had missed any.

But I never found it.

How can something be there

       and then just not be there?

         How do we forgive ourselves

             for all the things we did not become?

14. I was never bold enough to buy bright green sheets. I wanted them, but  always thought they were too brash, even with no one but me to see them. I bought a set yesterday and put them on the bed. I knew that you would like them.