We Both Forgot the Safe Word was Nebraska

I was a silverfish

curled in the spine of your favorite book.

You read me anyway.

Said

“This footnote bites back.”

***

You left your copy of Dharma Bums

in my freezer.

Said it was the coldest place

you could think of.

I thought maybe you were trying to preserve something.

Or sabotage my frozen peas.

***

You always smelled like thunderstorms

and pencil shavings.

I wrote a song about that once.

It was mostly humming

and the sound of me not texting you back.

***

You said your bathtub had a personality.

I said my shadow filed for emancipation.

Somewhere in the middle,

you kissed me

while a silverfish ate half the poem.

We called it Tuesday.

***

And your breath had

that Tuesday apocalypse scent—

burned circuits, wet pennies,

and a whisper of static

like the universe clearing its throat

before confessing.

***

You blinked,

and I time-traveled

three seconds into your mouth.

I nested behind your molars.

You hummed in C minor.

It was disgusting. I adored it.

***

You bought me a grapefruit

and carved your initials into the rind

with a key that once opened

your ex-girlfriend’s birdcage.

She never had a bird.

That was a metaphor.

Everything was.

***

We fell asleep

in a pile of not-quite-sincere apologies

and three unpaid parking tickets.

Harold, the Polaroid of your ankle,

watched over us like a saint

with no miracles to offer.

***

We had a date once

to reorganize your regrets alphabetically.

Got stuck somewhere between

“biting the dentist”

and

“leaving early from my birthday.”

I still think you should’ve stayed.

***

We touched foreheads.

The wallpaper peeled.

My left earlobe caught fire.

Yours glowed faintly

like a lie you forgot to regret.

***

I mailed you a shadow of myself

in an envelope that tasted like library dust.

You replied “cool” in lowercase.

I sobbed for four minutes and two decades.

***

I wanted to be the thing

you didn’t return to the library.

The overdue fine

you were willing to pay.

***

Sometimes I dream

I’m a VHS tape in your glove compartment.

Melted.

Loved once.

Unspooled across a state line

neither of us remember crossing.

***

I made you a mixtape

of modem screeches, night bus sighs,

and the sound your wrist makes

when you twist open truth.

***

I keep finding your voice

in things that don’t deserve it—

a voicemail from a pharmacy,

a potato chip shaped like Vermont,

my own mouth when I talk to strangers

and use your cadence

without meaning to.

***

Your voicemail still thinks I’m important.

I left it a haiku about elbow dimples.

It hasn’t called me back.

***

Sometimes, I hallucinate

the way you tied your shoes—

double knots like you didn’t trust the world

not to trip you.

You used to say

existence was just falling forward

and hoping someone catches your elbow.

I tried.

I swear I tried.

***

You whispered

“I love you like a basement flood.”

And I,

silverfish with no eyelids,

believed you with every segment of my idiot body.