I Take The Long Way Home To Avoid The Tree You Carved Our Names Into

You filled your stomach with a pint of vodka
the night we fought until you broke into tears,
yelling until your throat was raw that you
yearned for me,
needed me,
that I was the air in your lungs.
I told you to pack up our 4 years and to leave,
that this was the last time my mouth will spill your name.
You stole my car and drove off towards the blazing horizon,
leaving me battered and bruised.

Three months later my phone rang with your mother's voice.
She tripped over the words like a child learning to walk.
I could hear her force them out of her stomach as she said,
"He imprinted your name into his skin 129 times.
He dented his bedroom walls with his yells for your touch.
His nerves became shot from all the pills he ingested.
And one night, he tried to hang up his heart
from the bar in the closet but the rope broke.
He said he was crazy,
that he started to see your face in the cracks of his brain
and hearing your voice late at night,
whispering up thunderstorms and hurricanes."
She said you loved me
and that you drove off the bridge at 2:30 four nights ago.

That same night I cried until I was gasping for you
to fill my lungs, to fill the spaces between my fingers.
My body ached for you to say my name,
to mutter you never loved a mind as much as mine.
I occupied my bedroom walls with screams for you.
I got onto my knees one night and pleaded for God
to bring back the only man who touched my heart
and not only my body.
I poured two of bottles of whiskey into my system
and drowned myself in the bathtub
with your named carved into my skin 36 times.