"orthodontics"

you chipped your teeth

    on the words you could not say

    as they fought for space

        behind cracked lips

    you hated me as deeply as

        you said you loved

                      me

    on the night where I fell silent

        and scraped my knees

    on a gravelly voice

    I could not respond to

you hated me for fourteen minutes

        and I wish you had said so

    instead of leaving “love” to

        sit acidic in the air

            until we both

                choked

this is not a love poem––

    to be written inside of glossed cards

and analyzed on

        chalkboards / powdered-sugar-hypotheses

white handprints

on a crimson skirt

this isn’t that sort of

    poem, because you walked out of

the front door of my family’s house

        too late for the neighbors to see

my father had forgotten his place

on the proverbial

porch:

shotgun in his lap

        tradition on his side

    he did not protect me from falling

        from this height

this is not a love poem––

because you didn’t look back

    didn’t turn and give me a wry smile

or a knowing look

or return with heaving breath and tiring arms

like John Cusack

at the end of a movie I wished you liked

because you didn’t

say anything

because you never opened

your mouth /

and I never saw

        the wreckage I left