Eighty-two.

How lucky I was. How sorry I am to have taken it for granted.

Eighty-one.

I would pretend so hard
that you couldn't reach me.
A mountain
circled with lava
on an island
in an ocean
filled with dragons.
It was never true.

Eighty.

The fruit on the kitchen table,
turning brown, that you didn't buy
for yourself, and the orange towel
taken from the closet and hung
next to yours. You cannot bring yourself
to touch them.

Seventy-nine. Faster, now.

You've finally drawn too many waves
and you weren't paying close enough attention
and they're swallowing you up,
instead of the sparrows and farmhouses,
pounding into your lungs,
you thought the before was uncomfortable?
You thought that a strained hour was bad?
Here, the dreams about whales
that you can no longer tell him,
the painting in your kitchen from the weekend away,
too many songs, too many oceansides,
too many open fields, too many beautiful places.
His hands that never failed to ground you,
all of the times you told him not to stare,
the gingham of his shirt that you first wrote about,
the battles that you should have fought louder,
god, how everything should have been louder.
Everything should have been so much louder.

Seventy-eight.

I am strong, I am strong, I am strong.

Seventy-seven. Sea creatures turning into monsters turning into buildings.

I've made more drawings
in the last two weeks
than I did in the entirety
of our first year together.
All of it is disgustingly
bittersweet:
The sound of bathwater,
the lack of air conditioning,
the bowl of rotting fruit
positioned in the exact center
of the kitchen table,
and everything
that I no longer believe in.

It's lonely, living here.
I have my cat and two-dozen
sketchbooks, and he wakes me
with a hand on my thigh
when I'm whimpering in nightmares,
but on any given day
I am a solitary creature,
with or without choice.
I keep my shoes in a pile
in a separate bedroom
because you can never have
too many immediately accessible things
to walk away on.

Seventy-six.

It's up to you
to find me.