Written by Lauren

You placed it inside that old jewelry box.

You remember—

The mahogany ridges I used to trace,

with my index finger,

wishing that it was your hair.

It rested beneath your collection of rose petals.

A dream wound too tightly to a star.

Incinerating the twine beneath my heart.

It is burning my fingertips—

Can you smell the heat?

Your vapid delusions—

dribble down the stem of my wine glass.

Pretentious scribbles etched into my skull.

It lingers between the hairs on my arm.

The ones that matched yours perfectly.

Since you’ve returned—

the twitching is back.

Like the familiar glow of my surviving headlight,

rolling past the dents on my skin.

I listen for you beneath creaks in the staircase.

I am drowning in your sappy sultry words.

My dreams are smeared like icing.

Philosophies stuck like sprinkles.

There is cedar in my hair.

I watched that Japanese movie—

it made me cry too.