I will not panic in the absence,
of your xanax hair that makes you feel like those things
you try to believe in. Like your humor,
like your smile, like you're inflated to the bigger person
you wish to chew on
without letting the fat cells sink
to thigh-level and your skull
to sky-level.

Your scowl is the one thing
that makes my eyes turn into spiral stairs
at 8am. We are more than car park friends now,
I wait in phone boxes and you sit on rooftops
with your theorem-lids vomiting sleep --
you should not let them hit the ground,
we do not know this gravel well.

You speak in half truths --
you say I'm a victim of finger nails
that bleed like water fountains.
You say I am fourteen and lost
inside a house of mirrors. You say
I collect mistakes for the sake of a story,
for the sake of a laugh, for the sake of a desperate poem
that I will not-send to you,

but I imagine your reaction anyway.