dear ex lover i promise ill stop chasing your memory in my dreams ill stop bringing your name up over cups of coffee muffins and loneliness i will marry a man and i will lay my heart on his chest like red roses on mahogany caskets and ill have his daughter and shell have eyes reminding me that god still believes in second chances and if she ever decided to love a woman i will rub bravery down her spine i will be reminded of all the times that we loved like there were expiration dates tattooed on our inner thighs if she ever comes home with eyelids like cracking levis and bruised kneecaps and a heart filled with question marks i will hold her like my mother never held me i will clasp her face in my palms like the new testament on judgement day ill tell her that love is the passion that allows you to do the right thing and that no woman can play coaster to a half empty heart and if she ever feels as if she is alone as if she is a hand me down pulled out of the depths of mummys closet ill remember your name and ill mumble it under my breath and if she asks me what i said ill tell her i know what its like to drag a woman out of a cold war and then being too worn to clean up the battlefield that it has made of you ill tell her that your heartbeat sounded like gun shells tripping over battered cement ill tell her that i know what its like just to want someone to remember you and that some women are as foul as expired men in produce isles and that apologies are like oxygen masks on a hijacked plane forgive yourself before you ever forgive the person sitting next to you ill tell her to never regret loving in permanent ink and that scars only give you stretch marks something to gossip about and that hearts and stop signs are fraternal twins lost in open roads and hollow chests and if my daughters mirror ever looks unfamiliar and shes too embarrassed and prideful to run into mummys arms ill pray that she has friends with hearts filled with thousands of fire flies who are not too cool to pray with her who will tell her to stop looking for the light at the end of the tunnel and find god in the darkness if my daughter ever walks in my house like shattering glass ill tell her about you ill tell her that we hurt like c sections birthing dead babies and that we cried together and we prayed together and we laughed like our smiles were the only ones that mattered in this world and that we hurt like women who loved women who loved people that did not love us dear ex lover i hope my daughter never knows what a goodbye kiss feels like i hope she never knows what ill see you later really means i hope she never memorizes the dial tone of a last conversation because a broken heart feels like poisoned butterflies taking their last flutters in the pit of your stomach dear ex lover i hope my daughter never bears her soul at a poetry showcase with her first love sitting in the audience knowing that the hands shell use to applaud her with will be the same hands that will never hold her again 6