where do you keep your endings?

i keep mine in a ziplock bag
at the back of my underwear drawer--
they're there next 
to the bag of thick brown hair
my mother saved from my first hair cut--
it wasn't the last time i would
use scissors to feel lighter--
i keep my endings on the head of a match or
a blue birthday candle--
i keep them on dog-eared pages
of books i haven't been brave enough 
to finish & in my pillow case
at my parents' house--
i've befriended the em-dash
even though it reminds me of a
coffin-- open casket i climb into
as a form of protest--
i've never gone to an open casket
funeral & i hope i never have to--
i'm trying to live 
in resistance of punctuation
& i don't believe much about endings
or what people
say they remember best about
you when you're dead-- 
let's face it
everyone has a nice smile--
everyone dies too young--
everyone's outline in chalk never fails to
look like a question mark
asking god where their body is
going after all these years of ending
sentences & turning off lights 
on the back porch-- 
i'm the kind of body who
lies restless as a semi-colon--
awake through the
night my eyes become
hole-punchers-- weighty circles
attempting to make a collage of
street lamp & half-eaten moon--
when i die i hope to return
as something with less punctuation--
me & you we could be street lamps--
the type with brachiosaurus
necks-- jaws opening into streams
of light-- 
be a dwarf planet with 
me-- be a sun so we can 
die so extravagantly we destroy
the mouth who spoke us--
i traded my periods for freckles--
i stole a handful of 
stars & forced them into the poetry
i've been writing for you that's
never done enough to read aloud--
let's meet here again 
across the sidewalk from 
each other on a brilliant diagonal--
i'll pretend i don't see you until
we flick on at dusk--
blink moths out of our eyes
& meet under street lamps
that are also the necks
of dinosaurs--
if you could keep your endings somewhere
would you keep them next to mine?
would you bury them in a shoe box
like our pet turtle or would
you put them 
on a coat hanger so you wouldn't
forget where to find them--