"it was a very curious story of young love
and betrayal and heartache and yet, it was also
none of the above for the very inclination that it
was young love gave way to belief that of course
betrayal and heartache would follow suit, and therefore
it cannot be considered love; for love should be nothing
but pure and stained only by tears of joy. instead they
took the very name of love and ruined it; they turned
roses into violets, they turned happiness into lack thereof
and perhaps the most tragic, they never really loved at all."

we did not go crashing down like waves at a shore,
you did not scream like thunder and i did not flash like
lightning there was never a bright yellow warning sign to our
love it was not written in the cool sand of a beach untouched
we were more like carved names onto a tree that
has been weathered, there was no fighting and there were no tears
you didn't cry and neither did i there was only silence and
it was somehow louder than words but we were not
cataclysmic; we just weren't in love
and we were never a tsunami; there was never any
rapid surging ocean to begin with

(h.l.)

the words do not come tumbling out of my pen anymore
the ink seems to have dried and i've killed the horizon
inside my brain with a cigarette ashtray that spelled out
your name there seems to be a permanent eclipse because
i cannot write like i used to anymore there are no more
tsunamis or hurricanes or tornadoes my mind is a
natural disaster all on it's own except there are no thunderstorms
or rain there is only darkness and drowning into a
sea of metaphors i wrote and analogies i spoke;
i think about the girl who thought of them from time to
time, and i wonder if she would be upset that no one
brought wildflowers to her funeral, even though they
claimed she was a sun shower they all ran away when the
flowers wilted, i don't blame them
i did too
(h.l.)

i hate the way i look when i smile
my glasses make my eyes seem so small
my hair is practically unmanageable my
arms are so short compared to my legs
so when i stretch in gym i can never reach which
makes my gym teacher yell at me and everyone stares
and i start to forget how to breathe and i know
i look like a freak and i don't feel sane
until the end of the day where i go home
only to hear my parents talk about how i never seem
to study anymore and how my two B's in my sea
of A's is a sure sign that i have issues
and i'm too tired to argue and too broken to care
so i just sit there and let them tell me all the different ways i
disappoint them; they'll send me to my room
i'll collapse on my bed and look at the wall and wonder
why i'm such a failure and the tears just spring to my face
and i'm feeling like i want to explode but i have no one to talk to
i used to be able to talk to you but now i'm just a burden
shoved to the back of your head and no
one cares anymore and i can't blame them because they're right
i'm a failure, a disappointment, a waste of space
most nights i go to sleep hoping the next day will be better
even though i know it won't be

so please don't ******* tell me that i'm perfect
just because you like how skinny i am
and don't envy me because i'm a size 0 skinny jeans
because at the end of the day, i go to sleep wishing
i could stop being me

(h.l.)

Welcome to the West Coast, the original land of the
star crossed lovers; the people, the parties, it's all so
never ending, the music, the movies it's all so picture perfect
but you, you're something special

she said, "pretty girl did you think you could get
through life like this?" i said i had no idea what to expect,
i had no idea what to expect and California was just
a star in the sky and California was never meant to be mine,
but suddenly i can feel the sun and the moon align on my thighs
and i can see paradise in his eyes
//
he's a Californian lover at night but he dreams like a
New York boy, i don't think I've ever heard of true love
until he spoke and his love it takes me higher than I've ever been before
[maybe they were right, happiness is a warm drug but
don't smoke cigarettes if you can't control the flames]
forget ecstasy babe this is heaven just you and me
the sun, the beach let's just run away until we find Atlantis
you can be Charles, i'll be Diana we can get lost
and never be found our treasure's a death wish but life is too fun
//
they say young love always dies, they say everyone says goodbye in
California but I'll bet the horizon wishes it
was us babe because we'll forever be running, never stopping
'cause the night is young but we already have plans to seize the day
we've always been young god's, it's always been our way
and kings and queens never die

Welcome to the West Coast, the original land of the
star crossed lovers; the people the parties, it's all so
never ending, the music, the movies it's all so picture perfect
but you, you're something special*


(h.l.)

I can still hear his voice in my head sometimes;
whispering stupid jokes and telling me that
it would be alright,
I can still feel him in my heart actually,
at night mostly because that's when we would talk the most
we would talk about whimsical things and make
jokes out of our lives
although thinking about it now, I think we made those
jokes to keep from crying
//
when they were cleaning out your room this morning,
they found your box of toothpicks
I remember you would always have an orange toothpick
I asked you why one day and you
never responded
I guess I'll never know the answer now
//
the worst part about all of this is that
I still call you, when I'm upset or when I want to hear your voice
but all I hear is static on the other line,
I wonder if you can hear me panic from the other line
because all I ever hear is your voice mail in my head and
it's so inaccurate because whenever I would call you
your voice would still be thick and groggy even if it was
5:22 pm which was coincidentally the first time
I told you I loved you
//
I can still hear his voice in my head sometimes;
whispering stupid jokes and telling me that everything was okay
the ironic part is that everything isn't

crumpled sheets wrapped around your waist and the
scattered t.v. remote you were looking for falls into a fold
of the blanket you are intertwined within; you can no
longer give yourself the motivation to do anything, not even
move slightly to the right and stretch a little to catch the
tiny battery in your frail and delicate fingers. your overdramatic
and completely unrealistic soap opera will have to wait until
your grandchildren get home and one of them can turn
the t.v. on for you.

(h.l.)

he loved her because she was pretty
like the ocean and because her favorite color was black
he loved her because she was disaster enough to
leave marks on her skin and tears on her chin
he loved her because she was the poster child of anti and rebel
and because she bled onto paper in beautiful words

she did not love him because he couldn't understand that she
wasn't the poster child of anti she was just a misunderstood girl and
she didn't like being a disaster, she hated it
he couldn't understand that she bled onto paper for survival and that
her beautiful words tormented her
he couldn't understand that even if she was as pretty as an ocean on the outside
she was a tsunami on the inside

and
her
favorite
color
was
actually
a
very
dark
shade
of
grey

she didn't love him because he never really loved her

(h.l.)

Color me in the right shade of hate
fill in the vacant holes in my heart with pounds of abuse
starve me from my right to eat because my weight is normal
(and normal isn't nearly as depressing as anorexic)
paint me perfect and leave me looking
devastated and depressed
cracked and traumatized
leave me wanting to **** myself because
suicide is trending right now and the more alone you feel
the more popular you’ll become
leave me looking mysterious so that my prince charming
can look for the girl with the broken smile and then
fix me
break me so I can be perfect
leave me feeling worthless because hating yourself is cool
teach me how to cut my skin because
scars are proof that you’re broken
and the more broken you are the more whole they want to make you

paint me perfect
by tearing me apart
after all,
*why would you want to be happy?

some people say that it is impossible to
explain the color red to a person blind from
birth but i disagree
because red is not only a color to me
it is a feeling
red is what i feel whenever he is holding my hand
and whispering stupid jokes to me in class
and i start to blush and i try to stop but i can't and
all i'm thinking is red, red, red
red is the feeling of the sun pricking you
with what feels like a thousand tiny needles
on your skin
red is the sweet taste of strawberries;
the sensation of bursting flavor that
automatically makes you smile
and some people use the color red
to describe anger or fear but
i can never imagine red as such a horrible thing
because when i think of red
i think of all the times we stayed up late and
the next day you would tease me about our
inside jokes and you would poke me and i would blush
and try to stop but i can't and red
is the color that i feel when we walk on
the beach until our legs ache and the sun is glaring at
us but we don't care we just
keep on smiling and it's all so
red, red, red
like the time that you stole all my strawberries
over the summer and
threw them at me and i ruined my
favorite shirt but that didn't matter
because your cheeks were red
from laughing so hard and oh god,
you looked beautiful

some people say that it is impossible to
explain the color red to a blind person from
birth but i disagree because red is not just a color
to me anymore; it is not what i learned from preschool art class
red is the feeling that i get when i am with you in
the summer and the sky is no longer blue
but more a pale pink and a dark red

i always used to call you my james taylor
because you would write these songs
and they were written in
a special sort of ink that you bought
at some convention somewhere and
apparently, the ink was supposed permanent,
we were supposed to be permanent
but it's funny actually, how the word permanent
can disappear on a cold december night when you
happen to have too much to drink
and i happen to be on edge because you're not
acting like my james taylor anymore, instead
you have broken your guitar and you don't go
to conventions anymore and i think the last time
you told you loved me and actually meant it was
a couple of months ago in july, i remember it
because of course, you wrote a song about it, you
always used to write a song about everything but
now you have run out of your ink and i fear
that i have run out of love for the both us,
at the end of the day i was the only one who
made an actual effort but by now i feel like giving up on
you and it's strange to even think like that
because i thought i would rather crash and burn
with you than let you run away but it seems
you are no longer the boy who i love so i guess
i'll be waiting to see your ashes float upon the sea

(h.l.)

[are you drunk right now?
are you drunk right now?
are you drunk right now?]

cotton spider web sheets around my waist
i wish i could say this visit made me want to live another day
but the stranger in the bathroom doesn't even know
my last name. you called me at around five last night
asked if i was doing okay, i wish i could say i told you
the truth when i said i wasn't missing you

you're so ****** up babe
why do i love you?
you keep on leaving but i can't move on
you call us platonic in front of your
new girl and expect me to pick up the pieces
when she's not around

what a whiskey love affair i should have seen all the warning signs
but in my defense you seem more poetic in the moonlight
that in the tear stains on my new lover's bed

you're so ****** up babe
why do i love you?
you keep on leaving but i can't move on
you call us platonic in front of your
new girl and expect me to pick up the pieces
when she's not around

why do i love you why do i love you why do i love you

i'm so ****** up babe
you shouldn't love me
i keep on clinging to a broken past
i call us platonic in front of my new guy
but set matches to the fire that we had

(h.l.)

pretty
hurts
but
love
hurts
more

she** is thin and wiry and so unbelievably charming it
is hard to believe everything she says is not straight out
of a 1980's movie that changed cinematic history
because for once the girl asks out the guy and I am just
a shattered home left battered after a hurricane

she is a ghost and I mean that in every sense of the word,
when she left I felt my brittle bones collapse
inside of my sunken body as if it were a cave
and like acid I dissolved myself into everything
as a distraction to try and forget her but
she still haunts me with her smile and her laugh
and when I sleep I find myself imagining her as the shadows
created by the moonlight

her love was toxic. I know this because her voice still
shouts at me to do things despite the distance that has
grown between us; when I met her I was in a bad place.
I needed someone to be there and she was. she was the
only one who was ever there for me; it was unhealthy and
cataclysmic but she was there and that was more than enough
but then my tears started making her happy and my
anxiety gave her strength and I told myself she wasn't a
problem; until I realized I couldn't distinguish who I used
to be before I met her and she still makes her way into my
life at times but I have found calling her by her real name
scares her. it shows her that I know the mask of deception
she wears and that I am no longer afraid. my therapist asked
what I used to call her, before I knew, I said a friend. I know
now who she truly is and the word still tastes like iron in my
mouth. Depression.

do you remember what you said to me
before things became complicated
and before I realized
that I loved you.

do you remember our last conversation
that we had by ourselves
without our friends
and
without the tension of having to hide our feelings

do you remember our last hug
no one was watching
and we had both stayed that way
because we were both afraid to let go

do you remember that day
the first time
that you said I was beautiful
and that I should never think badly of myself

do you remember
the first poem that I sent to you
and
the first poem you had sent to me

do you remember
finding out that we loved
the same song
and
what you said to me when you saw me playing it

do you remember
telling me about your first love
and saying
that she could never compare to me

do you remember
when we were playing Truth or Dare
and you asked me
who was my first love


do you remember what you said to me
today
when we were leaving
and you gave me a hug and a kiss on the cheek
and told me to love someone else

I still remember what you said to me before things got complicated,
I’ll never fall in love
I still remember our last conversation
You guys look so cute together
I still remember our last hug, it lasted forever and even though it’s gone
I swear I can still feel your arms around me
I remember when you told me I was beautiful
I said that was a lie, because I thought it was
I remember the first poem I sent you,
it was terrible but you said that you loved it
and
when I was playing your favorite song
you seemed to be in a daze and said
that it was a good song
Remember?
Remember telling me it was stupid; your first love
and that I was a thousand times more important to you
You told me you would hunt down and ****
my first love for giving up something so precious
I remember how I felt when you told me
to date someone else
It was as if somebody had blew out the faint candle inside my heart

do you remember
how it felt to be in love?

(h.l.)

a boy, on the corner of Confused and Lonely
holds a cigarette in his hands, unsure of what to do
but hopeful that it'll make him happy;
because at the end of the day that's all anyone
ever wants to be
a girl, lipstick smudged, sunglasses broken and wearing
a shirt that was much too small, her image screams help
but apparently the rest of the world is deaf when
it comes to these types of things
they meet at Sunset Blvd. where women wear
skirts high and the men get even higher,
she's stumbling home; not drunk, but not sober
and the boy asks her if she's okay, she says yes
he then asks her how to light a cigarette because
it's been a week and that pack is burning in his pocket
screaming to be used and he had watched
a commercial on t.v. the other day but it hadn't changed his mind
so here he was, desperate to find out how to
light a ******* cigarette because if he doesn't even
know how to do that, then what hope does he have?
she said one word, a whisper almost and if they
were anywhere else he might not heard her but
he does, he hears the word as clear as church bells
don't
he responds with the question they both have
why?
and she shakes her head and smiles, still
dazed from the alcohol in her veins and says simply,
"because," and maybe it's because she looks like a mess
and he's lonely and confused but somehow that because
turns into endless long reasons not to as they both
fall into each other, madly and deeply

he asks her on her last day, how to light a cigarette
his voice shaking, his intentions clear
she responds with a clear don't
he asks her again why,
and she says "because," but sometimes
not even that is enough

(h.l.)

i have rewritten
every poem i have about you
at least six times
i have thrown out at least 9 letters
for every one letter you receive;
i have so perfectly hid my feelings for you
that i don't even think you know me anymore
because every time we talk all i think about
is how you would feel, so this is the
honest-to-God truth:
when i bring up the topic of the girl you used to love,
as evil as it may seem, i do it on purpose
because i want to know if you still idealize her like you used to
when i share with you my poems, know
that it is probably about you but that i will mask it
by saying it is in the point of view from a fictional character
when you call me beautiful, please know that i hate it
i hate it, i hate it, i hate it
because i know you are saying it to say it,
not because you mean it
when you apologize for your feelings
i want to bash your head in a wall
because i do not want an apology
i want the truth
and last but certainly not least
when i tell you that i love you,
it takes everything i have not to
add the "in"

(h.l.)

when you are six you will hear many things.
you will hear that you are gorgeous, that you are growing into
a beautiful big girl and your favorite sound will be the addictive
beats of your mother's jazz records and whenever you
are bored you will dance the only way you know how;
shamelessly and recklessly, swaying your small hips and legs
in rhythm with the music. this will be before you become
embarrassed of your gangly and uncoordinated body and
before you discover why your mother plays her jazz
records late at night so loudly. when you are six,
it will be the last time you will remember being happy;
before the word content disappears from your mind
as easily as the stolen homemade chocolate chip cookies
that you would sneakily eat before dinner
melt in your mouth, you will be six and the world will be
the biggest puzzle you cannot wait to solve.

(h.l.)

your favorite color is not blue you lied to me, it is instead
a deep shade of grey so dark it is almost black and your middle
name is not poetry it is dececption it is let's take a break it is
not honesty instead it is cheating it turning the tables so that i think
i'm wrong when i'm not and you cannot just apologize with
the same sad smirk that you always have and think it is okay,
you cannot just turn your pain into poetry and think it's
okay because it isn't; it's not right to fake the color of roses on
your skin and then call me at midnight and talk to me as if you
were dying when you're not and you told me your star sign
was cancer but guess what you lied about that too because you
do not have a star sign you cannot be predicted by other
people who think they know how to read the signs of space because
you are an asteroid and i mean that with every sense of the
word and i do not want to be tied down by you because even
if i am a shipwreck that does not mean i need your anchor
because i don't i don't i don't so you can take your misery
and your sorry excuse for love and give it some other girl who
doesn't know any better

(h.l.)

when we were young we would
give each other candy hearts on valentine’s day with
cheesy smiles and bashful cheeks
and every little girl in 1st grade would measure their popularity
with the amount of candy hearts they would get but
I was always the one who would eat mine before I counted them

you were the boy next door with the hazel eyes and the crooked smile
you never talked to anyone but me and we would
laugh off everything wrong with our lives;
it was all a constant blur--
the music
the drugs
the drinks
i don’t even remember our first kiss but
it didn't matter back then
when we were young and restless
nothing mattered back then, it was only you and i and
the music

the day after you left i found a note on my bed,
it had a candy heart that said
‘i love you’
almost like a final sarcastic laugh,
to remind me that what we had, for you it wasn't real
it was the lowest, and most painful type of love
it was skinny love and
they say that there is no greater pain than death but
what a lie
because darling what we had was madness, it was torture, it was hatred and desire combined into one,
it was tragic, it was worse than death because it made  me want to die an infinite amount of times, it was both heaven and hell, it was temptation in it’s greatest form. it was love.
it was skinny
it was hopeless
it was doomed from the beginning but
it was love
(h.l.)

I
I know that I am not important to you at all
I'm just the girl who's there
and I know that you will forget me possibly after this year or the next
and I also know that you will never like me--
because I'm over dramatic and boring and depressing as hell
and I'm not beautiful or even remotely pretty
and because you are simply too good for me
II.
but
before you forget me
and before you completely underestimate my importance in your life
before you forget the name of the girl that's just there
before you tell her yes
before you leave
III.*
Please know that I think that you are beautiful with sun-kissed skin and dark brown eyes that will forever orbit my mind
Please know that everything about you is perfect in a not-so-perfect way and that even though I hate that you cut your hair it still looks as soft as ever
also
know that you are probably the reason I don't actually study in study hall
and that all those times I asked for help I actually already know the math
remember Madison Square Park?
When I said goodbye and you told me not to leave,
well I stayed up all night wondering what you meant by *don't go
most importantly--
Please know that I love you
I am okay with you forgetting the girl that sat in the last row in class
and I'm okay with you never loving me--because to be honest, I don't blame you
and I am okay with you completely underestimating my existence
but I am not okay and will never be okay if you do not remember that you are perfect in a not-so-perfect way and that you are beautiful; with sun-kissed skin and dark brown eyes that will forever orbit my mind
and even though you will never read this
I'll make sure of it
I only have one more thing to say
*don't go

i
have
not
formed
a
coherent
thought
since
i
met
you

last night i stumbled into
a false reality
where i thought i was actually
okay because it wasn't raining anymore;
and the plants were actually growing
and my parents didn't fight
they just sat in silence
it was so ******* suffocating

but being suffocated is better than burning alive

my mom she didn't complain about how thin i was
and my dad didn't talk about
what a waste of space i was
my mind, it wasn't screaming at me
to fall apart
and the shards of the broken pieces
didn't sting as much
but then i woke up and realized what a mess
i was

my body is all angles; no curves
my hair is almost as dead as the plants
i'm such a waste of space
the broken pieces they still lie on my arms
and they yell at me at night
with the pale moon out they become so alive
and my scars they end up burning me alive

i want to suffocate

today i stumbled onto the
kitchen counter and made myself a
cup of coffee
i took my pills and i went to school and
did everything i was supposed to
i walked down the halls hoping no one would
pay attention to me

during science i tried to take notes
but something inside of me just told me to stop
and i focused on the clock
and i noticed how antique it looked
i wondered suddenly if it was a castaway;
something no one loved because it was too old
to function or something too ugly to be modern
i wondered if it would still tell the time next year and if there
would be another girl sitting in my seat wondering the same
thing
i wondered if the clock knew that it was
running out of time and that soon it would
become another broken thing in
this world full of perfection and that
no one would want to fix it
i wondered if the clock was afraid
of how fast time flew and how quickly it
could be replaced
then i thought about myself
i thought about how i was drowning in this
black abyss of perfection
i thought about how wonderful it must
be to be a castaway; to not
have to live up to anyone's expectations because
it was already established that you couldn't
i thought about the future; and
how next year i will be somewhere else
and i thought about how
long it would take for someone to realize
that i was so hopeless
and i thought about how quickly time flies and how
easily i could be replaced by the pretty girl who
sits in front of me
then i thought about her
i thought about how perfect she looked
and i wondered if she ever felt insecure
i thought about how nice she was
and how utterly fake she was all at the same time
i wondered if she was sad, like me
and i hoped to god she wasn't and
then i thought about how she would feel
if she was a castaway

tomorrow i will stumble to the kitchen counter
and make myself coffee
i will take my pills and i will go to school and do everything that
i should do
and i will walk down the halls; praying that nobody notices me
because in the inside i am the same as a broken clock

(h.l.)

you used to love to draw, learned how to sketch when you were eight
painted me a sky full of smoke and liquor and told me this
was where happiness would always start
your inspirations were my frustrations said you never liked
my pretty face unless it was full of madness
i guess you're wish has come true because darling i'm a hopeless
addict without you, my arms are designed with the color of
your favorite wine and i know i should be happy, my
skies are full of beautiful blues but i've learned
that pain is happiness when i'm with you
he was my darkest shade of grey, my disastrous tale of love
and what happened after, you were a beautiful mistake
a terrible tragedy you carved your name on my heart and
and made your touch a weapon filled with poison i can't
find the antidote and now i'm searching desperately for all
the pieces but they seem to have all broke
and i know it's wrong to want to have you by my side,
you always made me think i was happy
but i'm starting to realize that skies are not meant be filled with
smoke and liquor and that the world would burn
with your love of fires and hurricanes of tears would
fill your beating heart with happiness and i know that
you're sick and twisted, i know that you are the very
worst thing that could have ever happened to me
and yet i cannot bring myself to say that you are black,
you my dear are the darkest shade of grey
you're a disaster, a canvas that's been broken and filled with
toxic paint, a ticking time bomb exploding every day and
for your love of fires you were gasoline although i'd rather burn
early than die later for i'm starting to find out,
i like my skies filled with smoke and liquor and hate
the way the sun shines you could have the been the worst
thing that had ever happened to me but i know, oh i know
i'm not alone, yes i know that i am the worst thing that has
happened to you

(h.l.)

and they were the kind of people
who you just knew belonged to one another
in this type of way that was indescribable
they were the perfect partners in crime
and you could see it--
even through the bustle of the city traffic
and the distance on a map
you could see that what they had--
it was pure
in a way nothing ever was anymore
it was like a fairy tale
that gave you hope because it was so
innocent in this way nothing really was anymore
and it didn't end in a beautiful tragedy the way things do
it had no bittersweet ending
and the best thing of all is that it was so ordinary, so wholesome
that it made you believe that just maybe
this skinny love of theirs would survive
in a way that nothing really did anymore

his favorite color was orange;
like the sunsets at Times Square
and he never told me that,
I just noticed it by looking at the way
his eyes would light up and he would
start to smile a little when he saw something orange
and I always used to wish that
he could stay that way forever-
entranced and happy with the simplest things
it was a futile wish, of course
all good things come to an end and that
was the calm before the storm
and what a hurricane it was
//
your eyes are brown and yet I swear I've never
seen the color red until I looked into your eyes
and knew you were gone from me
//
my friends still ask about you; and I
tell them I haven't seen you in awhile, because I hadn't
I hadn't seen you since the summer when we would
stand in fields of flowers filled with yellows and orange
after that you were never the same
and I buried my love for you in a casket,
deep in the ground,
if you ever find it
you'll see tulips and books and
a black and white Hey Jude vinyl
by the Beatles

all things i used to love before i fell into you

you focus too much on beauty
you always compliment my eyes or
how pretty i look that day
and that's all fine and nice but
what i wonder is
whether or not you
will still love me when i am old
and tired;
will you still laugh and smile at me in
that way of yours when i am
too worn out to put on makeup or just simply,
too lazy to care?

will you still love me when i am no
longer size 0 skinny jeans?

my guess is you won't

so don't tell me that you love me and whisper
to me at night when in reality you are only in
so called "love" with the image of me, the illusion of how i look
and not who i am

then again, you probably don't even know the difference

you still sleep with the same blanket you had
when you were five and sometimes when you get
scared of thunder you walk into your closet
and cry and i know because i stayed up all night
trying to find a way for you to close your eyes
and sleep
.
you smile at the corners of your cheeks
i never thought dimples meant that much to me
until i met you and i don't know if you can
ever understand that the butterflies will never leave
as long as you hold my hand and i'm afraid of the
dark and the way people are and
i'm still finding it hard to talk to strangers but
with you by my side it's not as complicated as it usually would be
.
you're the only boy i know who wears bandannas
and hates the smell of smoke and i'm still
trying to figure out if we're meant to be but i'm learning
that finding that out is not as important as it seems
because you still have to count 10 sheep before
you sleep and your eyes travel everywhere before
they close at night and i know because i stay up all night
with you darling and there's no other place
i'd rather be

(h.l.)

locked in this box pushed to the corner of my room
are letters that form
knots in my stomach every time i read them,

who knew words could send such pain?

my mind is trying to escape the little prison the
words set up and yet
it's pointless because i remembered every single word
that they wrote-
telling me why they had lost hope in me,
telling me why bright stars always fade,
telling me why i wasn't good enough
and god, i'm sure they didn't mean for this to happen
they probably didn't know that the words they
wrote would end up creating dozens of
little paper cuts that run on my arms
almost like little soldiers marching towards
war except there is no enemy, not really, except
the guy who works at Walgreen who told me they only
have orange bandages but orange was your favorite color
and it reminds me of tulips like the ones you would pick for me
and now i'm crying even more and i'm at the
corner of Happy and Healthy except i'm neither and i just wish
that i could throw out the **** box but i can't
because if i do then i don't have any proof
that you are real; sometimes i wish you weren't but i'd rather
live in a world where you exist but you ignore me than
a world without you

then again, there aren't enough bandages in the world
to aid the wounds given to me by
paper cuts

(h.l.)

To tell the truth I don't think that I ever really loved you
And God that sounds horrible
but its true
I think that I fell in love with the feeling of love
if that makes any sense
I fell in love with my heart pounding and my blood rushing to my veins
and that wonderful sensation of elation that happened when I saw you
I fell in love with being loved
And God that sounds horrible
but its true
I fell in love with the short poems you'd send me and in all honesty,
I fell in love with your words
not you
I think that I loved you
but I was never in love with you
if that makes any sense
So, why, do I still feel agony when I hear your name?
Why does my head start to pound when I see you?
After all,
you were only one of my abandoned stories
with a beautiful start
and as always--
a tragic ending

He is like a page from a book;
and I don't want to finish
I.
I guess I should start off by how we met
we met at a place that was supposed to put our lives on the right path
and I'm pretty sure our first conversation was based on either music or books
and because I'd never met a boy that liked; let alone read John Green
I decided that he wasn't that bad at all
and I suppose he thought I wasn't that bad either
II.
I don't exactly know when it happened, but suddenly
we were best friends
he was the one that I would tell all my secrets too; and he became the first person
that read my poetry
and I would read his too, of course
and suddenly
there was this unexplainable attachment to the boy that loved the Beatles
I'd never actually cared so much for someone who wasn't family
but to be honest, at this point he knew more about me then most of my family did
and I was more than okay with that
III.
the thing is, when you care for someone so much, you don't really realize it until they're gone
it wasn't that big of a deal
I was mad at him for something so stupid that I'm mad at myself thinking about it
I only stayed mad a couple of hours; of course,
how could you stay mad at the one person who understands you better than you do
yourself?
But in the heat of madness, I imagined my life without him, and it was then that I realized
I could never be mad at him; not really
because he was too important for me to even think about losing
that was when I realized that I loved the boy who loved the Beatles
lV.
I don't know what to do without him
I don't know what to do without his poems and his songs
I don't know what to do without his death threats and his accent impressions
I don't know what to do without his supporting hugs and his reassuring smiles
I don't know what to do without him
V.
He is a page from a book;
and this is the last chapter; and it is ending soon
but
there's always a sequel
                                                        
­(h.l)

and in the end it was the music that
brought them together
because, god, they were always in tune
and they were two mismatched
puzzle pieces trying to find their way in this sea
of endless chords

she could not tell you when
it happened
or even how it happened
all she knew was that the boy with the
angelic voice and the blue eyes
had stolen her heart
(she didn't want it back)

he was the boy with the witty remarks
and the soft dark brown-but-not-yet-black hair
he made her feel
put-together when she was broken
and she hated it
she hated this rushed feeling of love,
of attachment,
and yet she lived because of it

The thing is that I don’t know
I don’t know if I’ll ever find somebody who will understand me and forever love me
I don’t know if I’ll end up having my own family and if I’ll live in the big white house with the picket fence

I don’t know if I even want that
I don’t know if I’ll end up an author or a therapist or a doctor
I don’t know if I’m okay, and to be honest I don’t even know the definition of okay
I don’t know if I’m a good friend; I don’t know if I deserve good friends
I don’t know if anything I do impacts anyone and I don’t know why I think and feel this way
I don’t know if I’m going to stop writing all of a sudden and delete this

I am very confused because I. Don’t. Know.
I don’t know if I even have the right to know or if this stuff is reserved for the future
I don’t know if I love or if I don’t and I don’t know what I’ll do if yes, it turns out that I do love.
I just don’t know
I don’t know so many things and I don’t know how I feel about that
I don’t know if I’ll ever live down my regrets and I don’t know if this confusion will ever end

I don’t know if I’m beautiful or even remotely pretty
I don’t know if my friends and parents only say this as an obligation
I don’t know why it matters if I’m pretty or not
I don’t know why I’m so insecure so many times
I don’t know why people who are beautiful say they aren't
I don’t know why I’m thinking so much about what I don’t know
I. Don’t. Know. So. Many. Things.

And I’m okay with that.

She was painstakingly too aware then of the stinging pain
that rejection brought, she was all too aware
Of the gorgeous blonde gossiping about her to him,
she was aware of how she was blaming him,
saying it was all his fault because
he always attracted female attention,
she was aware of his soft murmurs to not get upset,
she was aware of the silent i love you's he told her
with the caress of her cheek,
she was all too aware of his eyes then,
the silent apology they gave for her and she was also aware
of the pity behind them too, the look of wanting to
feel something for her and feeling terrible because he couldn't
She was aware of all of this, so she put on a shy smile
and her always useful mask of I'm fine, it's okay
and with that look given she walked out of the restaurant,
tears already slipping, her composure now a mess
and she slid her back down the wall of the alley nearby
and let it all out, she cried then because
the boy she loved was an artist, and she knew
that he would appreciate everything about
the hour glass blonde the way he would never appreciate
the twig like brunette she was and she also knew,
in her heart that he would be kind about everything,
about the whole thing and that tomorrow in art class
when she told about a boy named Elliot that
she met on the way home, he would pretend it was true
because he was kind and wonderful and patient and
everything she wasn't, he was the opposite of her,
and that she supposed was the very reason
that they could never be together,
because he was an artist and his job was to
create catastrophe on a canvas and have others marvel,
his job was not to fix disasters like her in real life,
that was the job of fiction stories because
in real life he would try, until the end of his days,
to paint happiness unto her with vibrant reds and cool blues
but she could not be fixed and that was the thing
that he would probably never understand
which was precisely why they had to stay away,
he had an aura of happiness that made others
want to live and being with her would break him
which was why she figured he painted curvy blondes
instead of skinny brunettes and it would have to stay that way,
because she was oil and he was water,
and being with her would strike such a fire in his heart
that would only be capable of leaving embers of ashes
so that is why she would walk to bus stop that day,
with a heaviness in her heart, but also an understanding,
an understanding of why disastrous girls like her
could not love happy artists like him,
for the sun and the moon would
destroy earth if they ever loved each other

(h.l.)

the lines on the paper i'm writing on are becoming
so blurred
and i don't exactly remember what this
was even about in the
first place
all i know is that i had woken up at
3 a.m. and i tried to sleep but i couldn't because
you voice was clear as day inside my head and
it was driving me insane and now
here i am
writing about my sorrows
with green day on the radio and
that was your favorite band and oh ****,
now i'm thinking about you again
this always happens
god, what happened to me?
i used to be happy believe it or not
but now i'm pathetic,
now i stay up in my bedroom listening to old records
and crying all because of you
and even though i can't exactly blame you
i will say this:
you crashed through my like a tornado would
into a city; you give me the world and then turned me
upside down whilst i was still dangling
you were one of those hurricanes every one is afraid of
and yet somehow in awe of;
you felt me in the eye of a hurricane
and i am still drowning