My anxiety claws its way up from my stomach to my chest,
makes a pit stop to sit heavily when I breathe,
when it senses I am tensing it rises further to my throat so that when I speak,
I know I am in its company;

My anxiety demands respect
it demands to be heard,
it demands to be felt,
it demands to be seen
so that when I take deep breaths and my eyes dart around
at every exit, every window, every glass of water
everyone will feel that something is wrong
leaving me no choice but to excuse myself
leave the room
and wallow in the comfort of my racing thoughts, listing the things I see, feel, smell, taste and praying
that the invitation to the mental health ball in my head
will expire soon

tell me

how do I become someone's home

when I am all sticks and stones and poor timing

clumsiness held together by suppressed trauma

held back by a dam

I am both the skilled architect and the drunk contractor of my body

my memory has neighbourhoods inside of it each designed to cater to every occasion

tell me

where do I find the house known as me for you

in what neighbourhood do I search

I can't remember the last time I have held onto something

as unfamiliar as being loved back

what I'm trying to say is that

I don't know if I can be a house

but I can be the warm light that somehow takes you through the darkest days

I can be the worn out blanket that holds its charm with a little help of softener

I can be the go-to mug, with spots from over-use and poor maintenance but volume big enough for a comfort drink

I don't know if I can be a house

but I will take my limbs, my bones, my skin

and one by one

become a safe space

god am i scared

but amidst the touches that linger longer and longer

and the butterflies in my stomach when i come up to kiss you

amidst the way that you say i love you and really mean it

and the way i rush back to you after every event like a butterfly to the light

i realise

that letting you love me

was the best decision i've ever made

the way you say my name has become my favourite melody

my voice saying yours becomes the chorus

it feels like it’s been forever
but then on days like this I’m reminded
of the inevitable colour of depression
of the way summer’s stormy clouds form over the mountain
in an all-too-familiar grey
of the way the leaves,
tired from the heaviness of hanging on to branches all summer
finally let go
isn’t there something so beautiful though
about how each dying leaf
tries to make the grey of fall
all the more colourful?
how falling isn’t the failure
but the most beautiful part of the cycle?

I trudge forward bearing the heavy weight of all that fall brings
and knowing the inevitable grip winter holds onto my emotions
stepping on each of the leaves
one
by
one

we're two matches burning together slowly

all i feel is warmth and light around me
even if i'm one day closer to dying

Your image is stuck in fragments in my mind like shattered glass, but this time it’s a vase that I wish didn’t have to break

we tell each other the things we want to hear because we're too afraid to hear the things we want to tell

creativity exists only in uncluttered spaces in the left corner of my mind reserved for falling in love, being in love, or being depressed

i've tried to write ten thousand times but i've only been left with a disappointment staring back at me, writing the same metaphor in about two hundred poems finding out ways i can be more creative but pushing away the melody of the keys because when you have assignment after assignment after assignment keys don't feel like comfort anymore

nothing can replace pen on paper but my notebook is running out of pages reserved explicitly for just me and if i get a chance to write down something usually it's a name staring back at me, identity undetermined, point zero on a map that has the whole world on it but somehow feels empty

my body has taken me to tons of countries, through plane rides and train rides and busses and trams, and somehow i still can't figure out how to find a route that best communicates my emotions

when the muse plays hide and seek i spend most of my time seeking and never finding, it spends most of its time sulking in the shadow of mental health never once thinking to come out enough to string just one line of thoughts

you can't make a poem from zgrjblksabg;saeibgsgkrg

i am always the i like you and never the i love you / always the i want you and never the i need you

I am all half *** whispers and wrong sides of the bed, all lukewarm milk with cereal and mediocre drip coffee, all tosses and turns and no peaceful slumber

you won’t have the courage to tell her your body is only made up of skin and blood and bones and boy and some days your body is just a clothes rack waiting to be hung and some days you chain smoke nicotine just to feel like you’re halfway committing to suicide and some days your bed will become the only person you contact while the whole world stops

i am the *** waiting for the last turn of the hob until it boils over

i am the glass waiting for the last drop of wine until it spills

i am the frightened child sitting in the dark waiting for someone to turn on the light

i am the frightened child sitting in the dark hoping nobody will turn on the light

can’t you hear
that in every ‘goodbye’ we tell ourselves
there lies a screaming ‘please don’t go’?

honey, you could make the sun wish it was the moon for just one night to be able to be the one to witness the way you come to life when it's past 1am and you're dancing to the sound of memories rushing to your heart

I would have poured gasoline on myself and asked for your lighter while you lit your cigarette just to prove how much I loved you and it still wouldn’t have phased you as much as the nicotine would // now I laugh while you light your cigarette and when you ask me why I just tell you sunshine burns bright enough just fine without you anyway

i miss you softly, like the way you used to gently touch me with hesitance hoping that wherever you held onto was the right place, the way you used to breathe into my ear for affirmation, the way you used to want to hold my hand despite it being as cold as the winters i had to weather after getting my heart broken

i miss you tenderly, like the way i held on to you after i realised i could really learn to love you, like the way we held hands and fell asleep that last night because young love and new love and gentle love doesn't know just *******, it knows feelings

i miss you eagerly, like the way i waited for you to message for two and a half weeks telling me something was off, like the way your message sunk into my chest when you told me we had to talk

i miss you the way i missed myself when i was with him, the way i constantly searched for a me behind the bars of a relationship that only knew how to push me farther into the cell

i miss you / i miss you / i miss you

he tasted like all the memories of us that would never go away, etched in the crevices of every cavity and every bleeding gum, memories you crave the way you want candy or that chocolate bar, memories working their way to the nerve so they can hit you and leave you numb

don’t leave bits of your heart in the ones who find the blood you spill intriguing, don’t jump into them as if they’re the bottom of the cliff you’ve always wanted to jump off of, don’t hold on to them the way you wish you’d been held through the darkest parts of your depression, don’t let muscle memory remember places they call home, don’t don’t don’t let yourself drown in more disappointment

and just like that day turned to night / and just like that my problems came to light

it might've been the cobbled stones that you saw that reminded you of me, or the way that she stood next to you, a proud 5'2 like me, or the way the bag full of your clothes that you'd left at my place smelled like me thanks to the perfume i sprayed in the bag, my attempt at forget-me-nots, sense of smell fading slower than our history together

it might've been the way he looked at me first that made me forget about you, five months deep in the end of our relationship still agonising about whether you were okay, whether depression ****** you into her grasp once again, whether you'd managed to get out of it alive this time, might've been the way i started travelling to learn instead of travelling to see you that helped me realise even if you weren't at the end of every flight or every train it would be okay

it's amazing how we went in opposite circles and still ended up at the bottom of it together, amazing how despite all of our history we still play it off like it was nothing, amazing how you keep throwing a ball that i keep having to not catch because my muscle memory has forgotten how to play games with you

i'll slowly tiptoe into your mind, my voice will crawl back into your ear, slither down your throat, escape from your lips, get down to your stomach, release the whole ******* zoo, stampede into your veins, supercharge your heart with 100 horse power and cause you to keep running back to me the way i knew you would

and the best part? i finally have the power to watch you do what i did so long ago, finally have the power to have someone else tiptoe through my mind and build a home there, finally have the power to stop your voice from entering my mind because i've finally stopped saying it

being with him may have felt like an eternity but i promise you it was only a year and a half and in comparison to your 21 years on this earth, that's just a small drop in your ocean
2. you are every single sunrise and sunset anyone will ever need. you are enough.
3. stop trying to fit into a perfect circle image of what you think women should be, gender is fluid and at the end of the day nobody gives a **** about whether you have a nose piercing or not - stop trying to please him, he is out of your life.
4. don't deny yourself love when it comes running to you at 100 mph, don't sit in your chair and convince yourself you don't deserve to be happy because lonely is where you are comfortable
5. you deserve to be happy. you deserve to be happy. you deserve to be happy.
6. know that eiffel towers might not be enough to completely block out old memories but they'll be enough to make you forget about the pain you felt for months after he broke your heart and didn't give enough ***** to fix it again
7. honey, sugar isn't only in your coffee, it's in your blood - you are everything sweet in this world, please don't let a little rain melt it all away
8. nobody can promise you what tomorrow will bring but i can promise you that today will matter only on you, so go out there and go for that walk and eat that cake and ignore him and block them until you feel ready to face them again
9. don't let yourself soak up your depression, even flowers can drown from too much rain
10. remember you're only human, it's okay to make mistakes; but do not actively tell yourself mistakes are in your muscle memory - this is not true

------------------

you will be okay, it will be okay.

she’s a flower, tall beaming and bold ready to take on the winter and summer as easily as she flicks her wrists to get ready to write that next stanza, a force to be reckoned with, kaleidoscope of emotions delving into personality traits you didn’t know existed but wish you had so you could understand that flick of the wrist that much better, secrets screaming through quiet whispers down the channels of her ears when she swallows truth like a multivitamin, filling her body up with things like horoscopes and music and the constant thought of an inevitable end

you like her sort of mystery, like her dark eyes because they remind you of the peaceful nights you had back home, her dark hair because it reminds you of the way nature somehow decided to bless her with those Balkan genes once again, hollowed out vegetables becoming instruments and cold soups becoming delicacies, you’ve never had it so good

dance to melodies only the winds of the mountains know, sing to songs only the shepherds might hear, grab her by the hips and sing and dance and take that hand of hers and kiss that tired wrist just so she can lift it again and hug you so as if to say thank you, thank you for staying whole up until now, thank you for finding me

his lips collided with mine at 120 awkward miles per hour, teeth hitting teeth, lips biting lips, nervous chuckles and ****** hands clashing together to make something beautiful

the way you want it to stop but don’t, the way you know you’ve found someone nice, the way you know it’ll end but part of you doesn’t care

maybe that’s being 21, running towards and away from commitment with every quick brush of the hand in anticipation something greater than like but less than dating

maybe that’s being 21, being okay with that, no expectations for the first time in a long time

the smell before it rains and the taste of that first sip of tea in -20 degrees

the slow untangling of your thoughts with every beat of the drum, the way the wind blows right through you just enough to move you forward and never enough to blow you down

the sound of typing fingers when you know you're onto something good, the feeling of your own, and finally not his, skin

the seasons are changing and baby so are you / six senses are helping you develop into someone new

who hurt you enough to make you want to hurt me like this // who hurt me enough to make me accept it like this?

and honey i hope my name has left a scar on your tongue,
my skin a rash on your fingers,
my voice an unforgotten melody in your head,
and my love a softened place in your heart

somewhere in between ******* and ***** me

caring too much and expecting to little and dreaming too big and feeling too small