pretty names, but you have the prettiest.*
angel's white dust pushed around by
the dingy desert winds dry meadow murmurs.

heated leather seats, **** smooth leather pants
and slender, skinny beautiful body with
a name attached to it, smoke smelled
of burnt raspberries

and the conversation burned like them too,
i feel things for you and perhaps
transparently similiar damage
bleeding rubies out like sap

the conversations dripped like sap too.

but you went anyway.
you went to the ends of the earth.
far away from
broken homes
and
****** dish towels
and
leaky faucets
and
the one person who could forgive you.
you took love with you when you left,
replaced it with something vile.
something that resembled love
but not enough
to keep me.

all those mornings spent together
and not once did we ever watch the sun rise.

i was always alone.

She is the first, first love.
The one that I loved before I learned what love really is.
She is the hurt that I don’t talk about.
She had a name like a car
that she drove straight through the side
of everything I thought I had built.

I loved her with training wheels on,
I loved her in secret,
I loved her so much it felt like I was on fire with it.
I took me three years to fall out of love with her
and another to finally call it “love”.

I wanted to lay down and die for her.
I would have given up anything for her.

When people bring her up I laugh and say, “I thought I loved her once”.
She is the name I don’t say.
If there is a past, I have already forgotten it.
If she asks, tell her it’s okay.

The night we danced on your grandparents’ roof while the sun went down
I thought to myself, “could it ever get any better than this?”
We loved each other as much as any fifteen year olds could,
Painting each other’s toenails sunflower yellow in the middle of June.
I said “forever” for the first time that night and meant it.
I lost myself in an endless summer,
Drinking the rest of your dad’s Cabo in the pantry with the lights off
and giggling like he’d never find out.
We walked around with our chests puffed out
and talked like we knew something nobody else did.
You referred to me as your “beloved” and everybody laughed.
My sweaty hand never left yours
and, even just for a little while,
We owned the night.

You lit a fire in me and I tamed one in you.

Sometimes my heart still aches for the person I thought you were.

But,
You are not God, and this room is not burning.
You wanted love in shackles and I gave it to you,
Willingly (or not.)

For four years, you were everything.
And even though life is long,
I still wish I spent less of mine with you.

he liked my hair long so I cut it all off. i don't regret this. i've thrown out all of the clothes i used to wear, the ones that lived on his bedroom floor. i don't regret this. sometimes you have to burn yourself to the ground to forget someone ever touched you, sometimes you have to become nothing before you can be something again. that's okay. i've ruined every place he's ever been before his memory could ruin it first. i shed the skin he touched but it took months for new skin to form, i was raw and i was sensitive and it wasn't pretty. it needed to happen, though. i needed to be raw. and sensitive. and most of all: untouched. i want to forget it but i don't, i want to remember. i want to stay angry. i want to hold onto my anger forever, i want to start a revolution with it. i burned myself to the ground and now it's his turn. i shouldn't have had to deal with this as long as i have, i have been punished enough for a crime i did not commit; a crime i did not deserve. i need to teach myself to believe that: i did not deserve this. this is not my fault. it's hard to stomach that someone you used to love is a monster but it's harder to stomach a lie. even now, a year later, i'm still protecting him. subconsciously. it's a natural reflex for me, but i don't need to do that anymore. he doesn't deserve my protection, i am strong and i am powerful but not for him. never again. i don't want to be afraid anymore. i am strong, i can do this. i'm going to tell everyone what he did, because i don't need to feel ashamed of it anymore. i never did.

i feel that i'm doing something wrong, i'm not being a good survivor. i won't call my ****** out by name, i'm too scared to speak up about it. i feel like i'm a bad feminist, i see the other girls falling for the man who ***** me and i feel like it's my duty to warn them but i don't know how. he goes through girls and drugs and every time i see a new one, the vice grip on my voice gets impossibly tighter. i should be protecting these girls, i should be warning them and standing up for them but i am a coward. i'm a ******* coward. i'm too scared to say anything so i sit here and i don't sleep and i worry and i make myself sick. i'm a bad feminist. i'm bad at being a girl.

i've only got one friend anymore,
and it's even sadder than it sounds
if i told better jokes and left my house more,
maybe the rest of them would have stuck around
but it's okay
because my only friend, she's nice and she's pretty
and she lets me braid her hair

i spend more nights than i'd like to admit,
crying and watching re-runs of friends all by myself
my dog died last summer, i've still got her ashes in a little jar up on my shelf
and that's really ******* weird, and i'm really ******* weird
but it's okay

i don't know what i would do without pretentious poetry
or strawberry ice cream or female-fronted bands

i'm an artist but i can't draw, i just cry and pretend it's something
i have an ex-boyfriend who eggs my car every weekend
i've made more enemies than friends,
i'm the most popular girl at my high school, and that's why i stopped showing up to class

maybe i'd be happier if i did yoga and said words like "peace and love"