kissing you was like swerving into oncoming traffic
i can never tell if i am more haunted by empty picture frames or the ashes of their contents
you taught me that the saying "pick your battles" meant not answering when love was at the door
sometimes when i drink whiskey i swear i can hear your voice in the creases of my bedsheets & i sleep on the floor
i still catch myself running my hands over things you touched the most, looking for the echoes of your fingertips
i practice things i'll never say to you
i remember the day you told me you didn't like poetry, how "everything's already been said" & how "nothing meaningful can be captured without being cliche" you know, i don't miss you like the sun and moon, i do not miss you like tide bent waves crashing on the shoreline, i miss you like a chernobyl swingset misses children
rumor has it that drowning is a lot like coming home, that drinking bleach can **** the butterflies in your stomach
for your love of cigarettes, i would have been an ashtray
this halloween i want to dress up as the you when you loved yourself and show up on your doorstep
i never understood what you meant when you said i was an instrument, back when you would cup your hands around my chest and breathe through the holes in my heart, i still wonder if the sounds i made remind you of wind chimes
i never paid much attention to abandoned buildings until i became one
in my dreams all the flowers smell like your perfume
i am the only person who has ever wished for the same snowflake to fall twice
if i could go back, and rewrite the definition of audacity, it would be how when we lost the bet of love, you said "we never shook on it"
i love you, if the feeling is not mutual, please pretend this was a poem
the only apology i want from you, is to have you repeat the names of children we will never have in your parents living room until they *****
we are the same person if you find yourself up at 4am dry heaving promises, or if you are kept awake by the laughter of those who've abandoned you
nobody ever told you that goodbyes taste like the back of stamps
sometimes i'm convinced that the only reason we hug, is so you can check my back for exit wounds
May 19, 2014
May 19, 2014 at 11:42 PM UTC
i want to cut myself
open, and pour out every
word i thought about
telling you but never did
and stitch myself
up without anyone's help,
and clean away everything
i have depended on to fill
empty spaces, and replace it
with something new
i want to paint over my
wounds so that i don't have
to be reminded of what
i went through to get here
i want to be beautiful without
you, i want to be courageous
May 12, 2014
May 12, 2014 at 12:21 AM UTC
I started smoking cigarettes again
Something about having another thing burning between my fingers
Besides your hands
Makes me dismiss the feeling that lingers
when I think of you
Since I can’t have your taste in my mouth
Menthol will have to do
I am addicted
Isn't this sounding familar?
You **** me inside starting with my lungs
Like the small nicotine sticks do with every inhale
I would much rather your slender fingers in my hand
But for $10 a pack they last around a lot longer than you do
No matter how much you rot me from the inside out
A piece of me will always be yours
Always
May 11, 2014
May 11, 2014 at 2:54 AM UTC
pisces: you paint the ocean on your eyelids so that when there are tears streaming down your face at 3:15 in the morning, it doesn't feel like you're crying and you feel like a monster because nobody likes the taste of salt water, but what you're forgetting is that salt helps heal wounds
aquarius: you don't wear sunscreen when you're drinking lemonade outside in the middle of an indian summer because you want to show people that you don't have a care in the world, but it's hard for anyone to see anything when you've constructed a barricade of repressed memories and locked yourself inside a closet full of skeletons
capricorn: "i like holding your hands because they're warm," he tells you, but what happens when they're not? you want to peel back the layers of his skin until you see his lungs moving beneath his ribcage and you want to know if he can hold his breath for as long as atlas held the earth (maybe his lungs can hold your hands when he won't want to)
sagittarius: you get drunk off of cheap thrills and doing eighty-five down backroads while everyone else is asleep, but when it comes to letting people get close to you, you still need someone to hold your hand (maybe you can't trust yourself to trust others)
scorpio: you're telling him to kiss your neck when you really want him to kiss your mind, but you're so torn between being passionate and being psychological that maybe you don't know the difference
libra: according to others, you are the one who's supposed to be balanced and content, but right now you are struggling and you can't tell the difference between a love letter and a suicide note (it was hard for me to write this) (i love you a lot) (i'm sorry, baby)
virgo: you wear more makeup than necessary when you go out and you only wear black pants because they make your legs look smaller, but i want you to remember that you are a flower that was born in the midst of a drought and plucking your own petals until there's nothing left would be a real disappointment
leo: your hands are at your own throat because you are too generous and you have been taken for granted one too many times (ask your mother for advice and she will tell you to stop ripping yourself apart just to keep others whole)
cancer: there are rainstorms in your tear ducts and butterflies in your stomach and sometimes you feel like the earth will shatter beneath the gentle touch of your fingertips, but when you realize that nobody knows how to feel the way that you know how to feel, think of it as a good thing
gemini: you believe that soulmates are supposed to be your other half, but you should also consider that soulmates could be those who help you find the pieces you were looking for in others in yourself (patience — you will find yours soon)
taurus: you do things that you shouldn't do and you kiss boys that you shouldn't kiss and your shameless flirting with self destruction won't be ending any time soon (you let others love you to the point where you are too stubborn to love yourself)
aries: you light fires just to see how quickly you can put them out and you are always three steps ahead of the person next to you and sometimes you start fights just to see how long it takes for you to come out on top, but everyone can see that you would never hold someone else's heart just to have the opportunity to drop it
May 11, 2014
May 11, 2014 at 2:47 AM UTC
i have racked my mind
trying to figure this whole thing out
the staying, the going
the threads we claim hold us here
& the people who've stopped to play a tune on them
i sometimes relate it
to waking up in waist deep snow
in our former selves
the us we wish we could give one another
the children we've sat on the shelves
trapped, like the looks
we leave behind in snow globes
i sometimes imagine ships
dragging the bottom to the sea of "me"
for sleep & pieces of my old self
to sell to the new one
like history doesn't repeat itself
it gets me wondering
if you too want an apology from the rain
or if you dream of burning family photo albums
and wearing the ashes like perfume
if you're anything like me
how i hope god chokes
on memories of me blowing out candles as a child
i know i shouldn't reference my reader
but don't you know, the only difference
between alone & lonely is you?
that if my hands could talk
the only thing they'd be able to say
is "dear god we've missed you"
and how can you tell me it isn't love
when even the rain refuses to fall
in places where i've kissed you
i remember the day
you found my smile at a yard sale
it reminds me of how you'll leave
i wonder if when you go
you'll tell yourself
the person in the rear view mirror
is closer than they appear
May 10, 2014
May 10, 2014 at 12:12 PM UTC
once your heart tells you to do one thing and your mind tells you another, you go with what they say.
when your fingers interlock with someone else's that aren't who they're supposed to be you cringe at the thought of your feet touching at night.
once you start to believe what other people say is true, you start to disbelieve in what your teachers tell you.
contradictions make the curiosity even more unbearable, yet we still wonder around like its our job to get lost in the dark, never ending abyss of our mind and we wonder how it was even possible that we sunk so low in our self esteem where we cant get back up
and the lines that make up the picture of your sadness are carved into your skin, differing you from one another to the next and so on,
until you cant find yourself in you anymore and you go to someone else hoping to see some of yourself in their broken eyes
but you cant.
yet you still search on and on until you find one thread of yourself somewhere else and you keep pulling that until it runs out and you run out, but then what?
do you keep running or do you keep your mind set to never getting that feeling back in your gut like you got when you held that right persons hand, and when your feet touched at night.
May 10, 2014
May 10, 2014 at 11:58 AM UTC