It was a Wednesday and you were sorry.
I had found that coffee stopped tasting as good and rain became oddly ugly.
Puddles, which once held a sense of charm, lost their grandeur.
Apologies were routinely part of our dialogues.
Slowly they stopped making sense.
Like alphabet soup, the letters lost their meaning when they were jumbled in such chaos.
I do think you meant them, but I stopped wanting them.
I just wanted coffee to be rich again, and rain to bring gladness.
I wanted a full-bodied life back.

I woke up from a nightmare
I could not stand to keep
to myself

you were stretched across the couch
coffee going cold on the table
a half finished cigarette
still burning

you wrapped me up
in kind words that
I could not bare
to hear

whispered into my ear
"one day we will go wandering
and this tiny house will overspill
with dreams'

you are not your memories, darling
you are not the bad things
that have been done to you
you are a fierce flame
that warms my heart

forget them, my love
they are nothing
and you, and you
are everything

i’d rather write about the freckles on your back than think about all of the ways in which you quite possibly don’t love me.

i feel sick at the very thought of you picking me apart the way you did; fingers grabbing and stroking in a catastrophic symphony of skin and vulnerability.

let’s read between each other’s lines; share my sentences and punctuate my paragraphs with your mouth; because i can breathe easier on the mornings where i wake up wrapped around you.

because my moods change like the ******* seasons and the spinning in my head doesn’t want to stop.
                                         you tell me that i should probably get a therapist because no one that thinks about all the ways in which they could **** themselves has an ounce of mental stability.
                                          i tell you that i have been to four.
                                          names faded into a blur with hazy snippets of conversation remaining.
20mg.
                    30mg.
you tell me that trust issues and scars aren’t endearing and i tell you that neither is counting up the potential number of pills needed to dissolve your body into the living room carpet.

let me sink inside your skin and make a home in your flesh;
i tell you about the nights where i lay awake in the bath turning the water red.
                       tragic, isn’t it.

you tell me that this isn’t how my head should work and i tell you that i already know. everything you could possibly tell me i already know.
i know that 400 calories a day isn’t normal, and my hands shouldn’t shake all the time.
                                             i know.
please let me stitch myself into you, even just for a while; until i no longer feel dizzy and my world stops spinning.
i don’t need you to tell me that it will be okay, because honestly i don’t think it will be and, that in itself, is okay.
                                                                ­                 let me stitch myself into you, because my own skin can’t take it anymore.

let me call you back when my voice stops wobbling and my vision straightens out, but honestly, i’m terrified that it never will. what if this is it. headaches and tears and shaking and blood.
                                             and the debilitating, gut-wrenching feeling of pure and euphoric emptiness.

                                              tragic, isn’t it.

Your naked body
Pressed on mine
We kissed

I thought that
I should feel
Something

Thrill, euphoria
Lust, love
Or bliss

But no
I felt
Nothing

I

You ask me to write about you
and I say I can’t.
I say I can’t write when I’m happy and
you haven’t broken my heart yet.
I lied.
The truth is, I haven’t learned how to make poetry
out of my flaws yet.

II

I’m afraid your love might suffocate me.
I still love someone I can never have and
now you love someone you can never have.

III

I know I have so much to work on.
I am a broken person who has been together
too many times. The water is leaking and the flowers are wilting.
You deserve someone who will love you as much as you love them.

IV

My mother told me to be with someone who loves me
more than I love them.
I can not do that.
I want can’t-live-with-out-you love. Even if it tears through me
with the strength of a category 5 hurricane.  Even if I can’t use my lungs for the months after.

V
I’m going to break his heart.
Because I can’t grow to love him.
I know everyday I am trash
but it feels good to be loved like this.
I am fragile and so is this love.

VI

I think it’s safer for both of us to leave the vase alone.

Sometimes, I wish I hadn’t just been the backseat of your car,
Intoxicated. My first drunk hook up. My first. Period.
I picture myself being champagne on Valentine’s Day.
I picture myself being you, nervous in the car, holding Starbucks
because you know I love coffee. Sometimes, I picture myself as her,
calling you a stalker and ignoring your calls,
but then I see myself. I call you beautiful,
turn you into poetry, laugh at your bad jokes,
I see myself as I become your drunk Wednesday night
when you’re sad. I see myself as I say no,
I become a “this is not a good idea”
and you a “we’ll deal with the consequences in the morning.”
We laugh because this hurts too much.
You take her out for dinner and I burrow money
for Plan B because you forgot you don’t like condoms
and clearly have no idea how children are made.
I have already named him. He has your curls and
my anxiety. He is smart. Except, I never wanted kids and
you would be a great father. Instead, you tell her
the beach reminds you of her and I cry in a McDonald’s
bathroom with my friend as relief floods through me that
the test comes negative. I stop talking to you,
move forward, meet someone new and before long
see myself becoming you. Because isn’t that the cycle?
Bad men turn good women into bad women who turn
good men into bad men. I’ll set him free so he can hurt
someone like me, and I drink red wine as I read her
poems about him and me.

may 24, 2017
last suicide attempt
everyone blamed you
it was him
he hurt you
why do you even talk to him still?

you were never the reason
you broke up with me that night
and i snapped
the only thing that kept me happy
left
and i had
zero reason to
live

it was never your fault...

After all the jacks are in their boxes
And the clowns have all gone to bed
You can hear happiness staggering on down the street
Footprints dressed in red
And the wind whispers, "Mary"
A broom is drearily sweeping
Up the broken pieces of yesterday's life
Somewhere, a queen is weeping
Somewhere, a king has no wife
And the wind, it cries, "Mary"
The traffic lights, they turn blue tomorrow
And shine their emptiness down on my bed
The tiny island sags downstream
'Cause the life that lived is dead
And the wind screams, "Mary"
Will the wind ever remember
The names it has blown in the past?
And with this crutch, its old age and its wisdom
It whispers, "No, this will be the last"
And the wind cries, "Mary"

I visited you today,
felt you crunch against my toes,
smelt you from a mile away,
heard you in your throes.

You covered me in wet kisses,
as I languished in your swell,
you promised me an ocean,
one you knew so well.

I took you in my mouth,
let you spill down my chin,
and as I walked away, I smiled,
knowing I could still taste you on my skin.