Who would have known that such a strong friendship could start with a pile of books and a pair of crutches?
Strangers at first but sisters next
When sadness strikes my feeble heart she's there to patch it right up
We have had many adventures together which include but are not limited too
Breaking plungers, making forts, watching anime, bothering people, TREPCHMM (one of the many inside jokes), and most importantly failing at life together
A girl who can create the most beautiful things and cure the saddest of hearts
She'll stun you with her beauty and her immense knowledge
The only sad part about our friendship is
She refuses to read this

I told myself I wouldn't write another **** poem.

I told myself reliving the same traumas
over
and over
would not aid in the healing process,
but these are not
the same traumas,
this is not
another **** poem,
there is just
so much ******* material
that it's starting to run together.

She went to a movie with him,
somewhere public,
somewhere safe,
and still he drug his hand
up her thigh,
she kept her mouth shut,
tried to push him away,
wouldn't want to interrupt the best scene,
whispered
"stop",
he didn't listen.

He was in his girlfriend's bedroom,
watched her sit in silence
fuming
when he said
"no"
for the fourth time,
told himself to
man up
when she said
"what, don't you love me?"
He swore he did,
he just couldn't show it like this,
she didn't listen.

She was at his apartment,
told him that morning
she just wasn't in the mood today,
she shifted inside herself
as he kissed her neck
the same way he had
hundreds of times before,
forced a laugh as she said
"I really don't want to,"
he didn't listen.

She was sitting on his couch
when he put his arm around her,
unwrapped herself from him,
he told her to
"just relax,"
became comfortable in a body
he was never invited into,
she got away,
called her brother from the next street over,
explained to him from the passenger seat
that she had said no,
he didn't listen.

I told myself I wouldn't write another **** poem
because I had convinced myself it wouldn't happen again,
had convinced myself that
my friends and family
were not a part of the statistic,

but every sobbing phone call
or hushed condolence
reminds me that
this happens every day,
that pretending **** culture does not exist
will not make it go away,
that 20% of human beings
in the United States
will be ***** in their lifetime,
that 20% of the people I love
will be ***** in their lifetime.

I keep telling myself
I will not write another **** poem,

keep reminding myself
to look at the facts.

Oh, how perfect it is to want you,
how perfect it is to long for that which I know
I can never have, to see
the futility in my desires and to
desire them in spite of,

how perfect it is that you do not love me
anymore,
that we will not fall into mutual complacency
which would inevitably tarnish and blanch,
that the
unknown
will remain
unknowable,
that anything will continue to be possible
because nothing has been tested against fate,

how perfect it is to wish for the infeasible,
to strive toward a goal I will
never attain, to
never lack
something to search for,

oh, how perfect it is to want you;
how perfect it is to want too much.

she's asking everyone in my house for their horoscope,
my brother's reading into it,
"it's so accurate," he said
and for some reason I feel so detached
from everything
from my own cells, even-
dragging my fingers across surfaces pretending like it was meant to be
but by the end of the year,
my fingerprints will be wiped clean
and
every time i leave a place,
i feel like they didn't want me there, anyway
including your door frame
you never wanted me there, anyway

You were in my dream last night and I think we were in love and my head didn't hurt anymore and suddenly I remembered how it felt for my chest cavity to be full of something other than steam and I swear to God it was real, I could feel your heartbeat while you slept but still I woke into a dark room and let the world slowly come back to me and I don't know how but that illusion felt more real than my life has for a while now and I started grasping for someone on the couch next to me only to find I was alone, and I keep waiting for someone to tell me to calm down, that this is all a bad dream, I keep hoping I'll wake up and this will all seem foggy and distant because last night couldn't have been in my head, I could feel your heartbeat while you slept.

In speech class they taught us that people speak only to entertain, to inform, or to persuade so when I texted you at 4:31am after swallowing the liquor cabinet and talked about three years ago in Michigan when we watched that movie after everybody else had fallen asleep, I was trying to entertain you, trying to remind you of all the fun we used to have together before you changed and when I told you I missed you I was trying to inform you of the pit in my stomach that you left when you removed yourself from me, of the way I feel when you say my name and of the fact that yes, I did notice that you stopped saying my name and when I told you I was dying I was trying to persuade you to come save me, made it life or death so you only had two options and if you made the wrong choice at least I wouldn't be around to see it, I was trying to convince you that you needed me by showing you how much you would miss me and when you showed up at my bedside, I know you were trying to tell me you loved me.

This is for the girls that have ****** you. This is for the pale girls with short hair, the "she could be a lesbian but I'm not sure" type, the beanie wearing bad ******* with heavy baggage and a surplus of bandages. This is for the sad girls, the shipwrecked sailors searching for a beacon, the bruised rib cages and ****** knuckles. This is for the condoms, the purple box you keep in the drawer in your bedside table that we have all seen, the repeated observation that you have no ******* clue how to put on a ****** without looking like a child trying to stuff a water ****** into a sock. This is for the silence, the overwhelming quiet made quieter by skin hitting skin, the active avoidance of eye contact. This is for the fact that you consider foreplay "stalling," the speed with which you can please yourself via another person's body, the ******* that we have all faked at least twice. This is for the general consensus that your performance in bed can be summed up in three words: insecure, selfish, and pretentious. You are the Kanye West of ***; I'm not sure if you are going to let me finish. This is for the sore muscled sweethearts that saved your self-esteem and reassured you of your ****** orientation, for the courteous cuties who carried on until you came, this is for the girls that have ****** you. Godspeed.