You asked me if I felt okay
You said I looked so tired that day
It’s not something I can hide
You could see it in my eyes

I told you that I felt blue
You said that you felt sad too
You said that you felt so sad
You said you felt so sad
Like me

You asked me if I felt okay
You said I was so quiet that day
Every step is misery
Every thought’s an awful thing

I told you that I felt fine
We both knew that was a lie
You said that you felt so sad
You said you felt so sad
Like me

You asked me if I felt okay
You said I cut too deep that day
My only semblance of control
Shredded skin; fat cells exposed

I told you I had no choice
You cried ‘til you lost your voice
You said that you felt so sad
You said you felt so sad
Like me

I've always hated
that question.

I've wanted to die
since I was
eleven years old.

Isn't that
reason
enough?

No one taught me self care.
No one even tried.
All I know of life and love
are broken home lies.

I learned all the wrong things,
like how to cry and scream.
Alcohol, antipathy,
and other violent things.

Sometimes I think of better days;
I like to play make believe.
I think about who I could have been
were it not all done to me.

How easily I would function.
How that would just come naturally.
How I wouldn't do the things I do
if I hadn't seen the things I've seen.

I learned how to stay alive.
No one taught me how to live.

When you leave
I don't want you
to break my heart
I want you
to mutilate my soul.
Please
don’t take just a part of me
I want you
to devour me whole.

When you leave
don’t slip out
quietly at night.
Please
will you snap my spine in two?
Leave me heartbreak paralyzed
just for you.

When you leave
I want you to have left
only after having become
my everything.
I want you
to leave me
with nothing.
I want you to leave me
as nothing.
A distant shadow.
A hollow shell.
A nightmare memory
of what
I could have been
had I never loved you.

I want to love you so fully
so recklessly
that in the moment
that you leave
there would be nothing
at all
left to leave.

When you leave
please
leave me like that.

And
please
never leave.

I have run out of reasons to hate myself tonight
I'm sure I'll wake up with more in the morning

But for now, a stony silence has fallen upon my brain
so otherwise self-obsessed with self-hate.

I do not recognize the stranger in the bathroom mirror
and although he appears too tired and sad
to be any sort of handsome
he doesn't look as ugly
as the man I normally see standing there looking back
always so tired and sad and confused
and ugly.

So ugly.

So ugly, save for tonight.
For I have been set free from those intrusive spirals
the burdened repetition of every unfortunate thing
the burdened repetition of every petty thing
the burdened repetition of every monstrous thing
the burdened repetition of every made up thing
I have ever said, done, thought,
or been forced by demonic circumstance
to bear witness to.

For once I do not dread the thought of another day.
I am not crippled by questions of how exactly
I will grind through it all.
All the things that I must do
that I will inevitably not do.
All the promises that I have yet to make.
All the promises that I have yet to break.
All the lies that I tell myself and others
so as to briefly pretend
that I am capable of living
that strange thing
called life.

I am sorry.
I am ashamed.
I hope one day to be forgiven.
Or at least I hope for more nights like this one:

far too sad for sadness
far too tired to sleep
far too unhinged to remember to forget
that everyone, myself included, deserves to be loved.

I have run out of reasons to hate myself tonight
I'm sure I'll wake up with more in the morning

You said that we were the best of friends
But then me met our bitter end.
You said you saw me, honest and true
Yet you ran from the broken and blue.
You said you loved my troubled mind
You said said I was ugly, sad, and unkind.

You said I was your soulmate
But you don't have a soul

I think you just loved having a lover
That you didn't have to love.

we meet
in the cracks between
the love you lost
and the love you're
walking away from
we meet
in a dark quiet refuge
of cold secrets and comfortable silence
a sad romance world
where you don't love me
like I love you
and I convince myself that
that is okay
so long as you're next to me
and maybe
we might get to meet again
one last time
before you change your mind
and walk away from me too
but at least
I knew that it would happen
that I would be alone again
left only to feel grateful
for that crack in time
where you loved me too
before you realized
that you didn't