Before we leave in twenty-one days,
you should know that I don’t blame you
for all those times you thought you let me down.
I used to dream that my friends and lovers
were matured maple trees and would
awake to find they were always saplings.
I don’t blame you, I don’t blame you, I don’t blame you,
so please don’t blame yourself.
I’m a hard person to please.

All those times, you tried to gently brush my face
but then pecked, pecked, pecked
with your questions -
“How are you feeling today, love?"
I’m sorry because I never had the energy
to talk about it, or you, or life,
or how it was the hottest summer in years
or how I never really got over the last boy
I kissed, or how I locked myself away for two days
with Fevers and Mirrors on repeat
and a bottle of ***,
or how I got so scared of nightmares,
but not as scared as I was of myself
so I bought three more bottles of Jack
just so I could stay too drunk
to find where my mother kept the key
to the drawer with all the knives.

That wasn’t your fault, although you didn’t help
by planning adventures and conversations
and counting constellations without me.
You didn’t help by running away with the
hand of the last boy
I kissed when I closed my eyes.
It’s okay though, I’ve never wanted people
who didn’t want me.
Don’t blame yourself, please, because
it was me, it was me, it was me.

I needed you so much closer
than you were
but it was me, because I never trusted you
or told you about my feelings
or gave you a chance to care for me,
and I never told you why I drank
so much on weekends,
or why I lost twenty pounds in two months.
All of that was not you,
it was me, it was me, it was me.

An explorer never stops exploring.
If they do, they cease to exist,
to be, to live, to be free.
An explorer has to explore,
so what happens when they don’t?

I never wanted to stop searching,
but after two years
of contradictions,
when I asked God to heal my heart
but subversively asked you to break it,
I finally ran out of supplies.

I had to stop breathing light into holes
that you wouldn’t let me tent in.
I had to stop crying at dusk,
telling Him I needed Him to save me
from the jagged rocks I fell on,
and the game of Russian Roulette
I liked to play with the pistol I found buried
under your sand pit, just south of the stream.
I had to stop waking up each morning,
proclaiming I didn’t need Him,
just you, just you, just you.

Just one more mile,
one more night,
one more cave,
one more newly drafted map.
I can’t stop exploring,
because as much as I don’t want to live,
I do not want to cease to exist.

This is the only advice I’ll ever give:
you cannot fall in love with people
who don’t know how to love,
so please, for the sake of him,
and your mother, and expensive therapy bills,
don’t even try.

You can love him, all you like
but you cannot fall in love
with him. You can fall in love
with the idea of him, and fall in love
with the idea of finally fixing him,
and his arms wrapped around you
while you sleep, chasing away the nightmares
that started when you met him.

Love, you deserve a person who
will make you see that the Sun is ready
to heal you all over again each morning,
and who will open your eyes the right way:
with kisses and a cup of tea, someone who will
try their best to love your friends, your family,
and the stranger carrying their groceries.

Don’t allow him to keep
any more pieces of your already cracking heart.
He doesn’t deserve them, not yet.
If he learns to love, and love himself, and learns to
be with people without nearly destroying them in the process,
then rejoice, because you can heal together.

But he doesn’t want help, he doesn’t want you,
you cannot fix him - you can love him, and please do,
I encourage it, but do not fall in love with him
and don’t think you deserve someone better,
because you will not stoop to be bitter and petty,
it’s only that you deserve
someone who is ready.

I know, you’re sorry,
stop telling me you
want to hate yourself
for what you did to me.
I know, I told you I’d be okay
without you.
I suppose it wouldn’t help
if I told you
the nightmares started again
after you left.
It took me eleven months to
finally free myself from you
on the first go around,
and now that we’ve tried and
lost for the second time in two years,
just know it might take me
twenty-two months
just to let someone
kiss me on the cheek,
and touch my scars,
and say,
‘I love you, I love you, I love you.’

Stop asking to see me,
if you’re done loving me.
Don’t tell me you care about me,
even if you do.
I’m trying my hardest to climb out of your vines,
but every time you ask,
if we’re going to be okay,
another vine wraps around,
because there is no more we -
it’s just you and I,
and the cord that tied
us together has been frayed
for the final time.

I stretched myself
into a line so thin that I lost myself
along the way somewhere between you and him.
I became numb to the fact
that my mother’s cancer was spreading,
and I never said ‘I love you.’
and I stopped forgiving my friends,
for all the times they forgot or didn’t care
I couldn’t handle crowds,
and razors, and that I never slept
when I was alone in my bed.


When he told me he could never
want me they way I wanted him to,
I felt something for the first time in eight months.
But whatever I felt was not for him
it was him handing the piece back to me
only so it could ricochet off of the
Pacific and the thousands of miles between us,
because as hard as I try to rip it back,
and seal it to his heart with kisses and *****,
it will always come back to you