Ill always be present with you, just not here. Not now. Goodbyes are a foreign language that sound familar but I'll never be able to speak. The rushed last breath after I meet your eyes for the last time. I close the door behind me and face outwards. "Goodbye," I whisper. "And thank you for teaching me I have a voice".

And the Universe sighed. "This too you shall revieve as a blessing, all in time, my dear."

Goodbye. A word that haunts. Echos through the dark and paralyzes me with fear, enough to tremble and shake similar to the way a weak hand grasps for months, clutching onto life. When you leave, how do you suppose you hear me. I shout and scream into the cemetery of everything that once was. The lesson of a lifetime is say goodbye early. Say goodbye to the possibility of departure and leave before they leave first. Thats how you say goodbye to a ghost, in a way that will haunt them to their grave.

I will love you gone. Fluttering heartbeats shake trees into homes. Planting feet in the disposible cottages I roam freely from. I love you Brown even though all I've ever known was Green. Once an alive thing now foraged. Barren as I am wingless, Cant turn away from lacking leaves. I will love you deathly even if you dont nourish me any longer. You return greener than before, but sap only so sweet can be found on a dead tree.

They sit in their beautiful growth. They are observed from afar. They mark these areas, firmly staked into the ground. All it takes is one selfish, careless person to rip them out. After that, their seeds dont shake and blossom anymore. They decay and wilt. Become nothing more than a dead, pretty thing that use to be.

Your love was honeysuckle sprouts growing with every breath I took. My tears kept them flourishing until they were sprawled up my insides, clogging my throat not being able to decipher the 'I Love You's from the screams. Quickly the vines overgrew and spilled out my mouth as messy as the poems, forgetting what it was to feel empty.

I kept hush of the trappings of your watered down spirit so their ears would not bear the burning news. The flickers of innocence flashed its teeth as we wrapped our pinkies around eachother for the last time and promised to not let go. Four days after you walked, I laid my soul for eyes to greive upon, for hungry dogs to ravage my remains, slobbering like there wasnt enough on their plate to fill their expanding appetite. I wonder if on the walk back home you saw a daisy and thought of how you let that promise become as spoiled as my remains. I wonder if you plucked it, held it, and said how ravishing it looked, only to leave it with pulled roots.

Roses are red
As red as the open wound that bleeds
Violets are blue
As blue as the bruises on my beaten heart
Sugar is sweet
As sweet as your smile turned bitter after goodbyes
And so are you
Full of sugary sweetness, rotten teeth, and stomach aches.

Doomsday nurses us from the start, reigning over the watchlist of our lifetimes. I walk through the destruction in my path while ignoring the hand I dealt in it. The disillusionment falls out of your mouth and I weep tears at the sight. The end of a cycle. I nutured you whole and watched the lilacs bloom from your scalp. Started as buds but with the passage of time became weeded. I thought I breathed new life but it stands as just obliteration.

If this was the last day alive I'd press my lips to your temple, Id whisper my name hoping to make it eternal in the graveyard of the cosmos.

I once saw a butterfly with bruised wings and, in that moment,  I understood what it felt like to break the most fragile, beautiful part of oneself

Its always a foolish choice to hold on to the I love yous like a life raft while surrounded by the wreckage of a ship

I cry like the waves giving themselves back to the ocean. Pulling everything under until they are heavy and gasping for clear air. I hear people say my mood changes like the wind which steers my tears. Transporting my energy into something that doesnt matter. Your voice travels through me and I recieve it, just more muffled than how it was sent. I too swell
in response to a distant storm further within myself. Creates a hole I cannot escape from. You took advantage of the wave to carry yourself away to somewhere warmer. Calmer

The hair ties I left behind. I never forget where I put them, just a keepsake to come back to later. They know the hollows of my past. Followed me down every dark alley, school hallway, and soft bed. Only difference is they get left behind physically, while I get left behind mentally. The people I’ve left in my life are haunted by my remnants. Or blessed with my image. My face forever blacklisted from their memories but when they see my traces buried under their pillow their recollection of my portrayal does a 180 back to the day you told me you loved me. And you loved me. Then, my brain does a 180 back to the day you told me you loved me and did not love me. Back to the day I stayed too late because I never wanted to leave, never wanted to go home, you were home. Part of me overstayed my welcome and no. Im not talking about the hair ties anymore. Im talking about my heartstrings. The way you played them while shouting that I brought you to the hesitance because Im the whirlwind, the quick flutter of waves and you only were around long enough to get your feet wet, not long enough to strip each layer of clothes and get devoured by the storm I am, because storms are messy. Reek of nothing but havoc and frenzied goodbyes. Goodbyes that are resistant and without reason. Not anybody in this world wants a rushed farewell. I was left behind waiting for it, slowly. For you to tuck those hair ties into a back drawer and say goodbye one last time.

The light from the lampshade cascades a shadow across the white wall. Creating the outline of a broken body who proclaims bruises can’t be seen by the shadows. This doesn’t take convincing. The dark isn’t aware of the bruises, we talk of light and safety but all it does is highlight our downfalls. Says good morning to the hurt and a new day of torture. The revival of another ****** day. And we worship that? The broken body that  shakes and screams is ignored by the morning rush and clatter. The night listens and lets you empty.