I know you won't read this
Your eyes will meet my name and take on the role of ignoring
They will do their best to avoid its presence
And eventually it will be a skill done almost subconsciously,
Forgetting me

I know you won't respond
If I ask you what happened
If I were to wonder aloud what changed enough to make you do the same
I'm not quite sure you even know the answer
And I'm quite sure I'll never pose the question

I wonder how it is that no one ever told you not to love a writer
Or worse than that, pretend to
These word-wringing hands belong to a body with a heart made of glue
Attachment forms if you get too close,
I am telling you that you did

It's clear that no one ever taught you caution
To be careful with the girl who cares much more than she should,
Who will love you more than you ever asked for
You crossed a line written in red and the footprints are still there

I know you won't remember
The way your lips met my forehead when you said goodnight or how the same ones told me I was beautiful
Your hands formed craters in my back and now I don't know how to fill all of the empty
I am used to an excess of space,
Of vacant but this
Is just too much

I know you won't understand why it is that
People like me always let strangers inside
We open the door without looking through the peephole
And take in whatever the wind blows with open arms
It is a mistake I am not sorry for repeating
You were just one of many

I know you won't read this
I know you won't try to
You will probably see my name and move on the way I probably should have already
You will laugh at my vulnerability like being bare isn't something that takes strength
You will remember my thighs, the unsteadiness of my laugh, the freckle I pointed out above my cheek, my warmth
You will hear my voice in the title
You will see the word poetry and immediately say no thank you
And I will continue keeping the idea of you alive in a language you don't care to comprehend

I know you won't read this
I know you won't try to
But if you do,
Know more than anything else,
I didn't write this for you
I wrote it for myself.

Learning Objective:
Discover hatred for a poem you previously loved

It is undeniably human in how we constantly seek explanations for our problems
It's funny, the way we blame the alignment of the planets for our mishaps and frustrations, calling mercury into fault for our own mistakes
I have spent far too long searching for answers I will most likely never find to blame it on astrology

Your hellos have morphed into avoidance and I miss the way you once looked at me like I was a single star in the middle of a loud Los Angeles sky
I don't know exactly when you changed your mind or how and why but I do know that I haven't put the bottle back to my lips because the cool of it feels too much like yours
Early on I prepared myself for the let down but that doesn't mean I didn't taste disappointment

This could easily be an apology but I'm not sure what I have to be sorry for and the word is overused anyway
This could easily be an I am still angry but I'm really not, just aching and tired of the aftermath that follows wringing myself dry
I poured out all of my contents and you don't even have the decency to act like you could have loved me
I used to light up like an Idaho sunrise when I saw you but now when I do I have to dig laughter out of the depths of my stomach to pretend I’m okay
I am fading like the twitching light bulb in my room I am too weak to change

You made the mistake of telling a collapsing ceiling its perfection; you said there was nothing wrong with the structure
I watched you leave and then I caved in completely
Gravity had been calling to pull down for some time so I guess it makes sense that it finally did
My only regret is how quiet your smile gets when you notice me now and my inability to understand why

I don't know what I did to create the dull in your eyes or what I did to make you stop caring
I don’t know how we managed to go from pretend lovers to near strangers
I am so sorry for something I can't comprehend, for something I didn't even do, for that which I am uncertain
I am sorry that you changed and that I can't blame it on the retrograde of mercury
Los Angeles has enough stars without me,
I hope you find yours again one day.

In my mind I can see the rain pouring everything it has into the ground,
I can see the sun shining with all its might onto the earth
and I can see the air breathing all its breath to help a single rose blossom and grow,
and I know that due to all these things,
bouquets of flowers are given to lovers to show their affection for one another
and each petal, no matter the color, represents all the feelings we may or may not feel
yet cannot express,
so we give each other flowers to show emotions that mean more than we can say,
just like all the things given to a seed growing in the ground every day
to prove that anything, no matter size, shape or color,
can become beautiful enough to express the one emotion that can never be explained by mere words,
yet easily expressed with a single rose.

I hope I don’t **** this one up
If I make a mistake it isn’t my fault
My credibility can be diminished by the way present things
I, the way I present things
I am afraid of publishing something someday and
******* up the end result
Someone will read it and laugh because I missed word
A word, I missed a word
****
If I am to ever mess up a final draft then
I will laugh because nothing is final except for maybe death
Maybe
Books scare me because when they are printed the work becomes permanent
And I’m not sure I want anything I create to last forever
I don’t know if anything I say will ever be kept for that long but if it is I want my mistakes to be as clear as what I am attempting to say
I am attempting to say I cannot be held accountable for everything I do wrong
People will look back and doubt that I can be trusted because I didn’t use the write form of right
Even so, I hope my errors are good enough to be remembered
I hope I can incite a cringe or two with my fallibility
I was not made to be perfectly correct in all that I do, my words can attest to that
So if I **** this up, if I make a typo,
Let’s just pretend it was on porpoise.