He won't tell you he loves you. He will not look at you like you're the universe or the sun or even the smallest star in the sky. He will not show up at your doorstep at two a.m. and he won't give up his seat for you and he won't make you mix tapes. But he will stay up talking to you, making you laugh and sigh when you're almost falling asleep. He will be thousands of miles away, but whenever you feel like your lungs are filling up with smoke and you forget how to breathe and your hands get sweaty, you'll think of him and feel okay again. You'll write poems about him that he will never read and he'll listen to your favorite band and tell you how much he hates their music. He'll show you new songs to listen to and you'll love all of them. A baby bird will die in your hands and you'll never stop thinking about it. This is how he will leave you. Two years later you'll still love him even when you're no longer lonely. You'll dream about his eyes and you'll find it hard to understand how he left before he was ever really yours to hold. You'll be okay without him but you won't be happy, and that little bird won't ever leave your mind. He'll never leave your mind. He probably won't think of you because he has someone new he can hold. Someone with brighter eyes and a wider smile and whenever she asks about you, he'll smile but he will only say, "all I remember is how much she loved this really ****** band."

I look in the mirror.
I don’t appear.
This girls eyes are stained red.
Her hair, a rat’s nest.
Her cheeks are red.
Pale skin.

I try to think.
My mind doesn’t pop up.
I swim through my head trying to find it,
But the smoke gets in the way.
I see nothing real.

Nothing matters, will matter, or ever has mattered
In this haze of mine.
The only concern
Is how many giggles I can release
Per minute.

I have goose bumps,
My feelings are nonexistent.
I’m walking through a dream.
I don’t have to dwell on sadness,
I can release myself into a different kind of wild.
The kind I control.
In my head.

It is not without great vanity that a man loves a woman. She sits hours upon days, sunsets upon moons, waiting to be missed. He is inconsistent with his efforts, and as her love swells, he retreats back to the mannerisms that exemplify why women want what they can never have. He looks in the mirror feeling so lucky to live in his skin, so lucky to be so loved, while she looks in the mirror wondering what it is about her that does not intrigue him enough to fully commit to a heart as fully committed as her own. He knows his power, he wears it well.
It is with great vanity a man is loved.

Maybe deep down she'll always be that girl that wants what she can't fully have.

Loving people that'll never know how to love her, really love her.

And a few times she'll realize her worth but then she gets consumed in this futuristic land of fomo.

fear of missing out

That wide range between reality and what if.

Reality existing in hands other than her own.

What if being behind those closed doors that make reality worthwhile.

Fearful of abandoning reality because there's that small chance that what if comes through.

Fear of missing out.
On you.

I don't too much buy into those social media romances.
Reminding us every Monday and Wednesday
Guess whose it is

Well
I don't too much buy into those social media romances
Because pictures always last longer
And all those emojis become cliche
Hinting at all this love that may or may not exist

See
I don't too much buy into those social media romances
Although I always have moments I wish I could bare to the world
But they're better off left with me

Scrolling through these photos
See I don't too much buy into those social media romances
Because I know things are not always as they seem.

She spoke of poetry
as though it were her
goodbye letter.

No-
not to the world,
but to her pain.

And what was baffling
about her was
how someone so beautiful,
both inside-out,
be broken and darkened
by her past.

But something
that I was blinded to
in the beginning
was that even in all
that darkness,
a light so majestic,
absolutely luminous,
existed.

It was her that was
blinded of the true beauty
she was blessed with.

Her insecurities blinded her
of who she really was,
of what she could be
capable of.

She was her own enemy.