Does your family still talk about me?
Are your walls the color you talked about with me so long ago?
I guess friends do come and go
And with the irregularities in thought process that have come to light I suppose it’s no surprise you sought out people with better expressed feelings, sympathy.
You could say I left myself in the dirt
Chasing the only friend whose feelings seemed real to me

If he sees me sad
Maybe he’ll put away the things that have come between us
Angry
At the people whose feelings are supposedly easily expressed
For not caring
Angry
That the short hour of time I’ve created out of sleep for love has become so sour
Angry
That you can’t just put our differences aside and give me the only thing I’ve ever wanted from you since the beginning

Dark and empty
Where everything outside is muffled
Those are the places I reside now
A lightly treaded staircase
Inside the box of tin and 4 wheels that takes me everywhere I don’t want to be
Any available corner of a room
Loneliness and hunger
Hoping the more I leave people alone,
The more okay with me they might be
If my stomach is as empty as I am
The happy things might return

I imagine it's like tightrope walking
But on drugs
I dont know which way to lean
Where I am
Why I'm trying so hard to stay balanced
Where I'll land if I fall off the rope
I make my moves carefully
But my mind is spinning
I am preparing myself for what my mind seems to believe is inevitable
The fall
The end
I want to keep walking
The farther I go the better I feel
If only I could keep my balance in this altered state of mind i refuse to define

It's like a dream
Walking outside to find you sitting on the ledge of a ditch
Watching traffic
You always seem to find the perfect balance of speaking but still letting things be unspoken
And though they say I'm far from home
The drive has never seemed so short

I wish I could ask you to stay
That youd never leave
But I'd hate the thought that you could want to leave but feel trapped by my desperation
Your love seems so unconditional when it comes to me
But as time goes on I feel as if even your love for me is fading
I wonder terribly often that maybe I am becoming a worse person
And that you greatly dislike the changes you see in me

Sometimes
My bonds with people seem like wells
Wells that I am constantly running dry
And anymore it seems as if I am in a desert
I'm sorry
If I come to drink from the wells of friendship too often
I wish I could be more like rain

Everything is boring
And my dreams have never been so out of reach
I have no desire to return home without the touch and embrace of another
If only we could both stay here
Until my dreams were caught
I want to ask you so many things
If only youd take me seriously and answer my questions
I should take what I can get
Jokes and glances
But I've always wanted more
And I dont think that will change anytime soon

Apologizing
For needless things
Things I've been told are okay to do
Sorry
For saying no
Forgive me for expecting things from someone residing below the floor

For the better half of an hour
Some 24 hours ago
You sounded like you had a conscience
Like you could understand the deeper meanings of sadness, anger, and guilt
Talking philosophy
As if maybe there was a chance at happiness for us

Not necessarily beautiful
You can't always apply meaning to things like that
30 minutes listening to the sounds of a home
30 minutes of being ignored
When I had something to say
To figure out
Under pressure
And like a fragile flower in the wrong conditions
My voice died
And 30 minutes of sounds I couldnt quite understand ensued

It shouldn't have to sound beautiful for me to say it
For me to think my feelings are valid
But i cant put a frustrated sob or a tight gut into words very easily
And I cant simply say exactly what things are
It wouldnt have the same effect
The same relatability
The mystery
The same dramatic flair

It's the simplicities I hear when you're not paying me attention
That make my feelings seem like nothing
That make my questions so hard to voice
Why must I feel as if the tone of the room must be perfect
Before I can shine a light on a problem

On the phone
Drawing left handed sketches
Hearing you sing a familiar song as a joke
To no one in particular

It grips me tight
But I try to hide it
Like a parasitic vine grown from what was thought to be mere anxiety wrapping itself around my body
I am ashamed of it
I feel as if I am a monster admitting to a lover that I am cursed
But they are too caught in their dream version of me to truly care about it and the effects it has on me

April is a humiliating joke to me
The rain that supposedly comes to water the flowers
Is better represented by the amount of tears shed this month

I think too many people punish others for their words
Without thinking about why they were said

Have I truly wasted so many chances?
Have I questioned you so much that I deserve your hate?
All I had asked for was a less apathetic reminder that maybe dreams do come true
Instead I've received an impossible question as to what the root of the problem is
A repeat
Am I as bad as you both suggest
Or do I simply have bad taste

I wonder if youd be the type
The type to appreciate the little things I do
The words I write out in dedication
The images in my head I bring to life with brushes
The type to remember that I am more than the foolish words I speak aloud
It seems you arent
Yet still i hope you could be
Cause I wont be going anywhere
Anytime soon

There are days when every move she makes is laced with anger
Days when a potential lover cannot make time to accomodate growing feelings
Days when I cannot differentiate disinterest and stress
Bad days filled with friction and fighting
A wish that I could run away from it all
But suffocated by millions of thoughts as to what I should do
And confusion as to what the problem really is

I think I'd like to just sit
In the gray of what's past
My eyes see it as awry and colorless
But I can still taste the memory
Feel it on my skin
I can hear laughter
Gentle whispers
And smell the scent of a desire incomparable to that of any prior or future
That isnt to say that the connections that have or will exist couldnt be better
But instead that they each have a unique aroma
Still
I'd like to sit
watching the gray
As this lingering scent
Slowly dissipates

She says it wont be long
Till we see the sunny days again
But I was still hoping
That I could live them out with you

Screaming that you are happy
Doesnt make it true

It makes me want to be as violent as he
Hearing your false reassurances
Always having me make all the first moves
I want to to tear everything away
But I cant
Because that's not "me" anymore
The "me" now is refusing to let go
And you are
Refusing to let me know
What it is you want me to do

You build me a tower of hope
And then proceed to knock it down
While telling me not to worry about it
Now all I can do is beam a smile through the despair while clutching at the remnants of my dreams

"Did you actually write about squids?"
They ask
Not bothering to read the rest
Perhaps it was because
The language in which is was written
Was beyond their current comprehension
Or rather
They dont care to change their impression of me by reading a sad poem with a joking overlay

I wish the music would follow me out of my room
Trailing after my footsteps
Bringing me continued serenity
Filling the pit that would otherwise be a silent void

"Dont shoot the messenger"
Even if this messenger were to be unknowingly spouting lies
Or giving unwanted information
I beg of you not to shame them
The intentions are only of good
Undertoned with worries of accidental betrayal

Say something of value, little hunter boy
Something more than a line as carefree as the wind
And more concrete than your everfading emotions

The wannabe princess is building her kingdom
Covering polished nails in sawdust

She wants me to be greater than her
While walking me down the same path she took
He asks me to wait
Without telling me why or what I'm waiting for

Unexpectedly
My favorite love story is not a classic fairytale
It's their story
Their story doesnt have a happy ending
Instead
It ends with a man sitting alone in a dark house he still cant see as his own

Tan skin covered in an assortment of rose colored fabrics
Illuminated by tiny stars encased in glass
Faint melodies play quietly in the background to prevent silence from taking hold
A space timeless as the calendar by the door displaying dates long expired
This is my dreamland
A bubble that protects those within from any worries outside by trapping them in paintings
A private place
Perfect for romantic or platonic excursions
This is where inspiration is fueled
Where laughter can be heard from time to time when guests arrive
And where many pleasures, past and present, have and will take place

A long lasting tension
Ever present when I see those grey blue eyes
The tension was there even before I had my first partner
And it remains even after said companion left
Now the blue eyed boy has a partner of his own
But unlike myself he couldnt let the remaining tension stay unspoken
An intentionally exposed abdomen and carefully woven flirtatious jokes
Make my mind wander curiously
While my mouth mumbles a teasing line in response
And I realize it too late when my brain plugs this blue eyed troublemaker into my fantasies
I am only wading in his waters now
But I know I have the potential to drown in his depths

I had a dream
That you were talking to me in modern hieroglyphics
And somehow
I could still understand you

Why do you seem to exist in spite of me
The words below your image are a sad excuse for poetry
And your jokes are bland as ever
Why do you stand boldly on my platform
Seeming to dare me to look at you
Challenging me
I suspect a call for attention
Much like how I used to
But if I were to voice these suspicions
I'm sure I'd be looked down upon until I was laughing at my own self and how pitiful I had become
On the outside I'll beg of you to leave me completely
But I know that within me is still the constant plea that you will return and be better than when you last left

I was good at this once
The words came to me so easily
And I'd scribble them out in ink inside an old notebook
It's not so easy anymore
I stopped writing the words in physical form
There used to be so much to say that jotting it down was too time consuming
It gave the words time to run away
And for new ideas to cover up the old ones
Now
I've said so many things that I am almost raw
No longer a mystery
Just a rock of selfish anxiety
With the same old worries and thoughts carved in deep

I heard his name over the intercom
I knew I would
A boring name
I had strained to hear it
And though I expected it
There was still an unsettling knot in my gut
Though I can lust for others now
There is still
A longing
A yearning
For his familiarity

I know who he is
I can recognize him in a crowd
But when i try to remember what his face looked like
Gazing at me in a fond memory
It's as if he looks away before I can see
And I am stuck staring at a profile in my minds eye

According to what is public
I have not written in almost two weeks
This could not be further from the truth

50 drafts

Have been written in my spare time
And unlike those two in which I feel I am constantly intruding on

I consistently hide my works in their roughest form

And

I am

Odd

Because of the departure of one person, I have decided to isolate myself
I am not alone
Yet I have decided to be
Why
It feels better
To be alone
And dwell on things that should have no meaning
To lurk near the presence of one I am better off forgetting
I could seek the council of those I hold dear for support
But I am afraid I have troubled them too often with dilemmas like this
And truly
It is no dilemma
But merely me gripping onto what I have lost for the second time

Your scent is stuck in my head
Like the chorus of a pop song

My words are no longer poetic
If they ever were at all
Now they're just a stream of me screaming my feelings
Or rather
Speaking them in a calm manner
Even if it's a thousand pleas
They will still be repeated with the same tone
I wish I could be more of a wordsmith
But all I can do is blatantly state how much I miss you
How empty it feels with you gone
How repulsed i am by the others touch
How terrified I am of losing more people
How shapeless all of my words are anymore
When did the words become a dependency rather than an art form

Walking
In the middle of an empty road
Its quiet
The air tastes like fire and those weird flavored candy canes
Maybe a tootsie pop
laundry soap
All at the same time

Youd never get it
How intense all of it felt
The feeling of one I didnt want pressed against my back with arms wrapped around me
The relief i felt when an old friend came to talk and gave me room to breathe
However I was still locked in place
Unable to refuse a sloppy meeting of lips
The horrible longing for someone speeding right by you
Knowing him
The desire was always there before
Like a spark
That grew into flames when I saw him
That exploded into a raging forest fire last night
Trying to figure out the expression on his face
Concentration?
Sadness?
What?
I could never figure him out
I also heard bad things last night
I didnt know what to make of them
Had I been lied to?
Trying to figure it out
Listening
But I cant
Blaring speakers and noisemakers
Combined with a desperate grab for my attention
Arms like chains around my body
A plea not to listen
Not to look
Dont tell me what to do
I'm not yours
Can you people stop assuming that?
I told him I didnt like kissing you
I didnt like any of it
I thought thatd make him feel better
But it only felt as if he was running away
Why run away
And text me as soon as he arrived home
Apologizing again
It's all so intense
I might cry again
I miss him
I dont want to
I dont want anything

Its not about making the content anymore
Its about me
I always make it about me
But making people feel better
Or having someone relate
Even just getting them to think a little bit
That's always a plus
It helps me remember that there are other things in this world than the things I write about
It takes me out of my glorified teen drama
Brings me back to earth when I am left alone and dont have that person to tell me its okay

There are far too many
All about the same people and things
Repetition
I dont want to repeat the same things over and over again
But that seems to be all I do
Just in private
If I were to show it to the world just once
Maybe I'd feel better

Talking to you is terrifying
Maybe it wouldnt be so bad if I actually had the courage to finally open up your message
But I've done that before and it just got scarier from there
I dont want to be alone
But I dont want to talk to you
You are perfect in all the ways I am not
And yet you are flawed in all the ways I could never be
Some would say that we'd be a good fit
And perhaps we would if I saw you again
Instead I'll just repeat the same apologies over and over
Disinterest
Cause my mind is on someone else?
That would be a part of it
Cause I've put off talking to you so long that I've developed a complex
Another part
That the cloud that used to follow me from a distance now looms over my head and drains me
A bigger ordeal
I think you were better as an idea
Someone I could admire from afar
The way I would have as a preteen
I did want to know more about you
And maybe you wouldve told me
But I dont think I want any of it anymore
I dont want you to know about me
And I dont want to talk

A quick peck on the lips
A kiss long overdue
How I could stare at you forever
How I know you could do the same
You sound like a childhood friend
You look like a thousand suns
What would you do if you knew what I had done a day prior
What would you have felt if you knew who I was talking to the week before
If you knew the previous night I was silently weeping for another boy
A boy I had never loved
Who had never loved me
Who had lied for his own pleasure
Who had brought out the bad parts in me
The desperate parts
The anger which was hidden away
I cannot blame him for what I did
It was my impatience
It was my decision
And because of that impatience
I wasted two days with you
If you knew all that
Would you still have kissed me?
Would you have saved me a seat?
Let me lean on your shoulder?
I hate having regrets
But just this one time
I wish I wouldve chosen differently

Writing a million drafts
Of inadequate poems that barely qualify as such
The amount of published works is exceeded by the number of drafts
The delete button lurks below
But shall never be touched
Every untitled draft contains a thought from a time in which I could do nothing but write out my feelings to relieve the chemicals rushing through my brain
The drafts are not neglected
They are read to remind myself that I have felt just as unpleasant and survived
Some are grown into published works and are allowed into the outside garden
While others continue to sit in my metaphorical windowsill
Only to be seen by those I let in and myself