You're growing tired of me.
I can feel it in the spaces where your silence has started to settle.
I feel it in every breath you don't take around me anymore,
I feel it with how every laugh feels further away than it used to.
You don’t say it outright, but I see it in the way your eyes move past mine,
like I'm something you’ve already looked at too long
and you’re just trying to be polite.


I loved you so hard I still can’t sleep.
My mind keeps pulling your name apart and folding it back into maybes and ifs,
and I replay it all, the quiet moments, the almosts, everything
until I start to think they mean more than they should.
You should know I never stopped loving you, not even for a second.
But I don’t think you’ve figured that out
or maybe you have,
and you’ve just stopped loving me.
The thought of that sits heavy in my stomach, like a second heartbeat.
Some nights I start thinking up versions of myself that might’ve been easier to love
ones who don’t wear their sadness so visibly and so meanly,
ones who wouldn’t make you feel like staying is a chore.


You're growing tired
of all the things I won’t say out loud,
the feelings I edit out of every sentence
because I’m scared of tipping the balance
between “close friend” and “too much.”
So I swallow the aches before they rise,
tie my thoughts into neat little knots
so you don’t see how messy it really gets.
How messy I really am.


Sometimes I think about telling you everything
you are the only person who’s ever made me feel like I can, but I still can’t.
It’s all too tangled.
I want to know how it feels to sit beside you and want nothing
except to be held like I mean something
held like maybe I mean as much to you as you do to me.
Yet I stay quiet, again, like I always do,
because if I spill it…
won’t it drown you too?  


I miss our hugs, where in that moment our souls blurred together.
I miss our cuddles on the couch, where everything felt right, felt safe.
I miss how being near you made the hurting stop, even just for a little while.
But now it’s been so long.
All I have left is the ghost of your warmth,
And now, your touch feels too heavy,
like something I’m not sure I can carry,
cold in a way that makes everything feel distant.
like your warmth has faded into something unfamiliar.
It’s not that I don’t want you


I do.
But this isn’t you.

Remember you
I was Simon, an architect trying to find precious artifacts.
I found the crown,
The cause of all my frost,
The thing I thought would save me,
But it changed me.

Just as I was giving up hope, I found you,
The most precious artifact of them all.
My Marceline.
A little vampire girl,
Lost in her own ways,
In a world too unforgiving to let you in.

You were the only thing that made the days bearable.
I held onto you when everything else fell apart.
You were the reason I kept going.

But now I’m the Ice King, lost and scarred.
I try not to lose myself because I need to save you.
But who’s going to save me?

I found you in the wreckage of a war,
Just a scared little girl, lost and alone.
I was just a guy,
Scared and searching for my home.

Remember you.
We faked our laughter to ward off the fear.
Just the two of us, plus dear old Hambo who was always there,
Always together, a patchwork family of
Not one,
Not two,
But three.
Inseparable and together, side by side,
With broken smiles and hearts we tried to hide.

Like two pieces of a puzzle, we fought together
To stay alive.
But before I knew it, I had to leave.
You were gone from my life.

I see you as my daughter,
My sweet girl who saved me
More than I ever saved her.

The father you should’ve had, I couldn’t find.
We lived this ruin of a world together,
Until I could no longer ward off the evil that came with the cold.
Now the ice has frozen everything,
And I forget the man I was, the love I once brought.

Remember you.
Even through all the things I’ve forgotten,
For every moment that fades away,
Know that until I come back again,
My life will always be cold and sad.
I just wish it wasn’t like this.

I miss you, my Marcy girl.
Please forgive me
For whatever I do
When I don’t remember you.

[  ] I don’t know why I’m like this.
[  ] I’m sorry.
[  ] I never meant to hurt you.
[  ] The cruelty slips out,
[  ] and I pretend it’s not mine.

[  ] It’s not on you.
[  ] The storm’s always been mine.
[  ] I’m just someone
[  ] who forgets how to breathe
[  ] until it’s too late.
[  ] And I need help.
[  ] I always have.

[  ] I’m unraveling, quietly.
[  ] I don’t sleep right anymore.
[  ] I don’t smile the same.
[  ] And I’m scared
[  ] of what I’ll lose
[  ] once you see too much.

[  ] You’re the only calm I’ve ever known.
[  ] But I know how this ends.

[  ] I’m not mean because I hate you.
[  ] It’s never been that.
[  ] I just push
[  ] so you’ll run
[  ] before I ruin you.

[  ] I can’t save myself.
[  ] But if I scare you off,
[  ] maybe I can save you
[  ] from becoming part of this mess.

[  ] I want you to stay.
[  ] God, I do.
[  ] But if you stay,
[  ] you’ll see the worst parts
[  ] the ones I bury
[  ] under shaky smiles
[  ] and half-laughed jokes.

[  ] I don’t want to be someone
[  ] you pity.
[  ] I don’t want you
[  ] to hold my pieces
[  ] like they’re yours to carry.
[  ] You don’t deserve that.

[  ] You’re my best friend.
[  ] The only one
[  ] who ever made the dark feel less cruel.
[  ] The only one I wanted to get better for.

[  ] So maybe I need to go quiet.
[  ] Disappear for a while.
[  ] Figure it out.
[  ] Alone.

[  ] Please forgive me
[  ] for being too broken
[  ] to be held.

[  ] I love you.
[  ] I’ll miss you.
[  ] I’m sorry.

[  ] i am Diane Nguyen
[  ] when the lights are off and the room's too quiet.
[  ] when i start spiraling over nothing,
[  ] but pretend i’m just tired.
[  ] when i swallow the urge to say, “i’m not okay,”
[  ] because i don’t want to ruin the vibe.
[  ] i get her.
[  ] she writes things she’ll never publish
[  ] and calls it healing.
[  ] me too.

[  ] i am Flame Princess.
[  ] masking my heat with forced politeness,
[  ] but the fire kicks at the cracks in my voice.
[  ] i was taught too young that my feelings were too much
[  ] so i bottled them.
[  ] and when the bottle breaks,
[  ] i’m the villain.
[  ] one day you’ll get it
[  ] that’s never who i was.
[  ] i’m just a girl who’s overstimulated,
[  ] trying not to combust.
[  ] trying to regulate in an unadjusted world.


[  ] i am Kirk Gleason,
[  ] Full of chaotic side character energy.
[  ] i tell stories with weirdly specific details
[  ] so no one notices i’m actually unraveling.
[  ] being silly is easier than being seen.
[  ] i make people laugh so noone ever stops to ask
[  ] The dreaded "are you okay"
[  ] I make people laugh because if they’re laughing,
[  ] they’ll stay.

[  ] I am Jake the Dog,
[  ] soft and simple.
[  ] i love hard and think deep.
[  ] i hold onto weird metaphors
[  ] about cups and pillow forts
[  ] I tell myself not to get hung up on imaginary things
[  ] because that’s how i understand the world.
[  ] i just wanna chill,
[  ] but my brain won’t always let me.
[  ] yet still I try, cause to love life you need problems
[  ] And i am determined to live to my to its fullest

[  ] i am Ted Mosby,
[  ] annoyingly romantic.
[  ] the kind who falls in love in soft, slow ways
[ ] not with only with grand gestures, but with quiet familiarity.
[  ] The type to romanticise shared eyecontact and exchanged looks
[  ] i write poems about people
[  ] who don’t know they broke my heart.
[  ] Though i still think love is worth the mess
[  ] Even when i doubt myself i always know
[  ] Loving someone is never a waste

[  ] and i’m Periwinkle.
[  ] the soft, sparkly part of me i locked in a box
[  ] when life got loud.
[  ] When life didn't understand I was only a child
[  ] i still believe in her.
[  ] i still believes she's there.
[  ] The little kid, with not so little dreams
[  ] she danced in the frost and thought the world was kind.
[  ] she’s quiet now,
[  ] Her sparkle not so bright
[  ] but she’s not gone, just dimmed
[  ] she still hides in old drawings and weird dreams like buried sea glass on a beach

[  ] i’m not all these people all the time.
[  ] but they live in me
[  ] in the sighs i swallow,
[  ] in the jokes i tell too loud,
[  ] in the poems no one reads.

[  ] i wear them like second hand hoodies,
[  ] hoping one won’t smell too much like someone else.
[  ] some days i throw them all on at once,
[  ] just to feel something that fits.
[  ] some days i stare at the pile
[  ] and don’t even bother.

[  ] i just want someone to notice
[  ] without me having to ask.
[  ] someone to say,
[  ] “i see you , even the parts you hide.”

[  ] until then,
[  ] Ill keep hiding my true self,
[  ] Untill I'm truly seen
[  ] Piecing myself together with glitter glue and stubborn hope,
[  ] soft rage and borrowed words.

[  ] and maybe i’m still becoming.
[  ] and maybe that’s okay.

I never thought I’d see the day
when your name felt strange in my mouth.
I miss you.
I miss who we were.
But loving you started to feel like holding my breath,
and after a while, I just needed air.

It was like a tie pulled too tight,
a knot I picked at ’til my fingers bled.
Some days, I still sit with the string in my hands,
trying to weave the loose threads of our friendship,
wondering how I let it break—
how I missed the moment we started unraveling.

It’s hard to see exactly where the hell I went wrong.
Maybe everywhere.
Maybe nowhere at all.

The world was always too loud for me—
clattering, crashing, caving in—
but you made it softer.
Like the sweater you gave me,
promising I’d always have you when I wore it.
You muffled the chaos just by being near,
pulling all the noise into your own sleeves,
leaving me just enough silence to breathe.

Now, when you laugh,
it sounds like it’s meant for someone else.

It shouldn’t be for someone else.
It should be with me.
It was always with me.

But you’ve changed.
You are exactly who you said you’d never be.
And I think you know that.
Maybe that’s why you left.

I grew up.
And you grew away.

I think you smoke too much.
I think your friends all ****.
We never did figure out why our parents fought so much.
Maybe they saw the ending before we did.
Maybe they recognized the wreck in us
before we were old enough to read the signs.

After you,
I gave up on love.
Left it folded at the back of my closet,
next to the sweater I never gave back.

I miss the old days
the sleepovers, the warmth,
sneaking in late and crashing on your floor,
blanket forts and cartoons at 2 a.m.,
fortresses of giggles and bruised hearts
we never talked about.

With you, I felt safe.

I’d leave my sweater on your porch,
you’d leave your bag under my stairs.

Don’t go back to your old place.
It was never really home anyway.
The locks are constantly getting changed,
the rooms are colder, emptier,
and the walls have already forgotten us.

I bet it still looks the same  
From when i ran away that day

We survived it by pretending,
by making forts out of broken things
but pretending doesn’t work forever.
Pretending only got us so far.

Don’t leave just yet.
There are still games we never finished,
stories still left untold,
lullabies stuck somewhere in our throats,
pieces of us tucked in the corners,
waiting to be found
like loose change in the old couch.

I do miss that old house
the old memories,
the giggles and the cries.
But the last light between us flickered.
Maybe it was always meant to burn out.

I always used to say,
“Stay a little longer.”
Stay, even when the lights went out.
Stay, even when it stopped feeling easy.
Stay, even when I stopped believing you would.

But that’s over now.
The light burned out a long time ago.
I kept using my matches to relight it,
but you didn’t want to use any of your own.

It doesn’t matter now.
But sometimes,
it still feels like it does.

I’m scared.
Scared I’ve been too vulnerable.
Scared I trusted too much.
Scared I’ve gotten my hopes up.

I should have known by now
nothing this good is ever real
Nothing ever has been.
Nothing ever will be.
And it’s time to accept that.

I have always been disappointed,
since I was a little girl,
and somehow,
I have made peace with that.

But this time,
this time I want it to be different.
I want it to stick.
I want you to stay.

I’m sorry I love too strongly,
too loudly,
too much.
But there’s something about you
something I can’t explain.

I have never felt safer before,
and yet,
I have never been more terrified.

I’m scared I will let down all my walls,
let you in,
only for you to look around
and decide you don’t like what you see.

I’m scared I’ll scare you away.
I’m scared you’ll be like everyone else.

I’m scared.
I want it to stick.
I want you to stay.

When your shadow touches mine,
that's the closest our souls ever get.

Lovers only from a distance,
lovers only in a daydream.

Our eyes play chase through the hallways,
a constant tag of exchanged looks
from you to me.

Pretend not to notice,
pretend not to care.

But I see you,
and sometimes I think you see me too.

You are the secret sigh,
the secret whisper of my heart.

Imaginary you smiles,
imaginary me believes it meant something.

I build a whole world in my head,
where you reach out,
where you choose me,
where you don't even hesitate.

But the truth is—
you don't know me.
You probably never will.

And all of this,
all of this ache,
all of this hope,
is something I made up.

So I’ll smile across the room,
catch your eye for a second,
and let the dream live a little longer.