We were two severely broken things
and though I was promised someone to mend me
I couldn't bear to get better before you.
so I replaced all your lost pieces with my own
and glued you back together with the blood I lost from slicing my hands when I touched you.
And when you were whole again
you decided there weren't enough parts in the world to fix me
and even if there were, I wasn't worth the effort.
And now I am even more broken than before
and there aren't enough pieces  for anyone else to mend me with
and I wonder if you ever touch your wrist and feel my veins under your skin
or look at your eyes and see my glass shining through.
Because I can feel every piece I lost
and every time my mother hugs me she asks me about the crater between my shoulder blades
that piece went to your ribs i think
and every ******* time you get hurt I know
because I can ******* feel it
and I can feel her cold fingers on my neck every time she touches your leg and I just want my ******* pieces back.

Sorry.
Five simple letters with the ability to twist my tongue into a jigsaw no **** kid would have the audacity to crack.
I'm sorry for never telling you I loved you.
I'm sorry I was so fixated on being destroyed that I couldn't comprehend that you could have kept me safe.
I'm sorry I check my heartbeat like clockwork,
But the aftermath of every close call is a permanent feeling of running out of time.
I apologize for holding your hand like your skin could possibly be anything but desirable to me.
Truth be told
I always liked the way you felt like an inside-out cigar.
I miss the way you breathed my pain like it was second hand smoke.
I'm sorry all I had to offer you was a busted frame and a hollow interior.
And I'm sorry I was too afraid to even give you that.
I'm sorry I treated your patience like a burden
For making you believe your smile was something I could choke on.
You were my proof that happiness doesn't only come in pill form
And I've been trying to drown these butterflies you left running through my head.
I killed the ones in my stomach the first time you put your arm around me.
I'd give anything to have them back.

In high school, I used to crawl
past my dad’s side of the bed so I could whisper,
at midnight, to my mom that I was leaving
and going to your place, and that I’d be back
by five in the morning, because I was that good girl
in the knee-high socks with the headband
that matched my uniform. So, I told my mom
that I was going over, watched her sleepy eyes
drift back to her pillow corner. I’d start my car,
put on that sappy John Mayer song you hate,
but know I love, and head through the center of town
on the ghost roads, driving like a memory
with four wheels and only three more miles to go.
You’d let me in the back door, careful not to shut the door
to the kitchen too tight, and we’d kiss
under the aquarium light.

I’d watch the shatters
of light split with the blades of your ceiling fan
as you’d remind me over and over again
with your words that I couldn’t stay long
while your hands pulled me in closer to your chest.

You were the first bad thing I let myself have.

I’d have to leave before your dad would get up for work,
so I’d pull on my sweatpants, wipe the makeup
from beneath the crease of my eyes, kiss you goodbye
for who knew how long it would be that time, and I’d cry
in the car the whole way home
because I knew that we were like grains of sand
in an hourglass
just waiting for our turn to fall.

Dear future me,

Please tell me you're happy, because that is all I want to know and please tell me the sound of his name does not still cause your heart to skip a beat, tell me you have finally dug yourself out of the gaping hole you fell into the first time you looked into his eyes, you're strong enough to climb out, even though you might not think so. Remember you're important too, because you always seem to forget that. and if your hands are still painting his phone number across your ribcage, wondering what the first signs of trouble are, then you need to understand that every tattoo is capable of being removed at some point and while it may hurt like hell to breathe sometimes, I believe that you are so much stronger than you think. who cares if it feels like it was all for nothing and who cares if you're starting to hurt more than you thought was humanly possible, you can not let one person ruin you, you will not let this ruin you, and although it may seem unbearable, this too will pass.

you asked me what love is today, little one.
I smiled and said,
love is your mummy and daddy smiling.
love is how we care for you.
love is the way we kiss.

I wish I could say that love
is always made up of comfort
and warmth
and a cherished feeling
spreading through your veins.
but it's not.
love is the tears stained into your cheeks.
love is the constant feeling of jealousy
because you can't bear anyone taking away
the only person who makes you happy.
love is sadness
love is broken
love is a knife
that twists in your stomach
every time he doesn't reply.

I wish I could say love was easy, little one.
It's not.
But it sure as hell is beautiful.

it's the hardest thing in the world,
watching you fade.
I'm waiting until you become dust
all for a more prominent ribcage
and to be able to cut diamonds
with your collarbones.

it's the hardest thing in the world,
watching you cry
in front of your reflection.
your pain is never beautiful
but your soul always will be.
you always were.

it's the hardest thing in the world,
watching you die.
you were always so fragile,
so delicate. I fear you might snap
when I try to hug you close,
with your bones digging into my arms.

it's the hardest thing in the world,
watching you fight.
although, it's not so much of a fight
when you're too tired to
and the winner is guaranteed
and you never wanted to win anyway.

i believe your heart is just overgrowth sworn to a secret oath of her bleach stained teeth, what was and what never will be. i sleep with buckets beside my bed and tear stained pillow cases and a knife under one of my mattresses. i wake up with a head heavy with dread and most early mornings i feel like i could be dead, but i know that i'm not because the knife is still under my bed.
and she kissed my forehead in my sleep and i held his hand under the tree where in real time people never meet, junkies just take turns staying there and sleep. i held a heart there. i held it in my hands and it was beating until there was something like a scream, i still think it was the wind.



the way the sunset skips some houses is really prophetic for the way some families in those houses become too broken to be noticed. the way the tops of the mountains can be seen on the darkest nights at times helps me understand the sounds the strings make and the sounds small creatures make when they awake. this chest is full of unmeasurable emotion that gave so many the notion that i don't know how to love, only curse the things that can't curse me back. i am skillful at allowing you to know my eyes and know my lies and the truth is i will never love anyone like i love the way i can make them love me late at night. i will never love. love never. never enough.

months ago on a friday night the bouquet of different memories we passed around was haunted by this idea that we could extract all of the hard parts from ourselves, all of the sad parts, and create god with it. everyone fell asleep that night and i went outside and buried this bouquet because i know that if there is such a god, he is sadder than all of us. we could never recreate something that's already been made with such disgrace to be full of anymore distaste, so we won't. we never will. our voices stay shrill now and some nights our ghosts steal our voices and run away to be near this tree, and they scream and scream and scream.

I have been told by four different people that I'm not really trying to get better, that I'm just wallowing in this sorrow and letting it swallow me, like bleach, but from you, I think was the worst. No, no it wasn't, the worst was the first time, from the first boy I ever kissed, I remember how sweetly he said it, "I just think you let it get the best of you sometimes," and how I exploded, and so I was prepared when you said it, had been through this fight before, had a witty retort prepared for every "well if you just did this you could fix it" you threw at me, I have years of experience in defending my sadness. So when you told me that if I have lived this long just so I won't break any more hearts than I have to then I should just keep going, and I said "Good night", understand that I only left because that poses a question that I have not been brave enough to answer yet, that I know to you it makes perfect sense but there are days when the only thing that keeps me going is the promise that I will eventually die, and when you try to push that back, try to tell me that it will not happen as soon as I have been promising myself, I lose hope. So yes, you made some valid points, and yes, I probably could be working a little harder, and, yes, I am still mad at you. You're an *******. Good night.

“Can you state your emergency?”
“There’s been a lung collision.”

He’s stealing your breath, darling I can’t feel your lungs
What an aberration, forced to bleed the river of an emotion
You were never taught to feel growing up
I think nobody told you how to feel a colour so hard
Crimson on your neck, on your chest
But I cannot find a wound
Your breath feels like knives
But it’s funny, you’re dying

You’re trying to tell me something
It sounds like the kind of thing you would say right at sunset
Slurring your sevens like you have mints on your tongue
But you are only gasping for air

Marble gazes
Your eyes are lolling back
They are the same eyes that have cut through me
The same eyes I’ve always thought were beautiful
When you were sad

You are weak and you are failing
Completely unlike the times
You would walk in like a sandstorm
No less powerful than a serpent
Beautiful

Now you are trying to speak
“Feels like a fishbone dislodged in my lungs”
And you laugh
You are laughing and you are dying
And this night still feels like day

I tried scraping out the difference
Between guilt and self-loathe
But the answer only lies on the blade of this knife
Maybe I could tell you I don’t know what I did with it
The reason we are not sure from which wound
This blood is seeping from

It wasn't just a lung collision
It was the explosion of a galaxy in your chest
When your ribs bent and cracked
Now they are broken, dust
You are breathing in rust
But it does not matter because you are dying

In the distance there is the sound of sirens
They are coming and they might be far too late.