Day 1:
When you wake up missing someone, and go to bed mourning them, remember that the first week is always the worst.

Day 7:
When your body begins to pull you out of bed and begs your legs to run as far and as fast as they can, realize that the only destination you're really seeking is their arms, their embrace; that home encased in steady beats and familiar warmth.

3 am:
When your feet can no longer support the weight of your heavy soul and your car won't stop pestering you to take a ride, don't waste your gas.
Don't spend your sparse tears all in one place.
He wants to kiss you too.
That's all that matters.

12 pm:
Everything reminds you of him, you're watching his face dissolve in a crowd of strangers, you lose sight of him.
When you see a tall boy and a shy girl cooing in the corner where you once swam in his eyes and confessed your love without spoken words, do not fall to your knees.
Do not avenge fate.
What was once a wonderful thing of yours can now be shared with people you wish you could be again.

Day 30:
When you find that food is your last resort, a full stomach is increasingly scarce, and days pass of nothing but your bed swallowing you whole and your bedroom seeming more like a dungeon, open your window and remember why you always woke up in the first place.
Recall why you used to smile, and your remedy, his smile back, will make the sun choose to shine again.

Hour 3:
When your lips and your hearts leap towards each other to certain death, do not procrastinate putting your tears on a silver platter.
Do not mourn what will be mourned far too soon—just love the way you didn't want to.
And don't let go.

Day 1:
When 3 hours feels like day 1 all over again, lick your lips, keep holding on to him although his embrace expired for some time now.
Most importantly, pretend he hasn't left yet.
Ask yourself:
When can I love you this much again?

I try to lose my thoughts but they spit themselves back in my face.
I guess there's a million reasons why I shiver even when it isn't cold.
I've been postponing this for a while now.
But you can't hold back for too long when something is screaming for you.
I can feel the flight instinct disrupt my body.
Fear is the most petty element, sleeping with love every night
corrupting it with it's infectious hands, darkening the pure.
I loved you for too long, and as of this moment, always, it is never long enough.
I tremble for the day that "I love you" struggles to slip through your mouth.
When you wake up and the first thing you do is bite your tongue and taste me trickling to the back of your throat, I won't be the first thing on your mind.
The ceiling won't remind you of me.
Your eyes will open, and somehow you won't be on your back.
You'll be laying on your side, something will make you realize why you can't love me anymore.
I'm trying to stomach this.
It takes all my strength to not dedicate this to you.
This was almost created in slow-motion: the definition of what time feels like without you.
My skin is so lost without your hands easily guiding the way.
Please don't forget about me.
I'll bang down your door till my knuckles are ****** before I let my name escape your sighs.

There's a myth about a boy with lips so toxic he takes a year off your life every time you kiss him.
I called him cigarette boy.
He was like a liter.
A matchbox that wouldn't light unless you struck him the right way.
It's almost embarrassing to remember the way he made me feel.
He made me feel the way I promised myself I never would.
I am an icebox.
He thawed away at the cold.
I am a puddle at his feet.
I can't figure out how he did it.
His hair is much lighter than mine—his smile so much more warm.
He reminds me of the way honey melts when you stir it in tea so hot it burns you.
There were 3 incidents that I knew he would not be going away:
1. Imagine holding hands with a ghost, a loaded gun.
2. Being lifted up in a flash flood, letting his love drown like a brick.
3. I felt like a soaked bouquet of flowers, and his eyes would not stop convicting me of love.
His eyes were the survivor in this aftermath of blood and war.
He had to leave me so I could grow.
In the end we were so invincible.
We had to find something else to mourn about.
He apologized for every kiss with more.
When my time was up, he asked me to tell him a secret.
"I'd kiss you a million times more knowing your lips are the death of me. I'd sacrifice this last act of selflessness to you."
Lace your veins with my vengeance.
I'd come to you every time.
There are no voices left to be heard beneath my skin.
He was an already published novel that refused to have an end.

If beginnings are always so simple, endings must be just as hard.
To watch you go would be to let you cut my wrists open and bleed on every letter you've written me, every kiss that still lingers on my not-the-same-without-you lips.
To un-grip the fingerprints that make your palms what they are
would be me losing my identity all over again
and letting the thought of your laugh get the best of me.
I'm holding my breath until the next time I see you.
7 years is a long time when 2 days are long enough
And 200 miles is too far away
when my heart cannot stretch that far without falling apart.
I can feel my body slip into survival mode
shielding itself from something that could **** more than a physical threat.
I want to cling my anxious onto you
sew myself to the back of your shirt
Search your vertebrae like it's the answer to why I can't breathe at a steady pace when I can't hold you for a second longer
Why someone so medicinal to my wounds would be taken away quicker than I was ever able to take them all in.
I'm trying to bottle it all up but all you can do is shake.
I know you say you only want the best but empty bottles like me were never meant to be opened.
You were the only one with hands strong enough to do it.

I'd give up my left arm to always be right beside her. My right arm for her to know she's what I have left and both arms to be able to hug her when's she away. I just don't think I have enough to give to get the courage to tell her when she's here.

Are you hurt from all the acid on his lips you've consumed
Begging to be kissed, or to be killed.
In the slow moment of blue pulses, closed eyes: you're holding a dandelion behind your back.
You don't want to pick it apart,
you have to.
Squeeze your eyes shut for the full effect.
A train could come.
You could die just like this.
His kiss is escaping
You don't open your eyes
He opens them for you.
What do you see that you don't want to?
You have 30 seconds to make a decision: Love or happiness.
There is a cliff in front of you
headlights and a horn behind you.
He is a head on collision
He is what really kills you
the way "on impact" never could.
The only way you could ever really die.

And I die everyday.

I believe that the sound of beauty lies somewhere loosely with the stars you've been holding in your eyes ever since you muttered that they were too hot to hang onto anymore, that fingers were slipping and the universe was too large, too cold anyway to fall in love over and over again with overlapping atmospheres.
Look at me with your lips.
Since when did we start kissing with our eyes, and why did it have to be me to soothe your wounds with my mouth.
I'm trying to find you somewhere in all the blood in my sink, more drowning than swimming, but all I'm getting at is that I should have loved you harder.
Tell me yourself then, why is it so hard to light a fire when the matches are 200 miles away?
You've always been my only light, my only primary source of survival, and without you I'm slowly leaving the place that was never really mine at all.
It started with the small of my back, that you should have been touching, that place on my shoulder that isn't quite right without being pushed against yours.
9 pm.
Not such romantic timing.
I'm always late with you anyway.
This time I'm splitting open my ears trying too hard to hear a scream that isn't there.
It ended with the numbing of my heart
where you should have been the whole time
where I'd never let you go.


(-a.r.)