watching someone die
has a way of changing you
into someone new

he tucks her hair behind her ear, then goes back to reading his book.
and she stares at him and wonders simultaneously how she got so lucky, and how things got to be this way. because no one ever told her what it's like to be in love, and no one can tell her which way is up.
"listen to your heart," they say.
but untrained hearts are just as faulty as untrained minds, and this girl is spinning circles trying to figure out where to go.
which step is next.
she bites her lip, that one he's brought between his own teeth countless times before. she guides her hand along his arm, stares at his knees. she curses them, because they are what she fell in love with.
she fell in love with his hands, and his knees.
and she curses herself, too. "stupid girl, no wonder you don't know what love is."
too busy wasting time watching skin taught on bone and how swollen knuckles settle.
too busy staring to catch her breath.
'silly me,' she thinks.
she counts the miles that will soon separate them, comparing them to the amount of freckles she'd mapped out on his back.
the odds weren't in her favor.
but there was a sense of despairing hope, even.
in crowded train lines and sticky nights running from everything.
under streetlights, dancing,
and clutching each other during thunderstorms.
'don't lose hope,' she thinks.
'you may be stupid but don't lose this.'
questions might never be answered but at least there's promises, whispered and held between their chests.
she might not ever know if this is it or if she's wasting time,
but god knows it never feels like time wasted when she watches those eyelashes close.

no, they don't speak a word. not here.
lips press to thighs;
tongues, slick with anticipation, know their way around this room.
their language is caught in the throats they bite,
choked back by the hands
that dig their tracks next to the spine.
they're somewhere between a first kiss and a last ****,
suspended but somehow tethered in a web of lust and lies.
their emotional open wounds or their physical caverns,
no one is quite sure what needs to be filled more.
skin is pressed so tightly to skin that the sweat can't drip; they just slide.
'laced fingers and foreheads pressed together,
there's no room for honesty. not here.

i don't know what my father sounds like when he laughs,
laughs where his sides are splitting and tears are in his eyes.
i only know his grin, his slight chuckle.
honestly, i hardly remember his voice;
something about a southern drawl
gently dabbed on syllables
spit out between the touch of nicotine, wrapped
in paper, to his lips.
i know the clothes that i wear mimic
his choice in clothes, somehow.
i know he will not walk me down the aisle,
and this is my decision.
this is my decision, and it will break my heart.
it will break my heart only
because it will break his,
like genetics somehow link emotion
across generations.
i cannot let him run my life,
like pretending to own a car that
isn't in his name;
borrowed from the person who
washes it gently, details the inside,
maintains its running parts.

turning children into property,
it's like trying to take a house that
you used to live in, years and years ago,
but forgot you had the keys to.
you test the locks, and when the door welcomes you
in for the first steps across a threshold
you call it "home" again.
you forget that there is a family on the couches.
a mother cleaning the kitchen.
a brother fixing the shudders.
the house has moved on,
but cannot bear to close its door to you.

this is our relationship.
this is our dynamic.
it has taught me that it hurts to tell him no.
it is expected for him to not care what hurts.
it has taught me how to run from guilt and shame,
destroying past and future in fits of
self-destructive rage,
just to forget the things i've done
or are happening to me.
it's taught me how it feels for a heart to break
from forgetting pieces of someone it loves.

but this hasn't taught me how to fix it,
and i don't think he knows how to, either.

there are times in your life where it does not matter what horrible things lined the edge of your clouds. despite what it seemed like so often, sometimes you just can't take the silver out of the gray.
it's often things like this that remind me of my summers with you. awful and tainted by extremities and currents threatening to rip us in alternate directions, almost succeeding.
and yet i look back on them and i smile.
because, no matter what the stories are behind it or the after taste those days had, there was a lingering taste of sweetness.
whether it was sweet tea, freshly cut grass, chlorine, slurpees, smoothies, or coffee ice cream,
we always managed to wash down the sadness for a while.
even when silence rings louder than the words we didn't speak, the emotions speak louder than words, or pictures, will ever say.
that first summer, even on days where i felt my whole world was crumbled underneath my bare toes, drowning in the pool i drenched them in, i kept them in for another few moments with you. and those are the memories i look back on and smile. no matter what happened after or with other people.
and the second, i was gaining my footing but you somehow slipped.  funny how unsteady ground can be, one foot from the other. and despite your falling, for other reasons or for someone else, i still see the time as peaceful. i'd never had what we had before with anyone else. not how we felt.
we've got another summer together approaching and this time i feel like i owe it to you. i think it's up to me to pull my **** together, despite my complaints, and grow up a bit. to bring you slurpees and suffer through heat just to sit for a while. to drain gas tanks and sit in parking lots at 4am to be able to talk. to hold hands through car washes or sing to each other or whatever else we did. i want it again and we'll have it. we'll figure it out.

it's been a year since i lost you






i still love you

"today my professor told me

every cell in our entire body

is destroyed and replaced

every seven years.

how comforting it is to know

one day i will have a body

you will have never touched."

we just passed six years last friday.
that means, with each and every day that passes, it'll be one day closer
to a life where you were practically never here.
you never existed.
never mind the drunk calls in the middle of the night that came after.
pay no mind to the night you told me that you loved me,
you loved me and i would never feel for you
the way you felt about me.
you already forgot about those.

each and every day i face a small reminder of what you did to me
but soon, soon there will be nothing left of you at all.
no skin cells left to remind me of the way your eyes burned holes in me,
no brain cells left rattling the memory of the screams
they echoed to just reach out,
just reach out and touch...

three-hundred and sixty-one days.
that's all that is left between you and me.

my favorite thing about her
is how much she looks like
i did the night
you begged me to stay.

everything was so soft. everything was so calm.
well, except our hearts. they were racing.
and it was awkward, but it was sweet. i spent my time biting my lip so i wouldn't touch them against yours. you spent your time taking pictures, to keep your fingers busy. on the camera, off my hair. and it brought us to our knees, almost. the weight of everything.
why me? of all people, why give me her present? i asked but never got an answer. but it sat by my bedside every night.
we were desperate lovers, desperate for change. desperate for some resemblances of the past, but rewritten.
older, even. more mature.
and well, the heat of the summer lit that flame in our hearts, and the rest of us. and you may have steered that ship, but my hands were on the wheel.
but eventually my hands gripped razors instead of bedsheets. and your kisses weren't sweet anymore. instead of burying your hands in my hair, they were buried in yours - in grief. we both broke, from the weight of the world. i told you we'd never be Atlas and you begged to try anyway.
why, though? you knew i was broken, you knew you were too. with cracks in the cornerstone, why did you keep building?
you sent that canary into a coal mine and you cried when it was dead.
just bury it. you always were so good at keeping a straight face; it won your poker game every time.
just smoke another one, you know you'd want to. why didn't you?
i don't understand why you were so broken. let alone why i was.
and when i asked, you could only say,
"it just all ended so...
abruptly."

you know, it's funny; tonight i was driving back to an empty apartment and one of your songs for me came through the speakers a bit too loud, just the way you liked it. the one about the girl who fled virginia for the west coast and the desperation to keep her close, mentioning the kempsville back roads and the boardwalk that we used to drive around ourselves. you said it was going to happen, i was going to leave virginia and you with it and flee to the pacific. and it's funny; you were right. i did exactly that, no matter how many times i tried to laugh at your vision of my future. you were always right.

and what's even more funny: you live further west than i ever have, surrounded by the mountains i am desperate to see, and i'll be returning to that commonwealth i was desperate to get away from. and it's almost a poetic justice. that i'm going back and you're the one half a world away. but this time, i won't be climbing through the windows of houses on indian river road anymore, or packing bongs in the snow in a greenbrier backyard, or watching the curls that would spill over that gentle curve of your lip in that house off of lynnhaven where we first met. no, i'll get to see the gentle curves of the east coast mountains, perhaps softer than yours ever were. i'll watch cherry blossoms fall soft and sweet, better than the way i fell for you. and you'll be in some spotlight in anchorage, making her laugh harder than i ever did. and that's okay with me.

When I was young, I was given a ring.
My mother gave it to me before she said goodbye, with a kiss and a wave.
Honestly, though, purity rings, even then, seemed like a fluke
with me. I was a rose
then, too. Blossom to the eye and thorns underneath, eyes stained an icy blue
and childish hands that were calloused, from playing, and rough.

I kept that trait with me. Being rough.
like a boxer in a ring.
I learned to fight, body covered in bruises in shades of black and blue.
My emotions were as dependable as waves –
tender and tranquil. And sometimes, unexpectedly, they rose.
Sensitivity was always a fluke.

So, naturally, falling in love was a fluke.
I wasn’t so pure at sixteen, because it was rough
to keep my mouth shut and my hands to myself around a girl named Sydney Rose.
They say sharks circle you before they attack, making endless rings
before making decisions and going for what they want, rising to the waves.
I just wanted to take her with me, into those murky depths of blue.

My fingers laced with hers, even years later, when we saw her veins of blue
beginning to become more apparent. Her sickness, a fluke.
It must have been, because it hurt her hand to wave
goodbye from behind hospital curtains. Grabbing at something you’re barely missing is rough
when all you’ve wanted is to garnish the finger with a ring
since you were sixteen years old, loving this Sydney Rose.

But as I’ve learned, despite its beauty, a rose
will one day wilt, and fingers tipped in blue
may never wear their rings.
Love, even in its most pure, must have been a fluke
with me, when someone can no longer kiss you roughly
against your mouth, passion no longer coming in insatiable waves.

I gave a little wave
to a stone marked with a name, date, and roses
piled high, petals tenderly grazing against a marker so rough.
And salt-water rivers threatened to drain, so blue,
from my eyes and past a mouth pursed in confusion against such a fluke.
And to say goodbye, I buried with her the symbol of purity that could match our love – my ring.

Now I wear another ring, one with a gold tinted with rose.
I sit in our house overlooking waves, overlooking an ocean blue.
And solitude seems such a fluke, when a life taken means making life remaining rough.

i could taste the hesitation on her lips.
i held her so soft,
kissed her so quietly.
the silence was heavy,
save for the shifting of our bodies
and the moans that slipped past our lips.
sometimes we're in so far over our heads
that we'll never find which is the real way out.
"the past is destined to repeat itself,"
i tell her.
"that only means that the leaves will die,
and you will leave again."
i shake my head,
but how can you promise someone forever
when it's just for tonight?
i tell her i love her
but we both know it isn't true.
anything to increase the body heat,
anything to melt the icy walls.
she'd never understand my
parasitic need for her.
just to hold her, just for tonight.
to taste something more than bland food
and smell more than the insides
of the four walls i see
every ******* morning.
i know she wonders why i come and go,
and i know she wonders why i chose her.
even those questions i can't answer.
whether it's those green eyes
or that crooked smile,
or just because i know she'll come back.
either way i'm sweating above her,
wondering if i should kiss her or
choke her.
poor pitiful thing,
sometimes i just want to put her out of her misery.
but for now,
we share the night
and the sighs
and the misery.

one question
that i want to know:
who hurt you?

it's been thirteen years since the first time i ever considered holding onto that hollow feeling in my stomach instead of holding you
and i still admire the way my ribs peek out between hyperventilation pulses whenever i see someone that resembles your face
when faced with how it felt to swallow your lies, even now, i'd rather be empty

our conversation
was punctuated by
the screech of my
windshield wiper blades
and we talked about
how if you were
the thunder, then I
was the rain

my heart is a hurricane,
hysterical with emotion.
my stomach is clenched,
bracing against the feeling of
all the butterflies I've ever felt,
dead and decomposing among gastric acids.
but my face is calm,
and my breathing is steady.
and my body feels like it's
tearing apart at the difference.

i'm so ******* scared of what you think about me now.
i spent so much time fine-tuning all these broken pieces
to meld into something you might approve of.
i was so scared to do it for myself.

i don't think i could even hold a conversation with you now.
i'm so different from the girl you said you fell in love with,
and even more different than the one i
became when i was with you.

and i know i never should have conformed.
i know i never should have bent over backwards
for someone that would eventually break me down.
but i did, anyways.

and it leaves me questioning my moves six months later.
it still nags at the back of my mind like a reaper ready to strike.
and i know i should be living for myself,
but you still haunt my thoughts with that ghost you left behind.

he sighs,
lights up another cigarette.
this time he knows something is different.
he waits patiently,
coffee in one hand and nicotine in the other,
staring aimlessly at his phone.
he had lived through another silent day.
there really was no surprise in that.
it had been days since she disappeared again.


the routine was so consistent that her
absent nature was almost as secondhand
as the smoke she used to inhale when she
cuddled against his shoulder.
he was weary now,
because he tired of not knowing
what she was consuming,
or who she may be *******.
he was wary,
not knowing if she was lying in a gutter
or just lying on her back,
legs spread in an invitation to a myriad of catastrophe.
at one time,
he was the one spreading those legs.
but he was also the one tucking her in at night.

but one day,
something clicked;
she woke up one morning cold and indifferent.
her summer smile had faded,
her eyes grew frigid.
he remained patiently by her side,
until she stopped coming home.
until she started drinking herself into oblivion
with people who did only god knows what to her fragile frame.
this time,
he was ready to give up hope.
this time,
they had fought so terribly
that he knew she wasn't coming back.
he knew it wasn't easy to hear
someone you trusted say things like,
"*******, you filthy ****"
and
"i hope to god you choke on the next pill you pop."
he wished he could take the words back,
but his heart was so broken.
she was so distant,
he wanted to make sure he reached her.
and apparently,
he did.
she had shaken her black hair,
blinked tears out of her gray eyes,
and turned on her heel.
that was the last he had heard from her,
and even now he yearned to hear
her voice on that phone;
the phone lying in front of him.
any words at all,
to know she was alive.
maybe, even, that she still loved him.

because, after all,
isn't that what he wanted?
isn't that why he picked her up,
****** on roadsides,
and dried her tears on his sleeve?
isn't that why he allowed her to
hide from the world in his bed;
kept safe somewhere between box springs,
his comforter,
his arms?
he would do anything to help her,
but she was a tragedy:
a life doomed to fronts of indifference
and too deep of cuts on wrists,
thighs,
hips.
and she wouldn't let anyone help her.
any gentle touch caused her to run,
and she never wanted to come back.
and this boy,
he just kept running after her.


he takes a sip and sighs.
he ashes his cigarette,
studies it,
puts it out.
he studies the bottom of his coffee cup
and carries it to the sink.
as he rinses it,
he hears small footsteps,
and an equally small pair of hands
snake their way around his waist.
"i'm home," she breathes into his ear.
this night wasn't so different than any other,
except that she came home
sober
yet warm.
he had been wrong.
so he turns and looks at her,
takes her hand,
and leads her to bed.

I want your fingers to sink into me like stones; I want your weight to hold me down like anchors.
I want your breathing hitched like carriages, I want you pulling at my hair like reins.

I want to know what it sounds like for you to say my name with every inflection, in every tone.
I want to know what it looks like when you drift off to sleep.

i guess all the nights you
****** me from behind were
spent mapping out where
you would stab me in the back

after a night with you, people began to ask questions.
color blossomed on my skin in shades of purples and red,
interrupted with the occasional broken-blood-vessel lines
where you tried to sink your point into my skin,
bas relief engravings into my superficial self.
my lips are cracked and bleeding,
and my eyes are ringed in black.
whispers slip past me,
ghosts dancing along hallways about the stories my body told.
the only people who know what happened were the people in the room.
love and hate look a lot alike,
lust and violence practically synonymous.
it's all just semantics, after all.

he pressed himself into me and whispered, "just the tip."
at the time, i wasn't sure what to think. i wasn't sure if i was able to think at all.
i felt something hard press into my back, but not what i was expecting.
no, this, this was cold even in the summer's air.
my mouth was sewn shut by the press of your hand, but maybe it was the drinks i'd consumed.
and it hurt, what came after. what led to this.
when you called out to me, this was the last thing i expected.
but i was naive, and i was innocent, but you took care of that.
the threat of violence hung heavy in the air, the tip of your weapon cradling my spine.
and i could smell the metal, faint over the smell of the dirt and leaves you'd shoved my face into.
and when the violence was over, and the questions began running through my mind
[white text on a blank slate,
wiped clean with new memories and a loss
of something i never knew i had],
it was over with a flippant wave of your hand and a flick of your sweat-matted hair.
a figurative, "see you later."
an au revoir to your ***** laundry, like it's not worth dumping in the wash.
but we both know i'll scrub myself clean later.
clean, but not fresh.
and you're not afraid, not yet.
no, you're not the one that will cower
in fear in corners of beds
in corners of rooms and closets,
all mirrors turned around.
you'll be able to look people in the eye.
but you're not the one that will recover. and you're not the one that will change.
no, you'll always be a monster, a beast of brutality and, eventually, regret.
but skin cells die and the body regenerates, and wounds,
well, they heal.
and i'm not there yet, but one day i will be.
first, i have to remember how to stand up.

she got on her knees again [how many times this week?].
she whispers to herself, to a god, to anyone that'll listen.
she can't stop.
she's spinning circles around topics she can't avoid.
head-on collisions using nouns and verbs.
swallowing pride and trying doors,
searching for keys and answers.
she's on her knees, whispering again.
she's spitting into palms,
because it's better than holding nothing.
she's choking down drinks and god knows what else.
she can't stop.
she's writing equations in chalk
and diagramming sentences,
just trying to figure out how it's supposed to work.
it.
life, or love, or religion.
purpose.
she's dragging feet, leaving black scuffs behind.
trying to make some mark on the world
until someone buffs it away,
on their knees again.
never ending cycle of submission.
knees scarred and ***** from begging, from laughing,
from imbalance.
until we're flat on our faces,
flipped only to be dolled up in caskets
or kissed goodbye before we
kiss furnaces.

she can't stop.

i know you're thinking about it now, too.
fingers dipped into coffee ice cream.
watching 'girl, interrupted,'
and i know you watched it closely
and maybe you questioned it like i did.
i know you're thinking about
those nights that we talked until
it wasn't the night anymore.
rushed phone calls when we
felt desperately to hear the other's voice.
nights spent in laughter,
nights spent in fear.
secrets, and dreams.
slurpees, and hiding from the heat.
and i remember that when you left that day,
my pillow smelled like you.
and to be truthful,
i held it and inhaled until
i thought my lungs could burst.
i tried to hold you in.
i tried until i couldn't anymore,
just to have that little bit of evidence
left over of your visit.

i'm so sorry that i drove you away.
i begged you to stay and then i left.
i fled, constantly, and i don't
know when i'll stop running.
i'm afraid of standing still,
but i'm also afraid of the
pain in your ocean eyes.
i'm afraid to be the one who causes it,
even though i know i am.
i'm ambivalent,
pulled between wanting to heal it
and wanting to protect you from it.
you'll never understand.
i'll never understand.
sometimes it's just easier for me
to leave it all behind.
to leave it to melted slurpees
and ice cream and movies.
to late nights and secrets
and the heat of everything.
and maybe, just maybe,
the upcoming cold will
bring the end of us.
officially.
but we both know this won't happen.
because i don't know goodbyes,
and i don't know severed ties.
i don't know how to end poems
or tie off chapters.
all in all,
i ******* **** at leaving.
and i'm sorry for that,
i really am.

all of her fingers
and all of her toes
are as cold as ice.
"like my heart,"
she always liked to say.
but this girl is golden -
metal on the outside,
as soft as ever on the inside.
malleable and valuable.
like the gold leaf
on the edges of bibles -
something you always see
but never seem to appreciate.
always on the edge of
something useless.
like the side of this
empty bathtub,
filled with nothing but air.
trying to decide if she'll
drown herself in this silence.
wondering if the other side is ever
really better
or just another waste of time.

it takes a village to raise a child
but only takes one person to force
the little girl into a loss of innocence
and you did it with such nonchalance
that it took seventeen years for me to
realize the gravity of what happened

i wonder if it keeps you up at night, knowing what you did
or maybe it was just easier for us both to forget

when the earth makes a complete orbit around the sun,
it is called a revolution.
when people stand up for what they believe in, enough to make a change,
it is called a revolution.
when you save something, preserve it for yourself,
it is called conservation.
when you told me you were leaving and i couldn't come with you,
we held what is called a conversation.
when i followed you across the country, train ticket in one hand and your hand in the other,
it was called love.
when you left me with nothing but a note on a hotel pillow,
it was called hate.
they say a picture is worth a thousand words, but words and pictures, slip-ups and homographs, grammar and literature and math and science,
none of it matters anymore.
none of it matters when nothing is changing and time stands still.
none of it matters when preserves run dry and talking turns to silence.
none of it matters with notes on a pillow that doesn't belong to you, thousands of miles from home.

i love how it feels to be underneath you.

i send you messages like these because i
know you're at dinner with your friends,
know you're out in public.

we're miles away, but i wanted to
make my presence known.
i wanted to make an impression on you
and make you want me there
when i wasn't invited.

i want to leave you hanging by the end of the night.
i want to start to make it hurt for you.
i want you to realize what is happening and reach
out for more, realize i'm not just smoke.
i am real and i can be lost.

and even if it didn't make you want me
like i intended for it to do,
at the very least you thought of me
for a moment like a front-page headline.

the whole county goes quiet on those nights that you are away,
and i can’t say much for it myself but
i know that every minute you spend away from my side
feels like an eternity stretched and
endlessly dragging on.

and as we skim the rights and wrongs on the edges of the city,
we find ourselves stepping in puddles
of blues and greens, almost like the whole world is
just beneath our feet and we are
somewhere at the top.

you make me cold in the pit of my stomach,
a glacier sliding past my lungs.
your bangs brush my eyelashes when foreheads press together,
only silence and movement and sweat between our skins.
and i feel condemned, of all things.
yet, irrevocably, i'm yours.
sold on the street corner, at the intersection of your passion and your distaste.

i'm holding you
cupped in fragile hands,
a frail little bird
in frail little fingers.
i can never hold too tightly,
because my grip might not
be strong enough
and even if i could
little bird bones
are tender little things.
and it doesn't make sense
because i hate birds so much
but i love you more
than words could ever say.
and then i think of that time
when i was a little girl
and that baby bird sat on my deck
and it didn't chirp
because it was dead
so i didn't know it was there,
and i stepped on it's tender
featherless wings
and it crunched under my foot.
and viscera spilled out
in reds
and blues
and yellow
and i cried
and cried
and cried.
and even though it was dead
inside already,
i was so afraid i would
be the one to hurt it again.
and it's kinda like that.
so excuse me if
i hold you too tight some days.
and excuse me if
sometimes my fingers are too loose.
i have my reasons,
they're there.
please, just please
sing loud enough to let me know
that you're still alive,
even if it's only a little bit.
and i'm so, so sorry
if i ever crush you.
i never meant to.

and she said,
"i live for things like that."
"i live for things like you,"
he replied.

you were confused by the difference
between ****** and heroine
but you loved to do them both,
hoping that one of them would
finally take you away

baby, won't you promise me forever?
baby, won't you stay by my side?
you have the prettiest eyes and i
never want to look away.
i know i promised you "never again."
and i know i spent more time on my knees than at your side.
but my eyes were filled with tears and i
couldn't keep my eyes off the ground.
well maybe forever was broken.
and maybe my side got scars.
but our eyes are locked in honesty
and they can't ever blink again.
but perhaps forever can be repaired.
and perhaps i fit by your side.
but our eyes are softer now,
and close just long enough to dream together.

don't ever think that,
if the opportunity arose,
that i wouldn't take
a bat to your teeth.
you may not care
but every word is about you.
every curse on my lips.
"cross my heart,
i hope you die."
you may not care,
but just so you know,
when your life goes to ****
i'll be there to cheer the fuckery on.
you deserve every tear that hits your pillow.
i hope your parents hate you
[more than they already do].
i hope he dies.
i hope every night
when you try to sleep
nightmares haunt you.
and we both know you'll
never make anything of yourself.
you'll forever be nothing
more than a two-faced *****.
you're nothing
more than a thorn in my side.
the buzzing in the back of my mind.
so you can sleep soundly tonight.
i'll be waiting for the night you scream.

i walked down the stairs,
thought i glimpsed you
out of the corner of my eye.
of course it was you.
you grabbed my arm,
pulled me to you.
i wrapped my arms around you.
your hands slid around my waist.
why did i let go?

because i had to.
you had gone upstairs
to find me.
i had come downstairs
to avoid you.
i studied you closely.
the snake bites.
the black hat.
your pupils so big,
your eyes wide with wonder.
you were so excited to see me.
******* ****, why did you
look at me like that?
i miss you, ******* it.

i wanted to hold you.
run away with you.
wake up to you.
but i remembered that i had
let go of all of that.
you had been dead to me
for months.
then i remembered the heartbreak,
the wasted memories and the
kiss goodbye.
so i said goodbye,
and i watched you walk away.

i'm not in love with you,
i never have been.
but i love you dearly.
but love and hate have
a very thin line, and
honey, i may just love you too much.

The cold of the winter reminds me of your Arctic touch, your tundra heart.
It reminds me of nights spent on floors, with you or because of you, I was never sure.
Because even when you were by my side, you were somewhere else, always talking about someone else.
Left me always wishing I was someone else.
And ever since, I can't find a home in this skin.
I let your poison sink in and it weighs me down like anchors.

i want to tell you that I never think of you
and that my love for you has faded with the years,
but my head and my heart travel more than I do lately
and they're always going home to you.