You fell in love with me.

I just hope you jumped.
Not slipped.

I wrote my way out of the dark pages of my life.
I know what it's like to see your life hanging by a thread;
scraping your skin with your fingernails to stop yourself from crying;
weaving scars on your skin to get some high out of life.

Smiling on the outside, but tearing up on the inside.
I've been there,
disguising last rites as declarations of love;
holding out for that one guy for some unjust reason.
I was once told I was beautiful on the inside,
I used to scoff at that thought.
I couldn't be beautiful,
my metaphorical skin was sewed and patched, ruined and defiled
and there was nothing beautiful about that.
It took me a while to see that beauty for myself.
I was once that one girl sitting in corner at midnight
contemplating suicide over family tiffs, unrequited love, loss, loneliness, and every other
stuff that I couldn't deal with.
I can't look at my left wrist
without feeling some sort of disgust because of the tallies of pain
I left behind.

I had this habit of saying 'I'm always good' whenever asked
but I got tired of seeing illusions as reality,
I was tired of escaping my own life. I was not okay and I needed help.

I wish somebody had told me
this sooner:

MELANCHOLY IS NOT TRENDY, DEPRESSION IS NOT COOL,
CUTTING IS NOT A FASHION STATEMENT
SADNESS IS NOT ATTRACTIVE

It's actually sad that we,
teenagers,
advertise sadness as if it's something to be proud of.  

YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL
YOU DON'T NEED VALIDATION FROM PEOPLE
DON'T LET HIM TELL YOU HE LIKES YOU BETTER WHEN YOU'RE BROKEN.
NO, SCARS DO NOT MAKE YOU ATTRACTIVE
SOME SCARS AREN'T WORTH HAVING
CRAZY IS NOT ****
**** IS NOT ALWAYS ****** SHEDDING A FEW KILOS WON'T MAKE HIM LIKE YOU ANY MORE THAN HE DOES
UNHEALTHY RELATIONSHIPS DON'T HEAL --words I wish I'd  heard sooner

You are not broken beyond repair

YOU ARE A PHOENIX,
A PHOENIX MUST BURN TO EMERGE.

i can't remember
what it's like to sleep in sheets
that don't smell like you

the day we went to the aquarium
was the day i decided to let myself fall
in love with you, and by 11:54 that
night i was practically suffocating
under the weight of words i did not
know how to say, so i simply took your
hands in mine and hoped that you
could read between the songs that i
whispered as you fell asleep.

we aren't much older
now, but wiser nonetheless,
and i have figured it out

I wrote you letters
Only to burn it later
Then write hundreds more

You
forgot to take your mother's kitten out of the oven.
She smiles on a trance
like Avalokiteśvara in a lotus
reeks of God, a melting honeycomb.
Bake me some pottery, would
you? But the clay
has grown so much its pants no,
no longer fit.

The dove faked a laugh
and Noah would clap.
Clap and clap and clap.
He told Emzara to leave him
and only him and only him
and only him
alone, for Chronos had put a chaos
on Themselves, and, and
Delilah would cry in joy when the pillars collapsed
along with her soul, along with her soul.

But you chose to pray to another
whom is not the arrow nor a lampshade on a hotel room,
whom is not a sun nor a xylophone nor the title of your favorite song nor the bricks you'd
tied on your
waist.

The stars' greetings unanswered, unanswered, unanswered.
O, dear, o my dear sky whom is polluted!
Cataract on the moon, moon that hollows air as, as I lose the setting sun that is
you.

She cannot sort the grain. After all these trials, I have been lost yet again. —But fairy tales have been this ruthless before; myth has given me wings, has painted my shoulders with fur, with scales, with scars. Legends have broken me down into all the smallest invisible facets of myself until I could do no more than vanish entirely. Who will love me behind the walls? Within my keep, another girl's impatient hands will light the candle to gaze upon sleepless eyes, and wake within me all the anxious demons hiding inside Pandora's Box.

A sigh signals some sort of disclosure.
– glancing over his eyeglass frames
at the slow downward tilt of her chest
her gingham blouse rises again
as she inhales energy for her words,
words intended to clarify or confuse,
he does not know.
His own exhale and a frowning brow
signal that he is listening-
to judge whether her statement
is real or fancy.
Her words a mercury for her mood
no gauge left as he guesses
seeking to understand her,
to crawl through her veins like a virus,
to know her every desire,
every expectation, even every fear.
He is adrift in his own flaws,
unable to grasp precisely her feelings, her expressions.
His distrust is great whether of himself or of her.
Salt honesty with caprice and tasty fare is spoiled.
Gripping the arm of his chair,
muscles straining to lurch forward,
he escapes toward the door
leaving her words
to fill the hollow behind him.
Tomorrow he may choose valor,
today the fear of authenticity scares him to his den.