falling in love

laughing for real full minutes and it doesn’t stop being funny every time i think about it

music loud windows down driving fast alone

jealousy

rage with hitting and screaming

physically too hot

guilt

being almost home

smiling or crying at a painting

right after finishing a really good movie late at night wide awake

having to fight another person physically to stay alive

seeing the person you love the most get really hurt or die

finding out a favorite Facebook friend died from RIP posts

not being able to leave

right after finally being done being mad and crying for hours

high on ******

*** that makes you cry

kissing someone special for the first time

I am so alone that I am choking on it
so many people love me and nobody knows me;

fading tattoos on my body like an epitaph for my heart.

Littered in bruises from people I don't know
but
they might as well be from me.

It's still a better day than yesterday.

for two years
every day had a purpose:
get more ******.
weeks became punctuated with
Narcan in mcdonalds bathrooms
and breaking your ribs
trying to make you breathe again-
when my hands come down on your chest
i go back to the seventh grade
someone is explaining that birds' bones are hollow because they were born to fly-

why is there such sick pleasure in this?
it was never as simple as wanting to get high-
first day: i can't think of the baby that died I need to get high
second day: I can't think about the boy that ***** me I need to get high
over and over and over
we would make love on the ******,
forgive our faults as soon as we found a vein
sharing a needle, you've been deeper inside of me than anyone-

i'm sober now. moved thirty miles north.
they took you away from me and the ******
my days aren't marked with purpose anymore
it's been fourteen days since I finally thought of the child I'm still scared to mourn
and the boy whose name I am too scared to whisper when I am alone

I have not left my house in fourteen days
and i can't breathe deeply;
I broke my rib on day one

it feels like the skin is at war with itself,
fingernails as artillery,
and i hear them whispering like these pinprick bullet wounds
aren't critical until i can feel the pain-
but there is a bomb that will go off inside of me

i can feel the clock ticking down inside of me so loud i am vibrating,
it's so loud you can see my hands shaking

and bruises bloom like flowers on the cemetery my body is becoming
and i can feel my blood being replaced with embalming fluid

"stop this" i moan,
and she says back, "just stop yourself"

"So I'll probably **** myself,"
I said to you,
"But not until I'm 21 and can stain my lips red
And drink for real
And get so drunk I'll dance right off a cliff.
The rocks at the bottom will hug me so tight I'll split right open.
And then I'll never be able to hide any of it
It'll all be there for you to see.
Bleeding out."
You looked at me and all you said was
"Okay."