and floating feels like an understatement now, as water levels drop instead of rise and the clouds are closer than ever. i spend every night wishing on stars that soon we will be standing on those clouds, the moon our next stop. i guess you never really anticipate the heaviness that can be presented to you so suddenly and i am floating on rain clouds back down to earth. somewhere on my journey down a familiar light stops me like an old friend and i stay, hovering above the lake i so often wished to be apart of. the darkness that surrounds me chuckles in time with the pounding in my chest, the kind of alarm that rings only at 3am. those dreams of thunderstorms have overstayed their welcome and i am the one doing the evicting this time.

but this is not the end. suspended by newly sewn strings i see a countdown forming above the glowing city, a reminder that nothing has ever stopped us before. we conquered the funeral and flowers grow from my fading graves. we've climbed hills that feel like
mountains to sit on the moon. we are still roughly 581 days away from the beginning and i have come to accept that maybe the stars were never spelling out "closed" but rather "not open yet". the grey mass that fills the air is the last curtain before the grand opening.

and that glowing city is as clear as ever and for the first time ever the end credits are rolling backwards.

9:03 pm:* I stand for nothing and fall for everything, but I've never fallen so hard for something as I have for you. I haven't wrote you anything in awhile and I think it's because I feel like I have you safely hidden in the middle of my palm in my fist, but lately I feel you slipping through my fingers. Are we okay?

9:46 pm: I've realized that I have trapped myself in a world of art being with you, everything I touch feels as if I'm experiencing it for the first time, but when I touch you, it's as if I'm touching fire, and baby, I haven't stopped lighting matches just to feel close to you.

10:21 pm: After our first love died out, others taught me love with bruises and punches but you haven't laid a hand on me and I can't decide if you don't love me or if this is true love. I'm leaning towards true love. I'm torn between showing you the darkest parts of me or shining a light on my cracked skin to avert your eyes from my scars. Does that make sense to you?

10:38 pm: This silence burns more than the ***** seeping down my throat could ever and I'm shaking at the thought of your mouth forming the words "goodbye". I've been built on the words "sorry I love someone else" and "this isn't going to work out" and if you listen closely, you can hear each person whisper those words that cut like knives when I cry. I sound like thunderstorms because I'm only a natural disaster, nothing less and nothing more.

11:02 pm: I wish I was bulletproof to the shots of sadness that are fired at me, but I am left convulsing with panic attacks and heart palpitations. Is it weird to want to die of a heart attack? Is it weird to want to be one of your cigarettes that you bite between your teeth? I want to be on top of your lips. I want you to breathe me in. Nothing makes me more afraid than you diving head first into a sea of lies about how I am cold and distant, because I've never felt more close to someone as I do to you. You'll find that I am only shattered glass, but do I ever want to be more for you. I want to be better for you, I want to be able to see happiness pouring out of your eyes so I can drown in them.

11:44 pm: You're a broken home but I still want to retire inside of you. I'll rebuild you if you'd hand me the tools. You don't even have to do so, I will fix you so you stand stronger than you ever have. You are a piece of art painted drunk and I want to kiss your canvas until my lips have left an imprint on you and we merge as one mess. This city rains too much and I have to get out and be with you, even if it does rain too much where you are, you shine brighter than the sun ever could.

1:20 am: I've taken 5 more shots and I can't stop sobbing your name. If I were ever to run into you I feel like it would be in the emergency room, but I'd still kiss you. I've attempted to write how much I love dating the girl of my dreams, I hope I'm still yours.

2:07 am: The slashes in my wrist match the lines in my walls and I can't stop staring at them because you always just say you're fine and I know you're not. I want to be so much more than this pile of dust, I want you to think I hung each star in the sky for you and that I created each galaxy to try and show you my love for you. You don't have to read all of this, my words are small and empty no matter how much of myself I pour into them, but I hope you believe them for once. I want to be so much and so little at the same time. I'm at war with my body and you're holding up a white flag for me and I don't know if I can recover. Somehow I managed to find myself with a handful of pills, just like 3 years ago when I attempted suicide to an Ed Sheeran song. You can say I love you to me but when I say it to you, my lips ache and my head fills with warning signs because it's never been this real before.

4:31 am: I woke up with uneven heart beats because I think you've started to regret me and I'd be lying if I said it never happens. I hope to one day convince you that you put the air in my lungs every day and I don't think I'd wake up every morning without you. Those are two things I'm very sure of. I don’t really remember what I lived for before you, I guess I wrote ****** poetry and thought drowning was fun in some sick way. I’ve been thinking about the way you’re going to kiss me, I’ve been prescribed antidepressants for 3 years and they’ve never really worked but i think your lips could cure me. I remember when we first started dating, i thought skin was supposed to be destroyed and i think thats when you realized that this wasn’t a two person relationship, it was you and I and my depression. I didn’t think the small of my back would ever crave being touched by someone as it does when i think about you. You say you see stars in my eyes and I pray to god that they don’t turn into black holes. I’m letting you pick apart my glass heart piece by piece and i never knew you had such strong hands until i didn’t see a cut on them while you examined such a shattered mess. God, I’m trying to put into words how much i love you and i know you think i don’t mean them and I’m searching for the right words but every time i take a step forward i take two steps back but I’ll keep on pushing because baby, you’re worth more than I can put into words.

As I write this great poem about how you broke my sick heart I have to stop and look to the ceiling so tears won’t overflow because it’s Christmas and today a year ago you asked me to be yours. I guess I didn’t realize that this was all a prank I was falling for when you made me feel invincible against everything, except you, and that’s probably why I still hurt over you 2 months later. I should have known that you weren’t someone who would stay because you didn’t stay up till 12 with me and you didn’t watch my favourite christmas movie and that’s always going to get to me.
you filled me with ***** that burned the back of my throat and bad thoughts that haunted my mind and made my entire ******* body shake. I carved my fingernails into my thighs because all I wanted was out, ****** I still want out, but when you saw the marks cut into me you held my hand and we walked to the convenience store at the end of my street where you pointed out the sharp razors to use instead. I can look on the skin covering my bones and still point out each scar where you thought I wasn’t capable of destroying myself more than you did. you left me convulsing over a toilet bowl because the way you treated me made me sick to my stomach and all I wanted to do was shrink and shrink and shrink until there was nothing left of me because you never knew how to love me, all you ever knew was how to destroy the already cracked pieces of me until I was left brittle, bruised, and bleeding. now all I do is speak in metaphors about you but *******, you do not ******* deserve my poetry. I was only second choices and a maybe to you, I was never put first and I was never a yes and I wasn’t even a no. I still know your birthday and your middle name and your sisters due date and I remember the way my name rolled off your tongue and I know your scars and I know why you never wanted to stay home and you made yourself the ******* victim when I was the one you were killing. did you even mean a word you ever said or were they mistakes that you scribbled all over the walls that you easily erased but I could never erase it in my mind because it's there, all of your empty promises and words.
My chest aches and the doctors say that I have some sort of heart disease but I know its from loving you twice as much as you ever loved me. I’ve been drinking more than I’d like to admit, but drinking makes my head spin and I wake up to not remembering a thing and that’s exactly what it’s like to love you.
But I can’t forget you, I’ll never forget you, I can echo words you’ve said and I’ve always been told to hold onto the ones who love me with their words rather than their hands. But I question if you ever loved me because you made me give pieces of myself to you that never existed and I told you I loved you and you said it back but why the **** didn’t you want to be with me? You tore me down and yet I was stupid enough to stay and expect you to rebuild me and I let you see how damaged I was and you took advantage of me and ****** around with my feelings more and there were more blades and pills and drugs and drunk kisses and you made me want to die.
I’ve started peeling the skin off of my fingertips since you started finding happiness in others because you were home for 9 months and now I’m numb. No one has any interest in me, I am a walking paradox, always laughing like I believe that I have self worth when I really only see myself as self rot. And even though I want someone else, I’m sure she doesn’t want me, you’ve made me believe that. My chestnut eyes are as dull as grey clouds and memories of us are lodged between my ribs where they won’t ******* leave no matter how hard my body shakes when I think about you.
I thought being with you would cure the way my sadness creeps into my eyes and blurs my vision, but really it was letting you see the worst parts of me and grabbing onto your hands until they broke because I held onto you too tightly. I thought if I held onto you tight enough that you wouldn’t leave but too quickly I couldn’t even grasp your shadow because you were too busy with other girls ******* on your neck and leaving love bites and I was left with a bottle of tequila and your stupid promise to stay. I thought if I screamed loud enough about the pain you put me through that someone would hear, but you grabbed me by my throat before I could make a sound and told me that you’d fix me, but one night in your sleep you whispered that I was incurable. I thought if I could memorize each freckle and line on your body so that I could trace them in my sleep that you’d never leave, but now you’re tracing other girl’s bare body’s and I’m sketching anothers too.
Afterwards I was taught what love was with other peoples bodies instead of words and I started to see my bones and I couldn’t stop taking pills and something broke inside me like glass shattering and I woke up in the hospital from a heart attack because of my **** heart disease.
I still have heart problems and I still think of you a lot. I would like to say I’ve moved on too and I have. I’ve found love in another person but unfortunately she doesn’t see any love in me, and that’s okay because neither do I.
I would like to thank you honestly, my dad and you are the people who have hurt me the most and I don’t know why I let both of you take turns stabbing me until I bled dry, but now I’m a walking skeleton because I am so **** empty. I can’t find happiness no matter how hard I look and I don’t know why my body feels so heavy at 17, like I’ve already lived through 3 lives, but that’s life. It’s crazy that you inspire poetry when you’re the opposite of love and I honestly don’t care if you read this and you’re hurt because you hurt me for 9 months and I’m still hurting and I don’t think I’ll ever stop.
Merry Christmas.

I'm not sure if you care much about me, I don't care much about me either, but ever since you came back after a year you've been flowing from the ink of my pen to my paper and I can't stop ******* writing about you.
I mostly sit in coffee shops thinking of how your left hand would spread across your cracked mug and how your right hand would grip my thigh, because you told me you always had to be touching me in one way or another to make up for the times you were too far to see the same stars as me. I see you carving our names into the wooden table and I'm tracing your lips with my cut up fingers and the only time you can tell me you love me is after a shot and a kiss or two. I never liked coffee until I tasted it tattooed on your lips and there I swallowed every apology for how much I drank and the way I ****** because both are so violent and both left us naked and crying until you held me so tight i thought my veins would burst, but I'd never tell you to stop.
Walking to the bus stop I confuse your eyes with street lights and maybe its because I'm slightly tipsy and in love with you. I hold your cut up hands, you told me your mom was trying to hurt you but you were as numb as you were when she slapped you, and you never cried. At the bus stop I kissed you so hard and your tears mixed with our saliva and I thought the four oceans had spilled from your beautiful eyes. On the bus I held you until you felt limp in my arms and I looked into your eyes and saw the street lights flicker and I made you get off at the next stop, even though we had 5 more to go. You had goosebumps covering your porcelain skin and you told me you had no idea who you were without your sadness in between sobs that shook my lungs and made me cry too.
Loving you is writing poetry so your eyes don't wander away from me even though I break pieces of myself to give to you so you'll stay, and that's not love but it's the only love I'll ever know.
Loving you is asking constantly if you've stopped loving me because self doubt swallows me whole and vomits apologies that tumble out of my mouth for the ways I try to **** myself I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry
Loving you is echoing words I need to hear, hoping it'll quiet the voices in your head telling you to do terrible things to your body.
Loving you is listening to the 1975 and hearing your name in between each chord and god ****** I love you
Loving you is never knowing how you are but always knowing you're in your car, because you never like staying at home, and baby that's okay.
Loving you is never knowing the colours of your eyes because they always switch from brown to green and oh god I'm so scared for the day you won't be here.
Loving you is knowing that you have me tucked away in the back pocket of your skinny jeans but not knowing when you'll take me out and tell me you love me, because I do love you.
and I love you is big for me, it's an anxiety attack formed in words it's trying to speak with bruised lips from kissing you too hard it's breathing in water, but baby we're both drowning so we might as well hold hands and sink together.

I am still sitting at the side of the curb where you left me with your demons. I've been looking for a way out, an escape, but in all the wrong places.
I held hands with the devil and he took me to his bed where love turned to lust and my body was no longer a temple to worship. Now I shrink away from the slightest touch of anyone because I started to believe that they were all the devil in disguise, well aren't they dad?
I don't know why you came back and left as fast as you did, but it sure warned me about the people who made empty promises that echo off my walls at night.
The words I wanted to say to you that night still bounce off my lungs, some linger on my tongue, few make it to my lips.
I have to write about my strongest memory, so how could I forget the night you left?
I thought if I could be daddy's little girl the storm inside of me would settle and there would be peace, but you broke each one of my bones with your bare hands that night, leaving me in a pile of self rot on the curb, didn't dare to turn around to see your own blood destroyed and who was I to think that family was forever?
You told me I used you for your money, but all I ever used you for was love. I thought you were home but I never even lived there for two years before you packed my things, kicked me out, and slammed the door.
You got louder and I tried to cover my little brother's ears to protect him from the poison spewing from your mouth and I tried to cover his eyes so he wouldn't have to watch his sister be ripped to pieces by the man he looks up to.
After you left I walked into my house, the four oceans had been emptied and spilled from my eyes. I screamed about the hate I had for you and pounded my fists against the walls and my mom was scared and I saw the faith drain from her eyes when she realized what you had done.
Nothing is poetic or beautiful or okay about a father abandoning his daughter. So when I thought of my strongest memory, this one came to mind first and I hope you know that your daughter writes about the ways you destroyed her.

my love is building a building
around you,a frail slippery
house,a strong fragile house
(beginning at the singular beginning

of your smile)a skilful uncouth
prison, a precise clumsy
prison(building thatandthis into Thus,
Around the reckless magic of your mouth)

my love is building a magic, a discrete
tower of magic and(as i guess)

when Farmer Death(whom fairies hate)shall

crumble the mouth-flower fleet
He’ll not my tower,
                        laborious, casual

where the surrounded smile
                                hangs

                                          breathless