i only have old poems & watercolors
and it’s not going to be enough
it wasn’t enough when i had new poems
and your face to paint

i gave you blue eyes to see the world out of
and you spared it a glance
said it wasn’t

your shade

i said i had time to spare
but you had already picked up your handbag

i wrote about everything you said
i didn’t have much to go on

i got myself pastels, and pencils,
and everything in between

you can always come back
they’re all named after you

is my blood
the right shade?

11.09.13; 11:48 PM

The house going to sleep is a matter of sounds fading, tap-dancing one after the other into oblivion. I know it’s just me when gone are the television sounds, the whir of electric fans, fingers tapping on the keyboard when I pass by your room, the air-conditioner hum when I pass by our mother’s, gone are all the reminders of life. The bags under my eyes are unwanted proof. By 12, my nail beds are bleeding and I am blinking at a million open tabs so I don’t think of you. At 1 am, there are gaps in my soul and I can feel the bitterness of a smile that may be mine, or perhaps yours (the one you never gave me), the saltiness of tears that may or may not come out. Last is when at 2 am I think I hear floorboards creaking and there are shadows in the kitchen that cannot be accounted for, my fear is limited where loneliness is not. my soul longs to be gazed upon, for a conversation to be begun, on the topic of truth and the depth of the ocean.

I am selling myself to death because life will not take me.

11.09.13; 11 PM

I just want to make up for all the good I haven’t done and whatever bad I did do while trying to be happy, then I want to disappear. I wish no one would ever have to feel this alone.

When I go, I will find it.

There is nothing to forgive. Things will be better from now on.

09.01.13

I know the likelihood of me getting asked to prom measures up to the likelihood of anyone actually using the white crayon in the Crayola box. I am going to be the girl that’s not even on any guy’s Plan B.

And that would be totally cool except I’m sad.

I am shaking my head at God and how he totally owes me one.

Prom is supposed to be like, the fairytale moment! I’ve been dreaming of princes and ballrooms and dancing and romance and magic and love… probably since I was conceived. How could you even let the dreamer girl who wanted to be a princess nurture five hundred layers of beautiful only to coat her with thick paint in the shade called “ugly”? (Trivia: That drives boys away.)

So maybe I still made believe I was a princess. But often enough, the mirror reflects the facade, when I’m expecting it to hold my heart. It gets to a point that you just have to let go.

I have theories. I used to despair and say that I was in the wrong storybook. What a life for such a girl. But it happens that romantics don’t have anyone to hold. (Thus the teddy bears, I suppose. Do you know how hard I hug those? I am pathetic.) My second theory, is maybe I’ve been looking from the wrong perspective. Maybe my life isn’t going to be a fairytale in the way I expect. How about a modernized version or something?

It’s becoming obvious that I don’t really have any ideas.

Except for one last.
Maybe there’s a plot twist?

Maybe there’s a plot twist.

08.23.13; 1 AM

And do you know, that night I went to bed thinking “What if four years from now I still like him?” The possibility haunts.

It’s been a year and fortysome poems since you. It’s been fiftysome conversations that I wasn’t the one to start. It’s been one birthday. And I carefully avoided greeting you.

You don’t know, you broke my heart. And then you made me trip over it. Maybe I bumped my head and got confused. Maybe I’m still on my knees, picking up pieces. Forty poems since you and only three were written without thought of you; you stained my fingers and you’re always seeping out. Fifty conversations which you began, but you’re always ending them; maybe I still want a thousand more.

I didn’t greet you because you greeted me late… Do you know, that hurt, but I almost understand now that you don’t care. And I cried a lot because you don’t care. I am so stupid though, because, I do. I miss you.

and if through the breath released in smoke
someone’s poison lips let out words that come
to mess up your breathing, if you
grapple with your feelings, don’t look
at your skin until you can brush
the sting of their gazes away:
it won’t last unless you let it
form thunderclouds above your heart
then it will tear you apart

when you pick up that guitar again, or run
your thumb along the grooves of your pen,
pluck a tune, strum a melody
begin a paragraph with ‘I love myself’
and pour it out until you are whole again
do what you love and never stop,
not for or because of any soul, other than your own

and about the people who have hurt you, if they
are around and you feel down and I am not close by:
lift your chin a little ways, and walk up high -
walk straight, keeping your gaze far away
do not act the winner nor the loser,
just close the window on the rain
when you don’t want a damp blanket.
when the rain stops, I will reopen them
and the starlight will fall upon your sleeping figure
(tired lines, thin bones, tiny heart)
one bright light for every time you’ve ever felt alone

we are no good for each other
spamming me "hello" won't get anything done
it's not nearly time to run
away yet, sweetie, you want to die
so do I, but we're going to different places
you don't even believe in the sky
and I have hung myself from it

I am sorry if I draped myself in faerie lights
and in that moment you saw me with your eyes
because I am actually not so bright
instead of brimming and spilling over with love
the layers of my skin is a monster I want to fight
a container I want to break and shatter in the night
I am under the surface, and it is difficult to breathe

meanwhile I am starting to think
you just want to be loved and it grinds on my
conscience that I can't give you that but why

are you so angry? I wanted to fix you and
I had intended to but you don't stay in one place
stop staring at my face like you're going to eat me
don't raise your voice at me, I frighten easily
your eyes are so dark, when I look at you I feel
like I'm trapped and never getting out
why are you so angry? I can't touch you
and not blow up myself, when I say

you make it hard for me to breathe,
that's a bad thing,

and we are no good for each other