Without you here,

I've been able to name stars after myself

And ***** my fingers on roses that I've planted in my own garden

I've read and written poetry because I have identified myself with confidence and happiness

And the throbbing constant ache is at a dull hum

I'm foliated sketches and the dog-earing of my favorite pages.

I am the prayer I say at night before bed and the gratitude I feel in the morning

And without you here,

I am still all of those and so much more

Without you here

I am so much more

But why would you choose to love broken?
When the world is already in pieces?
Aren't you supposed to want whole, loved, and good?
Why would you work that much harder to search for me, just to prove I deserve love still? Underneath my darkness, the picked at scabs? I'm the ever so little amount of grains that could barely fit on your pinky finger. Filled with numbered happiness, unguaranteed strength for the people around her. For hersel-- myself. I am not worth saving. I am the whole universe, without all the stars, moons, planets. Just infinite black holes.

I'm rereading poetry I wish are my own
I'm listening to the recording of rain
I'm playing scenarios in my head
I wish I can be doing and feeling
I'm closing my eyes
Hoping to cling on to dreams
Where I have a better sense
Of who I am
A new me, a better version
Rather than the me
I am right now.

I am alive.

Once the tears no longer sting
my sadness starts feeding off the intensity of the fire inside me
And for a little while
I am the calm inside the storm.
Until I'm not.
And I explode
Stardust shower my passion
It washes away the fallacious
It gnaws clean the misery
I conjure up sentences I've pent up
For so long
There's an enchantment to the truth I've been seeking
And found.
Seized, Sorrowed, Shattered
I will no longer be the synonyms of sorry.
I have found.
I am found.
Because the way I see it,
I am alive on words.

You are so extraordinary.
It almost hurts to think
that you might’ve thought otherwise,
at least once.

I want to be able to miss you until my heart aches. Maybe it’s because I’m trying to reassure myself that the walls I’ve built around myself have not affected my ability to love–especially loving someone that deserves the mountains and all the dandelions that have managed to not just grow, but dance, on the summits.