There has never been
another person
capable of
fixing me

I'm drowning.
My hands search for a grip  on the smooth surface of plastic
and I don't know what ways up or which way's down
I just know that this emptiness is surrounding me
pressing in
Its cheek up against the window panes that are so thick they block out any oxygen that might offer me a little escape from this hell that is reality and
I'm drowning
I'm drowning in my thoughts my sorrows my whole ******* life and the only thing that was certain is gone and now i've got nothing to catch me if I fall so i might as well just crack my skull at the bottom of this bottomless pit but if I do
If I do
You've already lost so much I can't leave you with another empty space to fill with the minutes and the days where nothing will be right
because your only other clutch is 3000 miles and an ocean away and even if we never got along that's too far and you mean too much because to have your heart ripped in half when your eldest is only 15 is too much for such fragile shoulders to bear and, yeah, maybe it messed me up but maybe it messed you up more
and if nothing else you're important
and maybe it's insane and maybe i'm insane and maybe some days it's all I can do to drag myself out from under the covers and pretending i'm okay is too much for me to bear
but maybe i don't need to pretend because even if this glass case exposes me to the world, bare-breasted and vulnerable even if they tear me to shreds one by one and feast off the meal that my flesh provides even if i'm drowning and it feels like i'll never be able to breathe again
if i can show the world i'm weak maybe it'll stop expecting me to be strong and maybe then it will be okay if i don't want to carry on and hiding in my closet with the blankets over my head will be deemed acceptable if not normal and maybe today's hard
and maybe tomorrow will be harder
but i cling on to the hope that one day the sun will shine again and the glass will break and I will be strong and i will be able to put myself together and wake up with a smile on my face thinking "todays gonna be a good day" and maybe that's not this year or maybe that's not next year but maybe when i get there it will be enough
maybe this will all be worth it
because i'm the shattered remains of the girl you once knew  and i'm drowning in the sea of my thoughts but i will take this tape and i will take this glue and i will peice myself together one by one and pretend to be strong for you because
you're the one who needs a hero in this hellhole of a world and I've never been up to the task but if a girl can't save her mother from drowning in the same mess then what is the point of it all.
And maybe i'm the one who's got tears on my face but if i can make those tears fill up a jar and put them on a table then maybe the way the light sparkles through them will be enough to remind me that it's not worth being sad because the world will move on and just leave me behind and it's going, going, going, it's spinning to fast it's going to far
and at any moment i might fly off but my feet are stuck to the ground because i can't leave you.

self-isolation
My mum tells me to leave the house more often and it’s not that I don’t want to it’s just that I can’t because the thought of only doing so makes my knees go weak but she keeps telling me to “just” meet up with friends.

2. not finding joy in what used to make you happy
It’s not that I don’t make plans with friends, because I do, it’s just that I don’t want to because I know that, as soon as I’m out doing things that used to make me happy and are supposed to still make me happy, I will have to pretend that I am, in fact, happy.
And it is exhausting.

3. insomnia
You tell me to sleep more because I look tired as if I am not aware of the bags under my eyes. You do not realise that they feel even worse than they look. You do not know that I am in bed early every single night because I do feel tired I just can’t sleep. Even though I am tired and my body is tired, my brain never is and I have tried reading and taking walks in the middle of the night and listing and counting sheep and insecurities and defeat and crushed wishes and possible ways to die.

4. thinking of death as “nothing big”
What scares most people is what intrigues me. I often find myself considering crossing the road right when a car rushes by or simply jumping out the window when I find myself in high buildings. It’s not that I want to die, it’s more that I am fascinated by how easy it is, opposed to everything else in life.

5. things that are supposed to be easy aren’t so easy any more
The biggest one is getting out of bed, I believe.
I have learned to put my alarm fifteen minutes earlier to let my brain and body accustom to the idea of having to face things that I don’t even know are going to happen. The fear of having to face the unknown is like a constant winter, freezing my throat shut and making breathing a whole lot more difficult than it is supposed to be.

6. being very aware of your breathing and heartbeat**
I never noticed how natural breathing was until I started to have trouble doing so. Now it just feels as though my lungs and my heart are in a constant fight to decipher which is the strongest which leaves me in a constant battle of having to focus on my breathing whilst my heart is making me feel as though someone is repeatedly punching me from the inside.
I know none of it makes sense and even if I try to explain it all to you, you will still tell me you don’t understand. But frankly, neither do I.

Being so aware of my breathing and heartbeat also makes me aware of the fact that they are still going, and that is really the only thing that matters in the end.
They are still going.

Maybe it's not enough to love you.
Maybe I'll give you my heart and you'll ask for a snack,
or I'll buy you a ring and you'll want a necklace,
or I'll get us a house and you'll decide you want a mansion instead.
Maybe I'll give you everything I have and everything I don't and it still won't be enough.

Or...

Maybe I'll give you my heart and we'll fall together so naturally you could swear we were meant to be,
or I'll buy you a ring and get down on one knee,
or I'll get us a house and we can start a family.
Maybe I'll give you everything I have and we'll be ******* happy.
(Maybe it's enough to love you.)

There are galaxies in my throat
all named after you.

I want your body pressed to mine so our hearts feel each other's beats.

My arms circled around your waste
and a kiss pressed to your face
a sound rhythm in our veins
I can't even begin to explain
You drive me crazy,
in a good way
I'd give anything at all
if it meant forever you'd stay
I don't think I have to, though
we're near tied together
A hundred minutes, weeks, or years
Any amount of time's forever
An infinity of our own
I can build a life around you
Pressing kisses to your palms
Pressing faith into truth
Matrimony? In time,
no need to rush it all
we've got forever ahead of us, darling
and I've already started to fall.

Open books with black covers containing stories never good enough to be read, words never long enough to contain the fragment of a thought. Maybe that's why I turn to putting my own in the complexity of poems, maybe that's why I'm never satisfied because I can never say what I mean. Sometimes I don't think you know what I mean, so if you haven't been able to read the between the lines; I miss you. I've been looking for so many ways to say it but none of them have been enough to make you come back. The thing about poetry is its never enough to make you feel the way I do. It'll never make you realize that ink seeps out of my pens with the purpose to make you feel something; but it never does. The thing about poetry is that you need to be empty to write it and that's why I learnt how to after you left. The shut door opened a new one which was the will to write about all the broken pieces of myself. The thing about poetry is it requires to see life through the eyes of things unspoken. Little do most know that mirrors and picture frames can speak novels of things forgotten which is me to you. The thing about poetry, is that I'm running out of things to say. I'm running out of words to spray on city walls, or carve in the wood of dying trees. The thing about poetry is that this isn't it. This is the goodbye, good luck. I have nothing more to bleed out for you, my mind is turning to dust. This is the last "I love you" I have left to write about, this is extended hands with empty palms.
This is the apology. It's me trying to feel something more than what I do, and as hard as I try to get there, I can swear that in nights of deafening silence I can still hear the sky screaming out your name.