you know what I think? I think sleep is for people who aren't up all hours of the endless night spending each second whole heartedly loving someone. I think 2 a.m was invented for poets writing poems upon poems about the curvature of his jawline or how her lips taste like stardust and sunshine because one never seems to be enough and do beauty the justice that true love demands. how could you possibly sleep knowing you're wasting minutes and moments and hours spent being subconsciously elsewhere while her hands are empty and he's out there somewhere whispering to the moon and the stars and Jupiter and whoever else is willing to listen about how beautiful you are when you don't think anyone is looking? I once had an entire conversation with the sun about your laughter and the calluses on your palms and the very next night I found myself screaming your name at the sky demanding answers from a solar system that only offered even more questions. the north star swallowed my memories of my head on your chest and your heart beat in my ear and now all I'm left with are smudged letters and holes in the walls a little too big to fit my fists. I want to kick the door of history clear off it's hinges and choke on splinters of pride and apologies. I want to tell you that I intend to fill every single empty part of your heart with my hands and your hands with my soul. you told me I was beautiful. I always knew you were looking.

I'm sorry. I've been staring at this paper for quite some time now and still I'm sorry is all I can manage to write. I've been swallowing apologies for months and popping sorrys like pills and still the words will fall out of my mouth whenever I remember the look on your face as I left. I want to tell every single psychologist alive that no number of family dinners will help you survive the falling out brought about by boys and high school and secret cigarettes and no matter how many times you hugged her it will never feel like enough because we haven't spoken in years and no by spoken I do not mean empty words spilling out of tired mouths and lonley lips across plates of food and phones smarter than we were because at least they knew the true value of connection. and do you know I've saved every single ******* birthday card because these words you didn't even have the nerve to write yourself are the most genuine I've never heard you say and the fact that love replaces from or sincerely at the bottom of the page instills the slightest bit of hope in me that maybe eventually I'll actually hear you say it to my face before the day our fingers are laced across your deathbed. and dad I'm sorry that this ******* poetry is the only way I've ever known how to say anything worth listening to but god I love you and I wish I could sew us back together but the distance between us is one no amount of stitches could fix. I wish Hallmark went out of business and telephones didn't exist that way I could hear you say that you love me before the words go extinct on your tongue and stale between your teeth. but all you've left me with are twelve years worth of birthday cards stuffed between my bedsheets and the audacity to sign your name on someone else's four dollar fifty cent masterpiece.

I've got this theory
that at night my chest fills
with memories of you
and my lungs turn to steel
breathing is nearly as impossible
as it was to let you go
and I swear its like I'm inhaling your smile and exhaling smoke
that sits amongst the midnight atmosphere
in silent hopes
that this isn't real
clinging to the dark earth like dense
black fabric that can't help but to choke
on your name
there are some things that even time
can't manage to heal
and I think it was the first night
I overdosed on sleeping pills
that I drempt of you holding my hand
and pumping my veins full of your laughter
because only I knew that it was a high
no one but you and I
would ever fully understand
I woke up empty handed and stranded
in a foreign land where calendar days weren't named after the way
your voice cracked when we met
and hurricanes came from the coast
but I think they spilled out from under your tongue when you woke up at one a.m fighting my memories back down your throat and swearing to yourself that you didn't love me anymore
and I don't exactly know how to end this without washing up on the shore
of nostalgia and broken promises
being washed away by the relentless tide that came rushing out of your mouth
and sliding between your eyes
sometimes I can't tell if im choking on fire or water
but I'm drowning in the sea of losing you and burning on the thought
of you missing me
too