I think there will always be a void
that not even the thickest substance can fill
and whether that void is in my heart
or head
or even between my bones
is something I still don't know
and I may not ever.

The music is never loud enough
and the heat is always on too high
and nobody believes you when you tell them you can't breathe
until the windows fog up
and you're forced to write your last words
in the condensation
with shaky fingers.

The demons dance and sing when others come around
And everyone claps along with encouraging words
But when I'm alone in my room
All they do is growl and hiss
And nip at my fingers from under the bed

It’s such a naïve thing to say
That I miss you the second you exit my line of vision
And compared to every day for the rest of our lives
This moment is only a glitch in time
But it’s as if every time we say goodnight
It’ll be the last time
Because each night away from you feels like a lifetime
And the only lifetime I ever wish to have
Is the one where we only exist together,
Skin on skin
In an apartment made of us
With nothing but the air we’ve exhaled
Occupying the space between our bodies,
However little that space may remain.

He touches my face
and I can feel the love exiting his fingertips
when it would usually feel like infatuation
and when I tell him I'm here to stay
his face lights up as if he's seeing the sunset
for the first time all over again.
Thoughts I have throughout the day
are ones of his thighs wrapped tightly around mine
as he whispers that he loves me
through the gaps between sighs and moans.
He sings with me in the car
and he loves my weird taste in almost everything
and the stupid voices I use when I don't know what to say
and I swear to god if I couldn't be his forever
I would rather just belong to the earth.

Tipsy conversations in kitchens of mutual friends
would have never been enough
And to come to such a conclusion
after just one night together (alone)
Would be insane to anyone but us.
I would wish we'd found out sooner,
But to say I'd change even a second
of the time we've spent
Taking in one another's breath
Under sheets we never expected to share
Would be even crazier than admitting that I loved you
the moment you opened your door.

I assure you over and over that I love you
but the vision of his face overshadows yours every time.
The motivation to touch you only appears
when I've become overly hungry for him
and I would lend you a glimpse
of what's lurking inside my mind
but you wouldn't be able to see
through the thick fog anyway.
Even with you inside of me I still feel empty.

It took one night in the same room
with the next four months left up to the universe
to figure out that the greatest plans
will never be the ones we make in advance
and with the help of you words
to pick the lock on my brain
there is no way in hell that I could ever allow myself
to ignore every sign along the way
and walk past the capability
of being in love with you.

I've started removing the happier pictures of us from my walls and now their empty rectangular skeletons are left all over the surface of the paint.
I can't decide if it is an aesthetically pleasing coincidence or a ****** up metaphor for the way I left you but it's funny how time can rot everything and everyone in its path.
I'm sorry for being happy without you.

They cut down all the trees that stood in the entrance to your neighborhood
and I wondered if it was a sign that we were meant to end after all,

because what are the chances that on the same day
I sat next to your mother's girlfriend in a parking lot
nowhere near her house or yours
and ignored her glances
when only a week before I would have made pleasant conversation?

How perfectly in tune would the universe need to be
for me to find out only hours later
that he has a birthmark on the outside of his wrist
just like you do?

Whether I'm the first person you think of
when you open your eyes in the morning
Or the last person you would choose to call
in an emergency of sheer panic
At least I am running through your mind at all
And I will keep running.

Your room is becoming my broken boat in the middle of a raging ocean, but it won't float with both of us in it.
We can patch up the holes all we want but we both know that tape won't permanently fix splintered boards and I know you can't admit it but you'd survive just fine if I jumped into the mouth of the creature that's been stalking us and the sea would slowly bring you back to shore if you would let it because it's much fonder of you than it's ever been of me.

It can be anything as simple as not wearing your seat belt.
It becomes difficult to take your medication,
without wondering how much is too much.
Looking in the mirror is like looking into the face of a ghost,
and eventually you won't bother looking at all
because it's not like you ever see anything anyway.
Everything feels out of reach,
and no one ever notices.

I am a thief with no heart of my own
creeping up onto window sills
and tip toeing into the dreams
of falsely accused prisoners
and no mercy is present once I stand in your room
and take what makes me stronger
as if I am the one who should be given a shield

and victims will lie willingly as they are seduced
and no mercy is ever present
even after we escape into the walls
(your former organs and I)
desperately searching for the flesh of the next.

I will **** them to hell before returning to my heaven
because even the sky cannot cut through my deceptive skin.

Thank you for allowing me to swim to the surface
Before sinking down to the lowest point you've ever been.

My mother lost her oldest brother to
a car accident
that didn't mix well with liquor
and on the way to his funeral, she ran
two red lights.

I am in love with people who are raw,

who aren’t afraid to show their colors

even if those colors are watered down

and the paint that covers their heart

has been chipped away at by ghosts of the past

who sneak into bedrooms at night

and whisper into lonesome ears,

“i am the one you thought you’d gotten rid of

and I am the reason you long for a past 

you wish had never happened to begin with”

Every day the pieces of you that still remain under my bed
crawl closer and closer to the front door
in an attempt to escape, unnoticed
and with one starving hand out the door
I ****** them up and drag them back to the home I've forced upon them
because I can't bear the thought of them dying in anyone's presence
other than my own.

we can't always follow our dreams, or our hearts for that matter. if we did we would all be walking around aimlessly, running into walls and sneaking up on ex lovers the way we beg them to do to us in our heads.

I remember when the clouds began to look like a vortex
Hovering above the trees
Ready to inhale anything in their path,
And I remember when the walls of my own bedroom
Started to feel like barricades
Secluding me from all the things
That made me feel anything at all,
And I remember my own voice
Passing quietly through the empty hearts
Of the ones I thought had been listening all along
And came hurling back toward me
Like a car spun out of control across wet asphalt,
And I remember when the only ones around
To keep me company
Were the echoes between my own skin and bones.

What a relief
That when you left
They followed close behind.

If I would have known you would **** me up this badly, I would have chosen a different locker on the first day of high school. I would have pulled away the moment you put your arm around me and asked me to hold your project from a ceramics class as you attempted to impress me, and succeeded. I would have never become friends with your twin sister. I would have never said yes when you asked me to prom, and I would have sat on my hands when you tried to hold them in the car on the ride there. I would have looked the other way when you kissed me afterwards. I would have said no when you asked me to be yours, and I would have told you I was busy before you came home with me the same day. I would have never said I love you, or agreed to meet you at that park at 4am in the first place. I would have never been seen with you by my neighbor, kissing on park benches in the rain, pretending we were the only ones left in the universe. I would have never let you get mad at me that way, when we screamed at each other outside the only house I’ve ever called home, when I couldn’t even make it inside before tears started falling from my face. I would have never had that water fight with you at the park that used to remind me of my childhood (now it only reminds me of you.) I would have never broken up with you, and gotten back together, and broken up with you, and gotten back together, and broken up with you, and still been in love with you but hidden it under someone else’s bed sheets. I would have never gotten high with you and forgotten all about him for those two short hours. I would have never talked to you on the phone like we used to, until I realized it was six o’clock in the morning and I had class at eight. I would have never listened to that song on repeat for weeks, even though I can’t stand reggae.
I would have never answered the phone when you called and told me you never wanted to speak to me again. I wouldn’t be sitting here, writing to your ghost, as if I would ever have the nerve to say this to your face.

I was sixteen years old when I effectively vomited for the first time. As my mother’s pasta and the words of a boy I thought loved me flooded my esophagus I grasped the cold sides of the toilet seat with sweaty palms and bitten down fingernails. I looked into the mirror as if my reflection had finally transformed into a wax figure I had been burning at for years and I knew it would never go back to its original form. I’d seen that look before, in girls wiping their lips in high school bathrooms, girls who wore baggy clothes and flinched when boys playfully poked at their stomachs, girls who put rocks in their pockets before being weighed at doctors’ appointments and covered up bruises over fragile bones with whatever makeup they could find in their mother’s drawer. I sit in health class as the teacher speaks of the dangers of eating disorders from a third person point of view and it seems as if the only sound anyone is hearing is the growling coming from my empty stomach. I stand up from a lunch table in the cafeteria and freeze at the words of a girl telling me I’ve gotten as skinny as my three month prematurely born best friend. I walk through the front door and immediately remove every piece of clothing that might weigh even an ounce and I step onto the scale with hopes of seeing my importance rise as the numbers fall but no one ever told me that I am worth so much more than 96 pounds.

I am nineteen years old and I am no longer drowned in a sea of panic when my father asks me what I've had to eat today. When my boyfriend glides his hands under my shirt and over the top of my waistline my head is not consumed by the thought that my stomach is not flat enough for his liking. I do not sit in class and think about the flesh of my thighs bulging from the holes in my jeans that a boy once told me looked like tumors under my skin.
Okay, there are days when the only one who knows I am my own worst enemy is the mirror and okay, I still politely insist that the lights be turned off before I let him touch me with satin fingertips and okay, I still have a way of instantaneously counting calories in my head the same way I counted on myself to stop years ago but
I only weighed myself once today.

I was sixteen years old when I effectively vomited for the first time. As my mother’s pasta and the words of a boy I thought loved me flooded my esophagus I grasped the cold sides of the toilet seat with sweaty palms and bitten down fingernails. I looked into the mirror as if my reflection had finally transformed into a wax figure I had been burning at for years and I knew it would never go back to its original form. I’d seen that look before, in girls wiping their lips in high school bathrooms, girls who wore baggy clothes and flinched when boys playfully poked at their stomachs, girls who put rocks in their pockets before being weighed at doctors’ appointments and covered up bruises over fragile bones with whatever makeup they could find in their mother’s drawer. I sit in health class as the teacher speaks of the dangers of eating disorders from a third person point of view and it seems as if the only sound anyone is hearing is the growling coming from my stomach. I stand up from a lunch table in the cafeteria and freeze at the words of a girl telling me I’ve gotten as skinny as my three month prematurely born best friend. I walk through the front door and immediately remove every piece of clothing that might weigh even an ounce and I step onto the scale with hopes of seeing my importance rise as the numbers fall but no one ever told me that I am worth so much more than 96 pounds.

I expected my first night at a college
to be like in the movies,
and to an extent it was.
Walking down streets on wet asphalt,
halloween night without a raincoat.
Half of my expectations
must have been coated
in a thick fog,
surprising me with consistent images
of you.
We snuck into the bathroom
of an unfamiliar apartment
just to manage one last kiss
before we sobered up.

The costumes would come off
and we would go back to pretending
you were just a friend.

i've written hundreds of thousands of beautiful lines of poetry about you in my head but i'm never satisfied with what comes out of it. i suppose it all comes down to one sentence.

it's been three years and i still believe you're the one i am supposed to end up with.

if it were up to me
i would show up at your house
dressed as the love of your life.
i would drag you from your bed
rip your heart from your chest
and leave your lifeless body at the door
for your mother to find.

i would tear every good feeling
straight out of your stomach
and replace them with memories
of all the things that made you love me.

i would burn the remaining pieces
and scatter the ashes
along beaches we planned to get married
and cities we were supposed to live.

i would leave your mind
hollow and unattended
and force you to feel me forgetting you,

sort of like what you did to me.

The mirror looking back at her
screams compliments over the loud music
coming from the stereo behind.
With artfully smudged eyeliner,
she slips into the little black dress
purchased from the cheap lingerie shop
down the street from her apartment complex.
Six inches above the concrete sidewalk
clicking with every step,
a lit cigarette dangling at her teeth,
she walks proudly to the ball
twenty minutes past midnight.

The morning after;
spiked hot coffee in hand
to cure mistakes of the previous night
and a knock on the door
greets a worsening headache.
The door opens to a well dressed man
and a tiny glass slipper
atop a diamond-studded throne.
He holds the delicate shoe to her foot,
toe nails painted black,
and patiently waits for a response.

“Those aren’t my red stilettos.”

Never leave me unattended. I will rip myself to shreds and burn my own insides, skin over ash. You will have nightmares for weeks.

Never question my train of thought. The brakes are broken and the lever to change direction was torn from its wires years ago. Colliding metal is the closest it gets to reality.

Never wash your hands in my sink. Slowly turn the knobs and only blood will exit from the antique pipes. If you’re lucky, you are type A.

Never sit in the passenger seat of my car. I will close you in when no one is looking, and the fumes from my angst will quickly make you still. If you can breathe by morning, the odds must be in your favor.

Good luck.

The path to a mind of insanity
can be seen as a gaping hole,
the one inside left hollow and empty.

Running from all signs of conformity
the truth is we are the ones who are full
of things only thought of as insanity.

Running from our own form of what we see
through the eyes which sit inside the skull
and wishing to be anything but empty.

“Don’t get caught up in the world’s vanity
or you will end up as nothing but cold”
are the words driving us towards insanity.

If the ones only filled with shallow glee
could understand our minds were carved from gold
and they will be the ones left aged and empty,

they would be forced to politely agree
upon the ones who have always been whole.
They are the jury and we plead insanity
while their minds and the prison cells stay empty.

The gravity of the moon
never gives up trying
to pull the ocean closer
to his surface,
and no matter how far you are
I promise to do the same
for you.

It's funny how you never look for company
until there's no one left to keep it.

I can’t stop thinking
about how you always hated your teeth
and the way the ones in the front go sinking
towards each other like mountains too steep
to climb. You say it happened in a car
accident, that the force from the crash
is what shoved them together that way but I know you far
too well not to point out that you are the last
person who would admit that you were
born with any sort of flaw at all.
You are the type of person to slur
your words until they fall
from your tongue wearing a disguise,
just to get me to grieve over your demise.

all you've ever known is me so i have to wonder if you wish you could have a taste of those girls with long brown hair and naturally bright eyes because if i were in your shoes i would at least want to experience that before settling for someone like me and i'm so scared that one day you'll find a girl whose eyes are golden in the sunlight but deep brown when you're alone in your bedroom that i know so well and that you'll actually have the chance to run your fingers through her soft wavy hair and they won't get stuck in the process because it isn't messy and tangled like mine and she won't have to wear makeup to hide the dark circles under her eyes because she doesn't have to send pills down her throat in the morning just to feel normal enough to get through the day without breaking down the way i do when i realize you're too good for me

we opened its stiff windows
and the room above the kitchen
could breathe again.
hot and stuffy like a car
with its doors sealed tight
in the middle of July,
the summer air
rushed into its lungs
as if it had just taken
a first breath from an inhaler.
meaningless,
useless,
simply a "spare"
used only for things to be seen
once or twice a year;
soon to be a room full of strangers
only to be seen
once or twice a year.

The smell of her hair
is not lavender or perfume.
It is chlorine summers
and cigarette smoke at a party,
a good party.
Her skin is not velvet.
It is fresh, white linen
that feels like home
the second it is smoothed over the mattress.
Her voice is not a whispering mother.
It is the ocean against the shore
seeping deep into the sand,
wishing it could stay longer.

You are a guitar
and its woodsy scent
when it has never been played.

You are the forest
as background to a storm,
car windows down
and no sound but the glass
cutting the wind in half
and the pounding in our chests.

You are summer at 3am
when sleep is unnecessary
and the stars are most vulnerable.

You are the scent
of
cedar
and rain
and home.

I loved the way you found subtle ways
to criticize my every move,
as long as it was worded well.
I loved the way you lied to all your friends
about me;
I'm sure they know
what a lovely person I am.
I loved the way you clung to me;
I know you didn't mean to leave
when the lights came back on.
I loved the way you told me all your secrets;
the ones about your ex
and how infatuated with her you still are.
I loved the way you told me
we should stop talking
because you "would rather not hook up"
as if calling me three days later
would make me believe
I had wanted to in the first place.

I love the way
I am finally over it.

an unread book,
a pair of broken headphones,
the shirt of someone who is perfect in my eyes.
a bic lighter,
a glass of water,
a succulent that i could never seem to keep alive.

condensation forms on the surface of the table
as the water begs to bring life back to the plant,
but the lonely plant only speaks of the sun
and the way it desires his light.

Sitting next to a stranger, I wonder what kind of life she goes home to.

The positive,
A mother who is kind and gentle and reassuring,
Who teaches her to be her own person rather than those surrounding her.
A father with dark skin from the sun,
Dedicated to his garden and enthused to teach her about it,
And also to teach her about life and change and fairness.

The negative,
A mother who was adventurous and spontaneous and wondrous,
Who taught her that not everyone is guaranteed
Enough time to live out their dreams.
A father with eyes as blue as her own, but with less joy,
Fortunate enough to be where he is,
But wishing that life hadn't torn him from his other half.

it's sunday morning and you wake up early for him.

you sit in a building with a bunch of "good people" and you know they're good because they're in the same place you are.

you listen to a man or a woman speak your words for you except they aren't your words.

you come home and you sit on the couch and you read your little book full of what you say is the "truth" but you don't actually know.

you change the station because what's entering your ears isn't about him and in his eyes that's a sin.

you get angry when i call you religious because it's "not the right term."

you tell me i'll never be happy unless i introduce myself to a being that doesn't even exist.

you watch your youngest daughter do what makes her happy and you sigh in disappointment.

when will you learn?

I look around a room full of strangers and wonder how many of them send pills down their throat every morning just to feel normal, and how many of them are strong enough to deal with their ****** up minds on their own, and how I am not.

******* my hands haven't shook this much since the first time you held them in the backseat of the car. what if i'm just imagining all of this and you don't actually miss me at all? what if on friday i pour my heart out to you and you can't tell me you've felt the same for the past two years? why the **** do i still care so much? god i miss your touch and your lips and your skin and eyes and fingers and that perfect ******* smile. why am i the only one who sees it?

we sit in my car in silence and i reach for the lighter but only because of the chance your skin might come in contact with mine. you tell me about her and i know she doesn't deserve you because she doesn't know how lucky she is to be in a bed with you, skin on skin on skin. i pour my heart out to you and when you leave we hug and you smell just the same as you did three years ago. you smell like poetry and the sunrise and endless youth.

i can't even write anymore because all the blood you spilled when you punctured my heart has flooded into my brain. my words come out muffled but on paper they just look like your smile.

I wake up every morning with a throbbing skull and I tell everyone it's hereditary but I know it's just you in the back of my head telling me you don't love me anymore. I guess when my heart of glass shattered you picked up the pieces and have carried them around with you ever since because you seem to be the only person with a match to the missing parts, and after giving you the only section that's still whole you have the nerve to tell me about her. "She means nothing" and I believe you but that doesn't matter when I'm the one who trusted in you when everyone else called you a fake.

She's probably never even noticed your eyes.

That night haunts me like I might as well have committed a ******. Your tongue tastes like a longing for cigarettes and those last four shots of "just having fun" but I'm not supposed to know that. You proceed to tell me I'm a dream come true right before she calls you because she had a nightmare. How ironic it is that she runs to you for comfort when you're the one creating lies as you speak through the phone at 6am with me lying by your side. I wake up from only an hour of sleep and find myself in your bed and whisper "it's not real" as you roll over and pull me closer as if I'm yours. I'll go about my day with a hangover in the place of my dignity and occasionally the memories come up with the alcohol. I'm starting to think it was actually the thoughts that made me feel so sick.

When you’re driving to the house of the only person you love and the only things standing between hurting them and keeping them safe are the words under your tongue and the time it takes to get there, your own life suddenly becomes unimportant.
Not once in my life has suicide been a thought that I would actually consider. But when you’re driving alone and it’s raining and the person you would do anything for is going to despise you in a matter of seconds and you don’t even blame them because you hate yourself too, it becomes an option. I am screaming at myself from inside this machine that only I have control of and I remember whispering, “do it. You deserve to die.” I have never hated myself a fraction of the amount I did in this moment, and for the first time in my life, the only thing stopping me from destroying everything I had ever become were the people I had already hurt. I decided one stab wound was enough.

we're told almost every day to never be selfish, but in a world like ours, how can we not be? even calling this world "ours" is selfish, but no one ever mentions that. do what you want. be who you are. be selfish. because in the end, the only person who you'll always be forced to impress, is you.

is it completely wrong of me to say
i'm tired of being in love
with only one person?
growing up is supposed to be fun,
but what if you feel
all of that fun
is passing right by your window?
is it selfish to stop building
what i've been building for a year
to start from scratch on something
i'm not even sure is real?

There's a demon in my head and it's finally figured out how to turn my skin transparent and show itself. It escapes through the blank stares in my eyes and as much as I try I can't stop it from venting through my teeth with whatever air is left in my lungs. It's slowly killing me and making my blood toxic.

i've always thought of you as beautiful, but who doesn't think this of their closest friends? the way you talk and move and breathe gives me a feeling that i've always defined as jealousy. maybe i'm not crazy for wishing for our skin to come in contact, or maybe we both are. as long as we were crazy together i wouldn't mind.