Do you know how it feels like to have a stomach that can only survive on intimacy and nothing else?
To be prodded to love all the things that touch your skin whilst simultaneously not being
allowed or able to tell the difference between the things that love you and the things that want to leave you barren?
How it feels like to see the solemnity and grandeur of an omnipotence within all the sinless intentions of the skin cells that you'll never be allowed to hold?
Well...
It feels a lot like the romanticization of an eating disorder.

Sometimes you fall in love and then begin to forget how your organs are supposed to behave.
You look in the mirror and realize that you're still thinking about someone else when you're
Analyzing your own body.
You clutch at your own skin,
your arms,
your hair,
your throat,
and begin to try and disassemble a mind that does not want to be associated with the body that it is working in.
Before you know it,
Every time you cross the mirror you clutch more and more parts of yourself and wish that they would not feel better in somebody else's hands besides your own.
You're getting thinner everyday,
you're losing sleep
you're forgetting how to breathe,
And somewhere,
out there,
There is a boy in a place far away,
giving to someone else what you are about to be killed
without.

You realize that you turn your own bed into an ocean everytime you think about his face.
You feel the hydration of the salt water from everywhere around you,
tickling into your senses and diffusing into your nose,
but you do not taste it.
Only sense it.
You're grabbing the sheets desperately.
Holding them onto your chest, covering up your shaking body, and
almost certainly forgetting the difference between imagining the embrace of somebody who does not love you and drowning alone inside of your own bed.
You look for a lifeboat in the form of a thought that has no relation to love or association to the idea of affection.
You're hoping to find a distraction that will either save you from your peril or help you breathe in a way where you can still be conscious when there is water inside of your lungs.
You're beginning to see dark shapes and figures and all of them are sprouted by the idea
of just having a little taste of the very thing that's about to drown you.
All of the dark figures are in the shape of your face,
And nobody is here to save you.
You begin to sink,
And sink,
And sink,
and sink
and...

You are empty when you wake up.
Your chest is not an *****,
but you find it funny that when it feels empty,
your stomach also wishes to feel the same way.

So you make sure it does,
Whilst yearning for a meal that does not wish to be consumed by you.

That is the only meal,
that you will never stop craving for.

Last night we told the town about our pseudonyms.
And, because the stars shone too bright
And we were left exposed with our tragedies hanging through the air,
I had to teach you how to paint the sky a darker color-
So that no one could tell the difference between our affectionate self-satisfying thoughts and,
Our misspoken words.
You always spoke like you knew more about being detached than you did about love.
Your shaking hands, your posed expressions,
Always tethering to always want to fall apart but almost too simple and beautiful
To ever be able to do so.
At the beginning I watched your lips blow through the light in your flute,
Trembling slightly to create a sound greater than my memories of the only voice I've ever fallen in love with.
Again and again, as you inhaled and exhaled, lightly creating that shape that only perfectionists can create-
And it was hard to believe those lips were now right besides me,
Muttering 'To die by your side is such a heavenly way to die'
over and over again without them even knowing it.
"Let's talk about heart break." you would say.
Let's talk about how you couldn't find a pool of enough antique movies to drown the romantic guitar music in your head with so you just used apathy instead.
"Lets talk about introversion."
Let's talk about the way you heard words you could not listen to- the way you constructed lies to the first pair of hands that offered to hold you, the same way you constructed a mask of indifference when they began to shy away to another girl in another school.
"Let's talk about nothing. Let's sing instead."
Let's sing that song from The Queen Is Dead by The Smiths.
Let's pretend like the queen died the second we sipped our first glass together.
The people are rioting in the streets, the people are screaming and refusing to march but we do not care because this isn't the first time we've stripped something away from ourselves
Whilst wearing a grin and pretending like we're complete.
This isn't the last- drink on, drink on.
There are two types of people in this world - the ones who get hurt and the ones who destroy.
You never knew this, but I was too busy figuring out if I had to become the latter just to be able to conquer love when you came into my life again.
I thought I would feel no calmness when it happened-
But it turned out I conquered love in a pint-sized African cafè.
With a girl who sometimes wore her hair back like Audrey Hepburn and thought that
Calling random boys on the phone and screaming 'Im in love with you' even when she wasn't was a perfectly acceptable way to spend an immaculate Thursday evening.
There is a light that never goes out,
There is a light that never goes out.
And even if it did go out,
I wouldn't worry.
Because you'll always be right by my side in that tiny cafè when it happens.
And you are something between radiant,
And radioactive.

I like to do those quizzes
in glossy bubbles that you
find
in Cosmopolitan and
Elle and
Seventeen.

Which girl should I be?

Should I
dump paper flowers
on my milkmaid braid?
Long skirts, long chains, and
Beatles on my radio
during their ‘Indian’ phase?

Should I
paint it all
black, strip life down to
a *******,
blare punk at full
scream,
and cram my toes in ratty Docs,
smash all emotion
into smithereens?

Should I
sugar-coat my mouth with
Maybelline, button up
collars, laughs, opinions,
read books on behaving
just like a
daydream,
sip teas, bake cookies, aim for
Ivy Leagues?

Which gilded box do I crawl
into?
Which skin to don
this week?
Which fashion editor-friendly
stereotype to fulfil?

Which girl should I be?

and i realized today
how much effort it takes
to love me

because when i do not
love myself
you have to love me
enough for two people

they called me crazy
for refusing to pick flowers
for saving spiders from the kitchen
and for talking to birds rather than humans

they called me crazy
for clawing at my wrists
for eating my own words
and for tearing out my hair for allowing myself to feel

nothing ever satisfies
when you worry about the endless amount
of "they"
and "them"
and what "they" think

nothing ever satisfies
when "they" meet your demons
and "they" make a home
in your own ******* ribs