Memories are blurry.
Feelings are not.

I do not know what to think of this
when I think of you.

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.

You asked me to write a poem about you so here it is:

Hell is brown-eyed.

Today I watched him put his heart into an empty locker again...
He did it slowly and cautiously,
As if to put emphasis onto how long it's been since
He's satisfied himself and not satisfied me.
He used to indirectly claim
that I was smaller than his textbooks-
that I was smaller than his backpack, but just a more heavier weight to carry.
I never knew if he saw the strains I felt more as a burden than he did-
but if he did he ignored it because I never lost an opportunity to turn my pain into a fire-alarm.
Every day we talked about how if it ended it was worth it and
how it still made sense even if we counted days like a bombs detonating time.
His locker grew colder,
And I watched the clock more and more-
I guess he couldn't tell that
I was measuring my heartache with each heartbeat
That burned per second.
I guess he couldn't tell-
Because we talked like we knew each other.
Now I watch him put his heart into an empty locker...
I guess I shouldn't be surprised when I hear a heartbeat inside of there,
That belongs to neither mine,
Nor even belongs to his own.

ground zero
i become aware of boundaries
i am a dog chasing cars
i sing your voicemail to sleep
there are no surgeon general warnings
to tell me that
the objects in the mirror
are more depressed than they appear
so how do i tell you
that there are parts of my life
that move slower
without you in them?
or that i look for you every day
in emails & unanswered calls
in the sunrises
i didn't choose to be awake to watch
that i sometimes still stare at doorways hoping you would walk through them
   *stage 1 you tell your new lover you've got a splinter and they pull the sound of your body falling asleep on mine out of your fingertip
   stage 2 your new lover says something at dinner that makes you choke so they call 911 & the paramedics do the hymleich not knowing you would ***** our promises all over the the restaurant
   stage 3 your new lover surprises you by cleaning the house & washes the shirt you kept next to the bed, not knowing it was the last thing you had that smelled like me
after
people always ask
what was loving her like?
after a really long silence
i just say
"it must be nice"
but i never say
it's watching paint dry
i never say
it's a window seat in hell
i don't tell anyone
about the dreams
where i am reading you
bedtime stories
each one is a different way you die
& every time i can never save you
dreams where what i think
are angels in my bedroom
are just homeless versions
of myself you never loved
i have dreams
where i pay someone to shoot me
just to see if you would cry
just to see
if you would cradle my body
i don't tell people
that loving you is like
playing piano
for someone who can't hear
that it's hitting repeat
on my favorite song
& forgetting the words
every time it starts over
that it's finding out
there's no milk after you already
poured yourself a bowl of cereal
it's getting locked in the dark
& being told to
look on the bright side
that loving you is like
being reminded of what it felt like
the first time
you accidentally let go
of a balloon as a child
it's drowning without the water
it's the feeling you get
when you start to dance
& the song ends

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?

I want
to be written about.
Immortalised
in the scrawling of
a pining boy’s
pen.

Encased, no,
enshrined
in verses of
a stars-for-eyes
poet.

Enwreathed
in flowers of
words that
a hopeless romantic waters
everyday.

Is it
much
too much
to ask?