the sickest part
about realizing you are in love with someone
is figuring out that
they don't have to love you back
we believe that
the person that we hold closest to us
should hold onto us just as tightly
sometimes they can't
because they are too busy
holding onto someone else
who isn't holding them back either
and the trend goes on forever.

so after all of this, here i am
sitting on the edge of another strangers bed
coughing up all the 'i love you's that were said to me
but never meant for me
i realize now that curses don't always unbreak
the past is tied to you
like cinder blocks around your ankles
and pressing hard against your chest
like the weight of his other woman
your true loves kiss
wont fix a **** thing
if the love isnt mutual
lately ive learned that
it is sometimes better when you get stuck
kissing your own wounds
and sometimes is always
i never believed that i was somebody
that someone else could love again

thank you for proving me right

so much slander
is ****** upon the poet,
who sits uncomfortably
at the tip of every tired pen
aspiring to run out of ink

she will suffer
for as long as our streets
remain flooded with the blood of the innocent,
for as long as our wrongful hands
desire to invent new ways to tighten the ropes
of our own expired dreams, hanging exhaustedly
around the same necks
that have since forgotten how
to support us

and because of this,
the poet will sob
violently, the way she prayed
to destroy the sight of her own words
sinking down the clogged drain
in her bathroom sink

how willingly it swallowed
every remnant of everything
she could never bring herself
to understand

from the thunderous sound
of her father's kind footsteps
escalating the stairs after a long day
that will leave his back stiff,
to the absence of her mother's voice
the moment she finally decided
to listen

pain, she thought,
is a remembered affliction

and it is the poet's sin
if she refuses to shelter it.

love - noun
deep affection, fondness, intimacy
-where your jaw drops to the floor and
your heart beats out of your chest like a cartoon character
past tense
-where time slowed down, or even came to a stop
because you locked eyes with this one person across the room
and your entire future flashed through your mind
like a projector streaming home videos on a
sheet hung upon your living room wall
but it didnt last and eventually time caught back up
and you ran out of film
so again you were stuck holding your own hand

love - verb
adoration, worship, idolize
do you love me?
could you ever love me?

dont answer that

once when i was 11 i read somewhere that you could fall in love with someone just by holding eye contact with them for a number of seconds. i cannot tell you how many hours i would spend in front of mirrors, staring down my reflection hoping to feel something other than my breath on cold glass.

you know the craziest thing to me when i was 12 was that i had never seen my face in person. i mean i'd seen myself in photographs, and i'd obviously saw myself in standing water, or mirrors, or when passing store windows but i had never looked myself in the face for real so maybe that was the problem.

when i was 13 i was in the eigth grade and some boy told me my kiss didnt taste sweet like it was supposed to so i stayed up all night perfecting the combination of chap-stick and lip gloss, and i made smudges all over my mother's make-up mirror in her bathroom, but it still wasnt enough so i left it shattered on the floor and never told her what happened

ages 14-18 i lived my life through glasses and tried so hard to be someone else that i lost sight of who i really was. because people dont want to hear about how you have daily staring contests with yourself, or how you always blink first. people dont want to watch the happiness disappear from your eyes, or see how your reality comes crawling up your throat and sits on your tongue waiting for it's chance to scream help, while your depression runs ramped, changing all of your picture captions to "ugly"

when i turned 19 broken glass and razors became my best friends, and lungs filled with smoke were like breaths of fresh air and i've never told anyone, but there were nights when i didnt come home because i couldnt remember where home was. they tell you that home is supposed to be this safe place where comfort can be found in your own skin, but i wasnt told that home is mirrors covered by sheets, and covering your eyes to anything that showed a reflection because i never quite figured out the trick of falling in love with myself the way everyone else apparently had

i hope that 20 is the year that something amazing finally happens in my chest when i look down at puddles and see myself staring back. i hope when i'm 20 that i'll be able to go through old pictures and not want to cry. i hope that 20 is the year that tolerating myself magically turns into loving myself. that i wont have to constantly replace shattered mirrors or picture frames. i hope the 20 year old version of me will finally be able to look herself in eyes and see more than what's missing. i hope when im 20 this poem wont hold relevancy and that my scars will be faded and the only thing left of this will be a success story