Sometimes I kiss you with eyes
Open
So that I can watch the
Lovely
Curve of your jawline as your lips
Move
With mine

Your touch not only takes my breath away,
But also gives it back.
In and out
A necessary cycle
I didn’t know the world could be so
Still.
Every moment,
Our faces close enough for two to become one
I can barely see you but

I don’t need to.

I can feel you.

I can feel us.

I can sense us,
The energy is palpable.
Our auras vibrating so intensely,
They’re almost solid.
I feel solid when I’m with you.
You hold my hand and I swear I wouldn’t notice if the world crashed and burned,
Because you kiss me and
It’s already gone.
I’ve always wanted to walk on the moon.
Who knew all I had to do
Was start dating you.

There are parts of this that terrify me
I avoid questions like a mom avoids the room of a
Sleeping child
For fear of waking parts of me that existed once.
I don’t want to mess this up
By continuing to move at the speed of a freight train,
But we don’t have much time and it seems
That that’s the only choice we have.
It’s not the only choice we have
It’s the choice my body wants me to make
Because it’s been drawn to you in the way that a
Bee is drawn to a flower full of nectar
For quite some time now
And it’s hard to deny the powdery pollen that coated me as soon as I jumped in.
I don’t know how we got to this point
But I thank my lucky ancestry every day
That I get to fall asleep to the lilting tilt of your voice,
Botched as it sometimes is by the 976 seeming light-years between us.

You are fire.
Everything about you breathes passion
You are a fire and I am the earth underneath you
You let me see what you are made of.
You let me cradle you as you flare up and as you simmer down to embers
The earth is never afraid of getting burned.
But sometimes I am.
Your eyes smolder with a love that could melt boulders
And sometimes trust is hard for me.
I know that’s hypocritical but you’ll have to forgive me
Even the earth has many faces.
Mountains grow tall and intimidating
Creating walls that people make games of climbing
The mountains letting them think they won,
Even some of the hardest house a molten core.
Plains keep the earth close
Dirt suddenly under your fingernails and staining your clothes
Seemingly from nowhere
You aren’t sure how you let it get there.
With sand you can make the most impressive of castles
That will fall away as soon as a wave removes its foundation.
Sand has trust issues.
As soon as she feels your fingers falter
She’ll start to slip through the cracks
But at the same time she clings to you from another angle.
Following you home and turning your carpets to sandpaper,
Your floors into gross renditions of the shoreline.
Sand will make sure you can’t forget her.
And she’s patient.
Even as the ocean,
Turned red from the effort of reflecting the beauty of the sun,
Ebbs farther and farther away,
To homes on other shores,
She waits.
She knows that though she’s been left before, this time it’s different.
The warmth of the sun still radiates within her
Reminding her of that.
Telling her that maybe
Her fear isn’t so rational after all.

Scattered points and sharp edges,
A body never lies.
The spaces in between soft and
Warm and
Welcoming
It’s also in your eyes.
Crevices hold darkness and
Secrets hide within
Luckily you don’t have many
For some reason or another
You chose to let me in.
Every mole and whisper of a freckle
Discovered in the dark
Is another story, yet untold,
Finding them now
Is an art.
The hairs across your body
Took time for you to love
Sometimes shaving
Sometimes leaving
What once you were embarrassed of.
As comfort levels increase
And masks keep coming off,
Details ever smaller show,
More for me to love.
Little “flaws” and blemishes
A body never lies
Every mark, a part of you
Perfection in my eyes.

I made it so far
But then I got to the beach and craved
Insanity.
From there to the end
My natural getting-home-from-work reaction was to
Crack open a beer
I think I felt like at that point
The fumes knew me better than you did,
And for them at least I didn’t have to
Explain myself.
I ****** up enough meals that I gave the cooking duties
To you.
Maybe if you pay attention to the stove you won’t look at my face not looking at you
Not knowing what to do,
How many times I avoided eye contact
Always trying to find something to point out
So it looked like I at least had some sort of reason
Just covering up the treason
That I probably should’ve felt bad for.
Feeling bad and feeling paranoid
Are not the same thing
And I only felt one of the two.
Flat beer
Old wine
Lukewarm liquor
I never knew a sink full of ***** dishes could spark such a fire
Scars left from burns can still feel phantom warmth.
The smell of burning butter
Not even a diet change could fix what was going wrong
A suggestion made for “health reasons”
You’ll never know what I was patching up.
I never knew how much hope could be contained
In eight ounces of soybean mush.
Now I’m back to where I was before
Only sometimes self-medicating to the point of remembering what it’s like
To not remember
But never sad to remember
What it’s like to wake up next to her.

I want to kiss you when you're smiling.
It seems like you hold the happiness of the universe
In the lines at the corners of your lips
And if I kiss you maybe I'll get a taste.
So far it seems
That it's been working

You pick your lips.
From worry or anxiousness
Or just plain boredom
I may never know
But
If I were with you I would glue your lips to mine
With love that tastes like honey
With care that smells like a bud before it blooms
With hope that this thing will work out
Until you forget
Why your lips are chapped in the first place

Time apart creeps
Like a candle slowly burning
But the thought of next year coming
Makes my chest ache with an emptiness
That knows not even cobwebs

There are so many things about us
To be afraid of
But when I look at you
All I notice
Is that our eyes
Make love.

Our eyes make love when they meet
And you never look away

When did I become so fond
of the blush and the delay
That comes as the result of a few
Good
Strong
Drinks.

When did I start to like having
An excuse
For the
Stupid
Things I do.

The burn of the drink
The blur of the drink
Blurs the lines
Blurs the memories
Blurs the feelings.

Was it when I started questioning
You?
Was it when I realized that I'd shut off
The feeling of missing you for so long
That it just stopped existing at all?
Was it when I promised myself to you
In a hurry?
The same way you gave me the ring?
Was it when I didn't acknowledge that I wasn't ready yet.

Or was it a long long time ago
Was it before I was even born
We all know it's in my blood
But I did so well ignoring 'my destiny'
For so long
For so long that I didn't care.

Did I not care?
Or was I just too worried about you and her to care
Was I just putting off caring
For the day that
I didn't care
Anymore

When did I become so fond of this haze

Sometimes I feel like my heart
Beats in another person's chest.
Like I bleed
From someone else's wounds.

I trusted you,
You lied to me.
I've known for weeks.

I no longer feel bad about re-finding your tumblr.
Both times.

I used to feel.
Harmonies sung from the tips of my nerves
Anthems ran through my veins.
Hurt crunched like leaves underfoot
Fire could burn on for days.

I used to know
That everything was real
I had no doubt in my mind.
Like was like
Love was love
Passion quite often defined.

And then everything stopped.
I put it all in a box
Because frankly, crunching can get quite annoying.
I tried to recall it and air it back out but
The air hung thick this summer and
Nothing ever really got completely dry.

Mold grew
Tainting everything and now
I can never tell what's clean
And what's a fabrication of my mind.

"x" is just a broken "l"
Split down the middle
And hanging on by a thread.

You took away my fear of attachment.
And then you gave it back.

Every moment hurts differently.
Like a crippled butterfly
Traversing a hurricane.

Three months gone and I realize
What I've been doing wrong.
Almost three years in and I realize
What I should've been doing all along.

It seems
That it always takes me just a little
Too long
To find where I belong.

A week into a relationship
I realize it's the wrong one
She didn't take it well when I told her we were done
Took it even worse when she heard I'd fallen for another
Why'd you take the time, she spat,
Why'd you even bother

I don't know what I'm doing
And turns out, I'm not so good at committing
Kinda backwards, isn't it,
Since this hookup is almost two years running.
I've got a ring around my necklace that says I belong to her
So why is it that I can't stop.

You were everything to me
And I don't know when that changed,
Can't tell you when that ring
Started feeling like a chain.

I know I broke your heart
I know I broke your trust.
But I wasn't being fair to you
The cage around my heart had started gathering rust.

I never thought that I'd
Be the one breaking up
With you.

You’re still here.
Every day, you’re still here.
I broke up with you but apparently that changes nothing now.

Some days you make me so mad I have to leave the room
And some days I leave the room because
All I want to do
Is kiss you

When will this stupid feeling go away.
Can I ever stop loving you?
This isn’t fair.
To either of us.
And now she’s involved.
Someone else is falling in love with me,
Hoping that she can trust that I’ve fallen out of love
With you
And here I am
Stuck in the middle
Still with no idea
Of what I want

And you’re still here.
In this heart that insists
On still beating.

For some reason
The error page
Is what broke my heart

I could write you
Five hundred poems
To explain to you what changed in me.
But that would require
Me
To understand
Myself

Love is dangerous
Love is safe.

Love is easy
Love is hard.

Love is terrible
Love is beautiful.

Love is rough
Love is gentile.

And kind.
And honest.

Love forgives
And cherishes
And values.

Love changes with you
And never questions why
She grows with you
And helps to ease the pains.

She walks with you
Picking you up when you fall
And holding the light
When you need to tie your shoes.

Love will hold the umbrella
When it rains on your face
And slap you with sunscreen
When life is getting a little too sunny.

Love reminds you to brush your teeth
If only because she doesn’t want to kiss you
When you have awful breath.
And love makes you wash your hands
Because she knows that if you get sick,
She’s going down with you.
And she doesn’t have time for that.

Love wants you to take care of yourself
Because she needs to take of herself
And while you are separate,
Individuals,
You are one and the same.

Love will make fun of you
When you’re being ridiculous,
And look at you like no one else exists
When you’re in sweats and a t-shirt.

Love with cuddle with you
When you feel disgusting after a long day
And tell you to get the heck off her bed
When you’re sweating like a man.

She will love you when you’re afraid,
When you’re brilliant,
When you’ve done something to please her,
When you don’t deserve it.

And love will get mad at you when you're awful,
When you’re being insensitive,
When you’re a ****,
And for reasons you don’t understand.

Love will wonder
Why you love her,
Why you stick it out,
Why you think she’s beautiful.

Love might want an answer
But sometimes there’s no way to say
That the mood swings
The difficulties
The roller coaster;
The warmth
The joy
The safety;
That everything about her
Is the best thing that ever happened to you.

I want to have wrinkles when I grow old
From laughing at how funny you think you are.

I want to have terrible, achy knees,
From spending a lifetime dancing with you.

I want an arm that permanently curves
To match the way you like it when you lay your head on my shoulder.

I want a hand
That has forgotten what it feels like on its own.

I want eyes
That can't forget your face
And a brain
That can have conversations with the tone of your voice.

I want feet
That are forever warm from being shoved against your legs before sleep.
And arms
That always fit around you perfectly.

I want my lips
To always curve into a grin whenever they see you
And my mouth
To never forget what it feels like to feel yours against it.

I want to forget how many years we've been together
Because we've been together that long.

I want the scars to fade
The fears to dwindle
The nerves to subside.
I want the hurt forgotten
The walls to crumble
The lines to fade.

I want trust to grow
Words to flow
Ideas to sprout.

I want to celebrate with you,
Grieve with you,
Live with you,
Love with you.

I want safety and security
In your arms
Forever.

I've never experienced anything
As addicting
As kissing
Her

You know
The movies never show
What happens to the other person.
The person who gets left.
The person that your protagonist realizes
Wasn’t what he wanted after all.
They never show the destruction caused
The avalanche of hurt and self-deprecating thoughts and low self-esteem
That they become.
They never show how that person is left
Thinking they weren’t good enough
And they never will be.
The movies show you that leaving
Is ok.
That it’s fine to flip from person to person
From side to side
They don’t show you how to deal with it
When you’ve hurt someone
Possibly beyond repair.

I miss the times
When we had time.

You were always a point of interest.
Ever since the day you walked into the student lounge
When you were the only one I hadn't met.
I was always absorbed with other things

I tried to make time to get to know you.
Between band and classes and activities
And everything that was happening
I always felt like I was failing you

I couldn't pretend anymore.
I tried to push her away
And make room for you in my life.
Nothing ever worked

I couldn't take it anymore.
The stress got to me,
I ended with you.
I regretted it immediately.

I came crawling back.
Laced with a trail of Smarties,
I always wanted someone as smart as you.
Thank God you took me back.

I made it just in time for summer.
800 miles,
Twelve and a half hours.
The ultimate test

I had faith in us.
I had made my decision,
I was sticking with you.
Did you feel the same?

We made it through.
106 days apart,
Made up for with 144 days together.
It seems meant to be

We talk about the future.
But the future will forever be a dream
Unless I get my **** together.
I have always been a coward

We are perfect together.
I just need to tell them
That I'm not who they think I am.
I will always be afraid to tell them

I have made plans.
So many plans
For so many aspects.
I just need to tell them

I want to spend my life with you.
Dancing, cooking, researching,
Testing all the furniture in the store.
Just one thing left to do

I want to travel the world with you.
This trip has been wonderful,
But it hasn't been the same without you.
It is long past the time to tell them

You are the only thing that I want.
You can make everything go away
You make the world bearable.
You make me strong

I'm almost ready for it.
They need to know soon.
I will make it through.
Which rejection would be worse?

I love you.
You will always be the best thing
That I have ever had.
*Losing them would be worth keeping you

Notes, melodies, beats.
Words, thoughts, stress.
Directions, vocabulary
English, Italian.
Nonsensical, repetitive.
Over and over and over
I never know silence
Until I’m with her
I never realized how loud my head is
Until I wasn’t with her anymore.

Tutto quello che
vedo è il suo vi-                      
no tinto labbra.

Non so chi sia
più. Lo specchio deve ess-
ere disteso.

How,
In a life full of averages,
Are you so
Perfect

Absolutely and without a doubt she is the
Best thing that ever happened me. She strode
Casually and awkwardly into my life, in the process
Defining for me the until-then
Ever-changing parameters of what I wanted.

****, I can’t get out of my mind this blue eyed
Goddess of a girl who is always
Hoping for something more.
I love her so much and yet I have a habit of playing practical
Jokes to hide how much the distance is
Killing me.
Looking at us, you would never know we’ve spent
More months apart than we had together.

Never did I think that she would be The
One; that love would be so easy; that she would be so
Perfect.
Questions ricochet around the mazes of her mind, she examines the world extensively,
Riveting anyone who takes the time to listen to her discoveries.
Sassy, ****, and smart, she’s got everything and
To me she is everything.
Ubiquitous, there is nothing that doesn’t make me think of this girl, life itself serving as a constant
Validation that she exists- that she is not too good to be true.
While the earth rockets its way through space it’s as if
Xanthan gum holds us together, no matter how far apart you
Yank us, we’re stuck like glue. I could talk about her forever, literally
Zillions of words could be said about this wonder of a woman who will never cease to be
The alphabet spelling out the rhythm of my heart.

You
Are the worst thing that ever happened to my writing because
You
Are all I want to write about ever ever ever and
You
Are far more than words could ever dream of describing.

I’ve been known
To take on more than I can handle.
To see the overflowing ocean
That contains the tears of the world
And to try to catch every single one
With my own two hands.

I’ve been known
To fall apart at the seams
When I realize there are droplets
Falling
Through the cracks of my fingers.

I’ve been known
To cave in on myself
And blame my hands
For never being big enough.

I’ve been known
To seem reminiscent of the sea,
Always coming back for more
No matter how many times I’ve been pushed away
By the shore.

I’ve been known
To love too easy,
To trust too much,
To land myself in quagmire
After quagmire
After sinking ship,
Giving off the impression that I was always calmly floating
While inside this dappled shell of ginger
And cinnamon
And sass
I’ve been barely clinging to the flotsam.

I’ve been known to get too attached
Blind faith my only guide
Occasionally mistaking the plank for
Solid ground
And walking right off it.

I’ve been known to backfire.
I’ve been known to sink my own ship.
I’ve been known to set out
With none-but-moral intentions
And end up lost
In the map of my own mind.

I’ve been known to drop the sails
Lower the colours
Abandon ship
Upon finding myself in the middle of a self-made
Maelstrom.

I have been known to ignore the lighthouse
Become a sponge
And crash into the rocky shore.
Absorbing all the hurt so seamlessly you’d think I’d been wrung dry

I’ve been known to dive in headfirst
And come up seething
When I realized the storm was more
Than I could handle

All I ever wanted
Was to save the world
With my own two hands.

Now I have my own savior
Handing me a bucket
And reminding me
That every storm is just a bunch of drops
And that all cracks can be repaired

I need you
To undress me until there’s nothing left.
Unwrap the layers until you’ve unraveled the mystery,
Left it bare,
Freed me from my mind.
Because I can’t take it in here anymore.

I never knew
How love could be.
How it could catch you off guard
And wrap you in a sense of security.
Like waking up in the middle of the night
Disoriented
And realizing she’s still next to you
And in her sleep she sensed your distress
And curled into your arms.
How it could hit you so suddenly
Like looking around at the world one day
And realizing you want to hand it to her
On a silver platter.
How it can make you feel like you belong somewhere
Even with all your flaws and crooked edges
Like a puzzle piece that finally found its mate.

I never knew
My missing piece would look so different.
So different from what I predicted.
So different from my puzzle.

I never knew.
But I suppose that’s the beauty of it.
I’m certainly not complaining.

Love hits me with everything she does.
Love hits me every time she breathes.
Every time I wake up next to her
And want nothing more than to kiss her shoulders for the rest of my days.
Every time I want nothing more than to kiss her for the rest of my days.
Every time we fight.
Every time we sit next to each other doing nothing more than reading.
Every time we’re both too stubborn to admit we’re both wrong.
Every time I’m drunk.
Every time I’m alone.
Every time I breathe
And my heart aches with every inhale
And every exhale
Because there’s a set of stitches
Where she walked in and took a piece of my heart
And replaced it with a piece of her own.
And that space is more sensitive when she’s gone.
It feels twice the pain of her absence.
Mine
And hers.

I never knew
How love could be.
But I sure like learning new things.

As long as you don't bring attention to yourself
You'll be safe.

Yes.
But how many others
Won't be

"Stand back,"
They say.
"Lay low,"
They ask.
Never stick your neck out
Too far.
But if everyone retracts into their shell
At the first signs of progress,
Will the world stay the same,
It will it go backwards.

We feel the need to capture light
And put it in jars
With holes in the lid.
As if we could capture stars.

We sit on the deck as darkness falls
And watch the weakened sky break,
Get punctured with holes.
We were never good with the dark.

We sit at a table with food left untouched
And lock eyes in battle,
Let heated words fly.
One of us has to be right.

We sit on our *****
And watch progress come at us
Laugh as it passes us by.
Someone else can change the world.

When you get here
It will be like my missing piece has finally come back
Raindrops rejoining an ocean.
I like to think you’ll come in gently
But knowing us
It’ll be a storm.

She says
"I love you"
Like she invented the phrase

It used to be
That I refused sleep
So I could lie awake and look at you
While you drifted
In peaceful reverie.

These days
I beg to dream
So that maybe I can find you
Behind these eyes
That you love so much
As they close in blissful slumber.

You hate it when I stare at you
I know.
But you don't understand that
When I look at you
The world
It just...
It just stops.
It stops and nothing else exists except for you
And my eyes looking at you.

There is nothing else.
The people in the room
Melt away.
The worries I have?
All *******.
There's no yesterday
No tomorrow
No differences that can tear us apart
Or tear my eyes off you.
You make everything else
Distant
And insignificant
Compared to the magnitude of my
Love
For you.
And the beauty and depth and wonders
Of the soul that I see
In your eyes.

I see your pain
And your joy;
I notice your laughter and your struggles and all the things that intrigue you
And all of it fascinates me.

I want to know all of it.
I want to know what turns you on,
I want to know what makes you click,
I want to know what you think about
When you have long car rides to yourself.
I want to know what infuriates you
I want to know what on earth could turn your beautiful eyes into fires of hatred and loathing,
Or melt them into pools of the softest adoration.
I want to know your future,
And what you see in it.
And I want to know if you prefer blue Jell-O or red.
And do you ever wish you were short
Just so you could always win at hide-and-go-seek?
Or maybe as tall as a redwood so that you would never have to wonder how a bird sees the world.
If you could go to the moon, would you?
Or would you stay here, in mock safety, to welcome home those who went in your place?
If you could have one super power
Would you care to hear everyone's thoughts
Or would you want to be able to run
Fast as a speeding bullet
Away from here.
I want to know your wildest fantasies
And can we make them a reality together.
I want to know your past
I want to know what makes you who you are
And what brought you here
To me.
I want to know everything
Hold back nothing
But not until you're ready.

When I look at you
I just want to talk.
Forever.
About everything and nothing
And when I look at you I want to sit in silence
Because that's comfortable too.
When I look at you
I want to spill my soul
Because I know you'd catch it.
I can see it
In your eyes.

When I look at you
I draw from your strength
I refresh from your smiles
And I remember who I am.

When I look at you
You are the only thing that exists.
You
And my eyes looking at you.
And it is truly beautiful.
You are truly beautiful.
And that
Is why I stare.

Six days left
In this oasis
In this escape
In this reality we’ve created for ourselves.
Six days left
And it already hurts.

Three days left
Where did my time go?
She’s one floor below me, and I miss her this much
What is twelve hours?

Half a day.
This will be the only thing about our relationship
That isn’t easy.

She has an early morning tomorrow.
Sleeping in our respective beds,
I don’t remember how to sleep alone.

If words could describe perfection,
I would paint a picture of phonemes and morphemes
Of syntax and semantics
Of beauty and wonder.
If words could describe her
I would bridge together vowels
Consonants
Punctuation
Grammar
If words could describe this
Trust me,
I would use them.

Shakespeare
Made up words when nothing else
Seemed right

I’m beginning to see why
He and Mr. Geisel
Were so unsatisfied
With the language at hand.

Five days in and I'm
Keeping myself busy so that I can ignore
The Aching that comes.
That always comes.
I'm afraid to hope that she'll
Be different than the others.
But she seems genuine
And I'm so satiated
When I'm with her.
Trying to be a better person for her,
I've never been with someone who could
Keep the panic over grades and schoolwork
To a dull roar.
I think I've got something remarkable here...
And I miss her.

She’s like a northern magnet
Pulling on my southern roots.
Roaming around in different circles,
Opposites attract they say.
More similar than some would like,
They tell us we can’t be together.
But we seem to be defying them pretty well.
All I really know these days,
Is that I like mornings a hell of a lot more
When I wake up next to her.

Squigly lines
And dots.
Question marks punctuate my every thought.
Leaves fall,
Seasons change.
That doesn’t eradicate the pain.
Time passes
Memories fade
Everything’s tainted, but look at the blade
It’s retracting
Getting duller,
It’s easier to remember the events of that summer.
My breath
Doesn’t catch,
Every time my head picks up a ******
Of a thought of you.

Day one,
Hour three
I don’t know you
You don’t know me
But I already have a question.

It went downhill from there
Questions coming as fast as the seconds passed leading up to my parents
Departure.
You didn’t know what you were getting yourself into when you said I could count on you
And then you let me follow you home
Like the lost puppy I was.
I didn’t know what I was getting myself into
When I said
Let’s be friends.
Because now all I want to do is trust you
When all my head says is keep it to myself,
Baby, I came here with more than just clothes in my baggage.
But I can’t keep myself from saying too much
And I can’t keep you from saying too little
And I can’t keep myself from wanting to save you.
When I need to save myself.
Because I can’t do this
Again.

I’m supposed to forget my past
But her words were dragons that continue to rear their heads
At inopportune moments.
For every question I ask you, I ask myself fifteen more
And the answers?
Well they’re with the slippers I forgot to pack.
I’m in love with a bunch of letters.
Little pieces of paper that make me nauseous just to look at.
Words that used to mean the world are now just contradictions.

So please don’t ever write me a letter
Because I’ll take that to mean you’re leaving me too.
I know her actions don’t have anything to do with you
But my past isn’t gone
It’s just been put on a shelf
Somewhere else.
And I’m trying so hard to forget where.

You deserve more than this.
You deserve more than the cheesy clichés and the useless words.
You deserve more than the part of my past I won’t tell you
And the rubble that I’m left with.
And for you I want to be more.

I’ve given you my heart on paper multiple times before
I want you to know
That for you, there is no door.
Forget my shoulder,
Let my lend you my spine.
And please if you ever need it,
Let our fingers intertwine.

Friend,
I want to be your windowsill.
I want you to know I’ll always be there,
For you to put your crap on.
I want you to know you can open up my head and look inside and rummage around for a while
If for some bizarre reason you would ever want to that.
I don’t know why you would ever want to do that…
But anyway.
I want to be the notebook that you can write your secrets in
And know no one will ever find them.
I want to be the magic eight ball that you turn to for help
And that has the courage to tell you what you don’t want to hear
Because I know you need to hear it.
I want to be that sticker you put on your wall.
You don’t always look at it,
But you know it’s always there.
Most importantly though,
I want you to think of me as a bottle of glue.
It doesn’t matter what you throw at me,
I’ll always stick with you.

In terms of smiles,
Is crooked a synonym for broken?
And in terms of lies,
If your tears are black, do they match your heart?

This is a story
Of the girl who was never the prettiest.
She was never the skinniest
Never the most popular
Never the absolute smartest
Never invited to all of the parties.
She was above average,
But never the best.
This is the story
Of the girl
Who lived to make everyone around her happy.
The girl who knew what it felt like to hurt
Knew what sobbing sounded like
Late in the night
When no one else was around.
This is the story of the girl
Who held her emotions inside
Because she wanted to help others
Instead of focusing on herself.
The story of the girl who forgot what happy
Felt like.
She forgot what it was like
To wake up in the morning
And not worry about what people might read in her face
Might see in her eyes
Might think about her appearance.
She couldn’t stop wondering
Why people never noticed
That underneath her perfectly composed
Wonderfully put together
Outer layer,
She was tearing at the seams.
This is the story of a girl
Who was living life
On the edge of a breakdown
Until her fall-down
Brought her around.
This is the story of the girl
Who got out of her town
Was forced to figure out who she was
And finally got the opportunity to make herself happy.
Finally stopped caring
What other people might think.
The girl
Who kissed the girl
Because that’s what was going to make her happy.
The girl
Who held her hand
Because that’s what she wanted to do.
The girl
Who came back home for break
And told her friends,
Through the terror and with a shaking voice,
That she has a girlfriend now
And she’s finally happy.
And listened with relief
As her two best friends
Said the things she always knew they would say.
“I don’t care who you like.
I don’t care what you do.
I’m glad you’re making yourself
Happy.”

Through everything you said to me
Everything you did,
I still blame myself.
I still see your pain.
I still worry.

You've always been more important
Than myself.
'Always' extends to now.

Don't worry, love.
I forgave you a thousand times.

I have to tell you.
I have to tell you all.
But I don’t know how…
I can’t find the words to say…
To tell you…
That I’m not who you all always thought
I was.

Your words cut like
Skates through the ice
Making cracks through which your heat
Can seep
Melting the shield
From a thousand different crevices.
Exposing the living,
Moving
System beneath.
Opening it up
To the world again.
Will you sink,
Or will you swim?