you said you could never hate me,
but what if i told you
what i did,
what i've been doing
who i've been doing*
and how old he is
and who he's married to
and what if i told you
that i think i like it?

you said you could never hate me,
but what if i told you
i thought of him
when you squeezed my hand
one
two times
and gave me a half smile?
what if i told you
that when he did that
i thought he was
pumping blood
straight into
my body.

you said you could never hate me,
i'm sorry i'm sorry i'm sorry.
i'm sorry.
i'm sorry i'm sorry.
i'm so sorry.

this is about letting myself be happy, about falling in love and forgetting the rest. doing this for myself because nobody else will, because nobody else can. because the nights won’t be lonely anymore with you there and there are some things that only happen once in your life and this is one of those things, you are one of those things. how extraordinary it is to even sit in the same room as you.

just no, god, really, you should know that you made the colors bleed out of my clothes and onto my floor when you wrapped your arms around me. or that if you rolled up my sleeves on my shirts pink roses would probably grow out from underneath. start from the veins in my arms and break out. gradually turning into stems. turning into flowers. i’d say the same for my legs but i’m weak at the knees, weak at the knees getting out of my car. take a deep breath and kiss him on the lips, close my eyes and put my hands on both sides of his face. do you remember how this felt? your eyes are shut do you remember? could you time travel from now to the first time this happened because i did. your eyes were shut then too just like this. you’re back, you’re back, you’re back. i can see you again. and when i’m back in the bed i handed over my heart in, would you know that i’m better now? that you never had to worry. this is better because we need it.

and we’ll go on a date to the movies late at night and i can rest my head on you the whole time while you hold my hand and let go only so i can move my fingers up and down the inside of your palm while it rests against your leg. let’s be the last to get up, sit in the dark with the credits so i can tell you how i feel about you just a little bit. tell you like i tried to tell the complete strangers who would sit at that table in that little diner in my town because i wrote your name on a window ledge. so when they look out at the cars, at the people, maybe they’d notice, maybe they’d know i needed them to know i was happy.

you make me feel is what you do, you bring back the constantly fading parts. you’re the one and if i had to explain the way you’re beautiful it’d probably be like the pocket watch necklace i found at a secondhand store the morning after you texted me. the battery is dead and the time is stuck with both the hands over the one roman numeral, and the lady who worked there said it’d need a new battery but it doesn’t need to be fixed for me to love it. you’re beautiful like when i hold your hand i want to know every line. i want to trace veins in your arms, i want to run my fingers over the back of your hands on the knuckles.

you’re a lot like when it rains at night when i’m in bed, and i just lay there instead of going to sleep and i miss nobody in particular but i just miss places, moments. it’s coming down so slow and gold cause the street light is shining on it. i’d want you there, could i hold your hand while we watch it and could you please try for a second to know that i feel that way about you.

you feel more like images than words, like my favorite sounds or like movies that changed my life, i’ll meet you in another life when we are both cats. there aren’t so many stars here. you’re beautiful like knowing they’re up there, anyways. you’re as beautiful for as sad as i get when clouds hide them. you’re as influential to me as my suicide attempt was, and i hope that makes sense because i mean it in the best way because it changed my whole life.

i can feel you changing my life when i got out of my car and walked up to your door it was like i knew right then you can’t go back from this, and it’s scary and it’s so hard to be alive again because i signed all the papers, i signed away everything it’s all gone it was boarded all up and forgotten, and you’re dusting everything, taking all the sheets on the furniture off, and tearing off the bad wallpaper. just let me in, let me try and i won’t go anywhere, i just want to live inside you almost. i just want to do what you’re doing for me for you too, you are so beautiful in ways i will never be able to tell you but god will i try.

i just wanna lay in your lousy arms, and feel real little. i feel little already but you can’t function in the world by being how you feel, but i want you to let me be what i feel and i just want that to be something that’s okay, and i hope you kiss it all away, all the parts that i pretend i am. could you draw in my hands with your finger and push down my fingers when they try to curl up, and could i stop you by holding your hand and kissing you on your neck, just soft, just really soft cause i’m really small and let me lay my head on your chest so i can tell you i can hear your heart beating, and it sounds a lot lamer in words here than when we’re there under your covers, than when i’m feeling like i just opened up your chest and climbed inside, cause it feels like you let me even if you didn’t let me. i just want to honestly believe for a few minutes that i don’t have to ever leave that moment, how we let ourselves believe anything like that i’ll never know but i want you to try because things would be better.

i was like a bird that flew out in front of your car in the morning that didn’t get hit, i was like a ghost but you picked me up, and your hands didn’t fall right through me. you picked me up and the way you said my name didn’t hurt. it’s like we were driving on the highway in the dark with our headlights off but we made it home. we made it home singing. these are the kinds of nights where you close your eyes and you feel like they’re never closed, i’m just staring at your beautiful ******* face with the glow of the tv on it. stuck in this memory with the right soundtrack. you were just smiling, and there i was becoming real, and i’ve been trying to tell you, you make me feel real. and everyone’s been telling me to stay away from you, but how could you love someone who never hurt you, who never made you prove how much you wanted it, how much you wanted them. you’re supposed to chase him, why didn’t you chase him?

i guess what i wanted more than anything was for you to see youself the way i saw you, to know that i love you in this bizarre unreal way where i don’t even know everything about you but i want to. and all i can feel is how closed these doors are. i find myself so desperate for any part of you, even the parts you gave no one because they aren’t important. no one watches for those kinds of things, the number of freckles on your arm or the way you squeeze my hand twice, but here i am in love with you, in love with your quirks, in love with how utterly human you are, how nobody appreciated the most appreciatable things about a person. this is all the b footage that i can’t stop watching, i am drowning in the parts everybody saw but nobody watched. that’s where i fell in love with you.

just oh my god, i really am so in love with you and everything makes so much sense when i’m with you, and that sounds so stupid and cliche but it really does,  it makes sense because you’re my other half and it feels like i’m done making the pieces that never fit fit, your hands were really meant to hold mine, i think i really believe again in this childish way that i threw out months ago that soulmates are real, because you are mine in every sense of the word.

you try to alter fate;
fate is
persistant,
stubborn,
resistant.

he is a spoilt child
who stomps his foot on the floor
to get what he wants.

you’re the one
who cuts the telephone line
and then tries to call for help.

i fell in love with death
and she apologized.
i asked why
but as i began to close my eyes,
i understood.

i understood
when i burned down
all the churches
because i was upset
your shoulders
weren’t framed
in a single one.

i’m in love with my biggest dissapointment.

how does it feel, when you realize you break off and shut up the ones with the light to guide you home when you turn them out, always turning off the lights. what’s a map to a match in this big, dark, cave of nervous hands and wanting lips,
lets not talk about the kiss. slurred slurred liquor bottle, throttle down the angry path of your father, let’s not talk about this. don’t say a word about your mother and those black tar veins of yours, your heart of crystals, no, don’t go there.

don’t ******* go there,
you’ll be trapped in endless pit of stockholm syndrome and marlboro black 100’s and not eating for 3 days to still, never be good enough.

i’m so sorry i’ll never amount to romantically ruining your life in a room of people who couldn’t care less about the eyes that cry and the bones in your chest. i really am.

i trace the cracks
in the pavement
with my foot
and bear the right
to miss you.
the *******
on my left hand
holding the cigarette
to my mouth
are turning pink
like my cheeks
when the winter
kisses them.
the smoke fills
my tiny lungs
until they can’t expand
any further
and when i hold it
for a few seconds,
i feel nostalgic
about that love seat
in your garage
and how your mom
was still alive and
things were so different.
i exhale
and watch the
cancerous contents
spill from my mouth
and remember the way
your lips look
so much better,
remember wishing
i could be your addiction,
remember how
you made death beautiful.

you’re not dead yet,
but you might as well be.
it hurts less and less
every time
i visit your grave;
the shell of
the person
you used to be.
i figured out
the different between
me and you;
i feel love,
but you shoot it
into your veins.
i hide my hands
inside my sleeves
and cringe
at the thought
of not being able
to call myself
“yours”
anymore.
i’ll take my slow,
last drag
and put out
what i thought
was going to be
a life time
of trying
to figure you out.

it was a love,
so sudden and fierce,
it scars your palms
when you press them
together to pray
and you only prayed
when his sad, tired eyes
looked at you
when he said your name
and it hurt the both of you
for different reasons.

don't talk to me
about holiness,
i've been on fire
for a year now.

he didn’t pray,
but he took a few seconds
to catch his existential breath
and when he did that,
he closed his eyes
and the doctor asks him
to read the bottom line
and it’s the name bullies called him
in the 6th grade.

that’s when you put
your head on his chest
and felt his heart beating
all the way inside yours.
then he tells you he feels like
flowers are growing from his knees
because they get weak
when he thinks of her,
but he didn’t mean
to say that and
he’s sorry.

he’s sorry and so are you,
and things start to burn,
like that time in 3rd grade
you put the candle
too close to the curtain
and watched your life
turn to ashes,

except it hurts
3 times worse
when it’s a beautiful boy
you didn’t know
was capable
of liking
someone
like
you.