I take in your love like fossil fuels

The guilt will **** me faster than
The illness
I wonder what it’d be like to be free
From all of this
Where would you put the sun
If you did not have to hold it up
For me
Every day
Would you rest?

fear keeps me here
stagnant and sorry
vindictive and caged
I waited for years
for an apology
or a reason, at least

I let the vultures
pick through parts of me
you left out on the street
scattered and shameful
harrowed and hungry
waiting for anything

my brain
is soft,
I let you in

watching car wrecks like fireflies
on your tight suburban street
smashing sounds
reverberate through
the trees,

I catch them with my teeth
I hold them in my jaw

and still feel nothing
I crave to be
the engine charred
sprinkled on the crosswalk
smeared across the asphalt
burning bright enough for someone
to notice me

I will wade until my knee caps break
From the weight of the ocean
Month after month in the same exact place
I wish there was a way out

I can’t catch my breath at all from the last two years
And you can’t hear me screaming
It isn’t your job to, anyways
But I wish there was a way

Let go
Of my exit strategy
The day I met you
There was nothing to run from
Only a home to come to

I want to hold your hand
And fill in your worry lines with
Permanent marker, make
Your bed just how you like it
And ruin it right after
I want to lay on your chest,
Talk in between laughter,
Laugh in between ***
Reorganize your desk and
Mess it up again with little
Sticky notes that let
You know
That I love you so much

I wanna make you lunch
But not because you can’t
Make it on your own,
I want to spend my free Time
Making my heart into your home

Unattached narratives

Charlie makes the same face every time they tell a joke they know they probably shouldn’t. They shift their jaw a tiny bit to the left, their eyes to the right. They start to crack a smile, intermittently, but it doesn’t poke through easily. They don’t let anyone know they think they’re funny. But they know. They’ve made this face a lot lately, they seem lighter; they seem fuller. I could watch the same face and hear the same corny joke every day for the rest of my life, and laugh like it was new. I could watch them smile until my eyes burned out. I wanted this to be unattached but I feel their joy in my chest, and I’m so thankful for that. I’m so thankful for this.

There is a pink haze over the city tonight
I’m sitting in a parking lot, texting you in a panic again
I’m sorry I haven’t gotten it together yet
At least we caught the end of the sunset
I love the way the full moon hits your cheek
Please don’t get tired of me
I took a picture of the orange,
I spent all day in bed
I don’t want to waste my life away
I don’t want you to grow sick of me

I hope you forget about me when you move away and start over.

I hope you don’t bring me up anymore, and that bottling it all inside eats you alive.

I hope you never tell your new friends about me, I hope you think of me every night.

I want you to hurt like I did. I healed, thank god. And I moved on. But I live every day with the guilt you gave me.

I have a picture of you,
23, surfing under our sheets to
Climb your way up my chest
Into the cavities that lay beneath,
Your teeth against my neck and your hands holding me,
I have a picture of you in my head
That plays across my brain every
Night and I am reminded again, and again
How good it is to love you the way I do
Raw and unusual and passionate and true

This is my body
Size 12, wiggle room
Jiggly thighs, 5’2
(And a quarter. It matters)
Overgrown roots blend
Into DIY blonde,
Somewhere in between
“Well kept” and “definitely depressed”
Acne scars, decently white teeth
Scar on my brow from that time I tried
Rollerblading into the sun, I swallowed the pavement on the way down. You can still see the cracks in my teeth, just underneath my laugh lines. I always tried to stay as positive as possible. No matter what.

This is my body, it holds memories like water weight.
Destined to burst, void of drains,
Man Made pores- formed from the inside out by cries for help that never surfaced.
Porous and calloused, found out that its purpose for a year straight was simply surviving.

This is my body. Flashbacks on a marquee, survivor’s hands painted nicely, so no one ever asked me why they were so *****, and broken, and ******.

This is my body
His dead skin under my nails,
Petrified.
Proof of a fight. scars on my arms
North of my elbow: survivor’s guilt in the shape of a Star, I spent last summer wishing night after night I wasn’t alive- I was so tired from pretending.

This is my body.
Latches like a leech to anything warm.
****** dry all of my loved ones in the year I spent spiraling,
searching for solace or sanity-
even safety. Found nothing but panic.
Nervous bird in a cage.
Narrow shoulders.
Boxer’s stance.
Dancing on the front line where I should have been to fight
Using my fists never worked.  
Neither did screaming “no, no, no”
Present until that very day. And now I lay silent.
Absent like a soldier, staring into space.
Trying to make sense of the shaking.


This is my body.
I have my mother’s eyes, her mother’s brain.
Black and white, strict like law,
Cemented in place for weeks at a time,
Then Moving at the speed of light, I cannot stop or I will die.
Creaky chest upside down, my stomach clings to my ribs.
Stand still until the room stops spinning
Or until my head stops hurting
And my legs stop shaking
And you stop when I ask you to stop
“This is my body” I whisper behind your hands as you steal all autonomy
I am left with nothing


This is my body.
He took it from me,
Did not even have to try to ruin my insides,
Did not blink an eye in the year I spent unraveling in front of everyone I loved,
Pulled out every lash I had, lost my job because of panic attacks,
But I am commanding it back.
I spent the last 6 months building from the ground up.
Spent the last 12 taking up the space I did not before.
The last 3 learning that it’s okay to.
I stopped apologizing in January.
I started yelling again in February.
It took that long to think anyone would ever hear me,
No one ever had.
This year I took my body back.
This is my body. Size 12, 5’2. Wiggle room.
Sometimes it can’t breathe right and shuts down in big crowds.
But this is my body and it is big and it is loud.
It takes up space, it is strong, it is pretty.
This is my body and for absolutely none if it, am I sorry.
Not a single part.

And I will romanticize the way we fell out of love until the day I die so that I may mourn in peace. I don’t want to know you as someone who violated my boundaries and called it care. I don’t want to know you as someone who stepped into my chest and destroyed everything in sight in the blink of an eye. Without even trying, really. I don’t want to know you as someone who robbed me of a year of life and gave me two years of flashbacks and rose memories and harrowing remembrance of what was- what was so powerful and encompassing and beautiful that when we split I knew nothing but emptiness. I don’t want to admit or accept that I allowed myself to be treated like that. So I will remember the way you hurt me but leave that part out when I talk about you. I will write about you in gold to give myself more time to forget what was underneath.

I wouldn’t recognize you now
With that frown about your mouth
You never wore that wretched thing whenever I was around,
I never smiled as big as I do now, though
When you were before me,
casting shadows
Do you think I’m a fool?
I won’t lay down and crawl back to you

Fall asleep to the sounds of the city
Fall asleep to your lips kissing me
What a way to wake up, in love again
The summer feels like it did at 13
But brighter and warmer, you here with me
Fall asleep to the sounds of my heartbeat
Fall asleep to your arms around me
What a way to wake up, in love again
What a gentle reminder of how it is to be in heaven

I withdraw
As you cast yourself out
Forgetful, gentle, galvanized mind
Spend all my time mourning you
Shaky chest, rotting hands
Begging for another chance
Former lover, forbidden friend
I would have loved you until the very end
But you didn’t let me
And now I love another
Not in the same way,
And that guilt will eat me alive
Until the day I die

thought about you again today
Ignored the sun to cast myself in your shadows in
the back of my brain
Loved you with all my fibers
Torn and frayed

Most days I don’t think about you,
Some days I do. On those days I want to allow myself to feel everything for what we had, who we were, who I am now in comparison; I feel it all to compensate for the year where I didn’t feel a thing. All I knew was you. Not joy, not anger, motivation, fear. Only you. You were everything to me. I cower in regret.












I look back and compare what I have now to the laughter we shared. I used to cry. God, I’d lose it every night in my bed- the bed we shared for 365 straight days. I loved the you that I put on a pedestal. The you I met that first day at my workplace, the you that you wanted the world to see. The spontaneous, giving you. The romantic you. The intelligent, humble you. Charismatic, charming. Truthful. Lustful. Golden. These images play on a marquee and I weep because I know they are not realities.







I loved you with everything. I don’t know what you want the world to see now, but I hope with all of my heart you are happy. You never were when we were together and I always blamed myself. I could not save you. I tried until I ran out of life. You told me I was your burden to bear and I felt it in my chest, in my legs, in my gut, but not in my heart. I know that is not true. I know you have a martyr heart, I know I have a lot on my plate. You took willingly. Fed yourself from me every night. You preyed on my vices so that you might have reason to be tired. You were there for me. Through everything.  I hated you for saying that. It hurt so bad, I spent three days in the same position unraveling on the floor the night you told me you wanted to help me more than you wanted to love me. I’ll never forgive you, I carry that guilt around unwillingly everywhere I go. It’s a piece of me, I cast out to feel relief and I feel nothing. In my year of fear and darkness, you convinced me I had you until the end of time- In goodness and light and in suffering. You lied. The minute you had to stop pretending to be in love with me you took that opportunity and ran and the words that followed dug me hollow. I can’t forgive you for that, it hurts so bad. Still, to this day I repress all emotion in hopes the next one won’t run away, won’t fall to their knees and look up and say “thank you for making me this way.” I don’t know where to go from here, but I want you to apologize for being there at all if it was never genuine.

Every night I’d  fall apart in your arms
You were always one for puzzles
By morning I’d be Whole again,
I sleep  alone now, wake up still waiting

You’re always in the back of my mind,
When I kiss him at night
I think of the way we used to laugh until
The morning.
Sunrises have not been the same in ages.
I know you hardly think of me at all,
I hope come fall I cross your mind.
I hope you smile.

This is my body
Size 12, wiggle room
Jiggly thighs, 5’2
(And a quarter. It matters)
Overgrown roots blend
Into DIY blonde,
Somewhere in between
“Well kept” and “definitely depressed”
Acne scars, decently white teeth
Scar on my brow from that time I tried
Rollerblading into the sun, I swallowed the pavement on the way down. You can still see the cracks in my teeth, just underneath my laugh lines. I always tried to stay as positive as possible. No matter what.

This is my body, it holds memories like water weight.
Destined to burst, void of drains,
Man Made pores- formed from the inside out by cries for help that never surfaced.
Porous and calloused, found out that its purpose for a year straight was simply surviving.

This is my body. Flashbacks on a marquee, survivor’s hands painted nicely, so no one ever asked me why they were so *****, and broken, and ******.

This is my body
His dead skin under my nails,
Petrified.
Proof of a fight. scars on my arms
North of my elbow: survivor’s guilt in the shape of a Star, I spent last summer wishing night after night I wasn’t alive- I was so tired from pretending.

This is my body.
Latches like a leech to anything warm.
****** dry all of my loved ones in the year I spent spiraling,
searching for solace or sanity-
even safety. Found nothing but panic.
Nervous bird in a cage.
Narrow shoulders.
Boxer’s stance.
Dancing on the front line where I should have been to fight
Using my fists never worked.  
Neither did screaming “no, no, no”
Present until that very day. And now I lay silent.
Absent like a soldier, staring into space.
Trying to make sense of the shaking.


This is my body.
I have my mother’s eyes, her mother’s brain.
Black and white, strict like law,
Cemented in place for weeks at a time,
Then Moving at the speed of light, I cannot stop or I will die.
Creaky chest upside down, my stomach clings to my ribs.
Stand still until the room stops spinning
Or until my head stops hurting
And my legs stop shaking
And you stop when I ask you to stop
“This is my body” I whisper behind your hands as you steal all autonomy
I am left with nothing


This is my body.
He took it from me,
Did not even have to try to ruin my insides,
Did not blink an eye in the year I spent unraveling in front of everyone I loved,
Pulled out every lash I had, lost my job because of panic attacks,
But I am commanding it back.
I spent the last 6 months building from the ground up.
Spent the last 12 taking up the space I did not before.
The last 3 learning that it’s okay to.
I stopped apologizing in January.
I started yelling again in February.
It took that long to think anyone would ever hear me,
No one ever had.
This year I took my body back.
This is my body. Size 12, 5’2. Wiggle room.
Sometimes it can’t breathe right and shuts down in big crowds.
But this is my body and it is big and it is loud.
It takes up space, it is strong, it is pretty.
This is my body and for absolutely none if it, am I sorry.
Not a single part.

Golden communion,
Grace of God,
Patience of the devil.


You begged me to forgive you,
I never learned how.
I knew clinging to hate was a sin,
I never sat down to listen to the ways you were sorry, I don’t think you had many.
I pray now from the street, make a temple out of gravel, swallowed asphalt to be here, asleep where you left me,
Why did you hurt me then leave?
Why did you come back after I’d already grieved?

Partial to a past that explained my experiences in a causal tone. Like a story that had to unfold, I made sure it made sense because I felt myself losing control. I had to have control of it. Apologies for every mistake I’d ever made because amending my wrongs was praying for one night without terrors. Tug of war with God. Cause and effect. I earned my hurt. I earned my hurt.


People that believe in karma drive me ******* nuts. Plagued with guilt from my childhood because I got ***** at 21 and I thought maybe if I had been nicer to Cassandra B on the playground at 9 maybe I could have kept my dignity that night in my dorm room. But it doesn’t work like that.

I have survivor’s hands. *****, calloused, jealous hands. I am not innocent, I am vindictive and manipulative and when I argue with the person I love I get mean. When I talk to myself in the mirror, I am cruel. I am not innocent. I was a bully as a child. I thought all of these things were a part of the reason why someone took my body from me when I was 21.

I tucked you away in the back of my brain
Waited for the spring to thaw you out
And now I mourn our winters lost, our summer love fading fast,

It is May, we were not made to last

I had to watch a couple of ****** romantic comedies to see how ****** up you and I were. I had to listen to Maroon 5’s entire discography before I got over you. I came and cried right after 23 times before I stopped thinking of you during *** or as I was pleasuring myself but it only took 23 times.












We were chaotic and I will remember dancing with you on the deck after the rain; I will remember you covering my mouth at 2:31am because my laugh was always, always loud and our roommates were sleeping; I will remember us in rose, the things no one but us knows; I will remember the nights you sat me down and listened as I cried. And I will remember the nights you did not. I will remember our first kiss on a stranger’s couch, and our last in my new bed, 4 months after I moved out. I will remember bending over the bathroom sink at work the day I found out you lied to me, begging god to give me my breath back.















I will remember taking god for granted every minute until I needed him to breathe that night. I will remember you telling me you loved me for the first time, and I will remember the last. I won’t remember you in vain, with anger, with sadness. I will remember you and I for what we were. Rushed. Patient. Crazy. Unsteady, exciting. Happy. In love. Over.

I don’t know exactly when I lost you.
Somewhere in the middle of me
Falling apart on a perfectly timed cycle
And blaming my sadness on your apathy,
I remember you told me you couldn’t handle it anymore.
I don’t know when, I remember the way you walked out the door.
And how when I chased after you, peeling paint cracked off where the handle was
Before I started trusting you and started leaving the door open
I remember when I gained you,
Everything went silent
When you told me you needed me
I called your “I love you’s” filler words
And you called me paranoid
I remember hibiscus kisses, stumbling
Over broken pavement outside my apartment
Where we made love on the couch
And I felt the blood in my veins
Make its way to my heart
And I finally felt that feeling
I waited my entire life for
I felt you and my favorite record playing
And I thought that was what it was like to be alive
And to be happy about it, for once
And then you left and now I drive in silence
Music makes me sick
Six months after you left I learned what it meant when people
Told me I had to get over it or it would **** me
Because I tried to **** me and the pictures that flashed across my face
As it started to fade,
Were all of you

Tell me what it’s like to fall out of love
So beautifully and with ease,
You walked away, me still on the street
And still managed to make it look like art,
Our love was never movie-like but the ending was,
Alone and grey on the pavement, begging for your patience
So I could prove to you one more time that I was worthy of being with
But you never wanted to hear it

climbing through the wreckage
you left your clothes here on purpose
you said you wanted me to miss you
the plan was fool proof
i donated your clothes today
a sure fire way to rid my space of you
something it took me a year to do,
nevertheless, i do not miss you anymore

i let you haunt my halls every night until the floors caved in
i grew to want and need your harrowing prescence
in the spaces between walls, i kept three flares and my keys
convinced i would have to fight my way out if i were to ever leave
but i never did

i'm sorry that i let you linger
four months since that family dinner where you told me you
could no longer hold me up on your shoulders
i was your burden to bear and you wanted the guilt to eat me alive
i would be lying if i said that it did, you cut yourself and held the blood up for the world to see''
i grew cold, entangled in apologies you pulled out of me
i was always scared, i was never sorry

I forced myself to sit and write about you because it hadn’t hurt in so long, and though I know that I am healed, sometimes I get scared of forgetting the way you used to make me feel like I was flying when we both know I was drowning. I don’t need that anymore but that high is unmatchable and I miss seeing the entire universe inside one person. So I forced myself to sit and think about you. To remember you. To dig down deep, way past my anger and look to the place where I first planted you. I needed to feel something so I went to that place and it all came rushing back at once.








I am abundant in forgiveness. You never apologized but I accept it anyway. I saw everything in you. My highs, my highs, my highs. Oh they were so golden. My lows, you picked me up from them every single time. I used the hell out of you and you let me. I know you wanted to save me. I know you loved me. I know that for you, being in love meant working on another person. We met the day after I was ***** and I carry that guilt on me like an armor, I wonder how hard I would have loved you if I didn’t need it. I forced myself to sit and think about you because I am doing it again.







I’m falling in love with someone new and it scares me to think that I could get that blind again. I could get that hollow and desperate. That small. That shallow. I let you teach me what I already knew. I forced myself to sit and think of you and I sat quietly as the anger passed through and the only thoughts left were harrowing and sad and blue and soft. You and I were best friends and I haven’t mourned that part yet because I only mourned the loud *** we had in every room in every building we went in. I mourned the laughter we shared until 4 in the morning. I mourned the way you looked at me like I lit up the room when I was so visibly tired.












I mourned everything but our friendship because I didn’t think it would ever end and when it did I couldn’t process it. I couldn’t handle the guilt. I couldn’t handle the way you checked out after one mistake when I spent 8 months letting you lower me into the ground without ever raising my voice.










I mourned my soul.
I mourned my future. I mourned my past. But I never mourned us because we were supposed to last. And when we didn’t, I felt my entire soul collapse. And I’m doing it again.







And I just thought I’d sit down and write you this and wonder if you could let me know what I could have done differently back then, so this time around I don’t do it again? I forced myself to think of you one last time so when the time comes to love this new person, I do it right and I don’t have to do this again. I wanted to hurt because I needed to remember how good it felt and how hard it was to let you go. I did let you go, and I write this 7 months later, in the spring, watching the sunset, full of light and gratitude, a whole winter has passed. I write this now in hopes that this new spring lasts. Will you write me back?

I do not miss you anymore
Nor do I hope you think of me
Six months alone, unlearning codependency
I feel yellow, I feel complete
I do not miss you anymore

I comb the room for proof of you
Gaze toward lovers old and new
None of them ring a bell,
I feel alone but I feel well

Logically, I’m over you
I understand the way
We added up was not what
I needed to survive,
I needed to not need you,
Need to not need anyone,
To survive,
Logically.

My emotion takes over
And I miss your mouth on mine,
You could call me anything you want
And I’d still fawn over your eyes,
Emotionally, I’ll never stop loving you

exit out of netflix because I don't want to be distracted
I sit with the burning feeling of missing you entirely
your body hair, your violent laugh, the way you kiss  my back,
I let these feelings in because they are all I have left,
I learned love when I learned your body, what made you tick,
what made you happy, what dug holes in the side of your mouth and planted seeds in my chest, I learned love like this was the best I would ever get,
and now I know it was,
I learned love with you, like brand new shoes that take time to feel right, but these were the kind you never take off once because your favorite band had signed them,
I learned love like making up from fights before we went to bed,
I learned love was missing someone when you are with them,
yesterday you asked me if it was bad that you had missed me,
I laughed it off and today I could not get out of bed because it
smelled like you and the night we both know we should not have had,
I miss you so bad,
I learned love like high, high, high, euphoria,
and then nothing all at once
and I learned that even after your heart is ripped from your chest you have to carry on, standing up,
because you still love me, and you are still watching,
and I want to make you proud,
I learned love like being loud about it, shouting from the rootftops that you were mine and that our forever was bursting at the sides,
I learned love like high, high, high,
and now it is nothing at all,
I learned love like Crashing,
Low, unbearable low,
Pain from laughing,
Low, low, low,
Missing you everywhere I will ever go

Next week would have been our anniversary.
Tomorrow marks 3 weeks since you’ve smiled at me, and 2 since we’ve laughed together.
But next week would have been our anniversary,
And just a month ago we were so happy.
Isn’t it crazy?

I forced myself to stop loving you
Because holding on was suffocating
Urban ivy, forgiving fists
I forced myself to stop loving you
Until it worked,
until I hated you in every way I never wanted to

‪Please don’t forget me when you move on and you are happy again.

I know I caused you pain but we spent so many months laughing. ‬

It’s hard to imagine being whole without you now.

I will let you go
So that we can grow
Separately on our own
It hurts to pull you through my fingers
But I need them back, I’ve seeds to sew

I think you loved me out of obligation
You needed a project, I needed salvation.

When roses grew between my lips and my place in your bed, you picked them and offered them to Someone else instead.

heavy in my chest
where you used to lay your head
shaking in my hands
where we used to play pretend
where forever was tangible,
it was your lips on my forehead
it was my laughter imprinted on your bed

now nothing feels right
without you here by my side

I am just
A willing fool
In love with you
My skin is yours
Your heart is mine
I love you, dear
For all time

Yesterday
We kissed in sunlit woods
I felt my soul latch onto yours, again
Wind and your lips on my skin
Paralyzed with happiness again

We ****** on the living room floor
After hours spent convincing ourselves
We couldn’t, we wouldn’t
I don’t regret a thing

I miss
The parts of you
That made me, me
But i am Whole,
I am an entirety

I kissed every inch of your body this morning, except for your mouth.
We created boundaries, to keep us from hurting.
I waited until I got into the car to start crying
so you would not have to watch me understand, again,
what I was losing.
I saw my pain in your eyes,
we spent the weekend trying to undo the hurt,
It didn't work.

I am still sorry
More than yesterday
Have not washed my hair because
it still smells like the last night we shared
together in your bed
I cannot wrap my head around it yet

I have had dreams for 3 nights in a row where I am strong like ocean currents, I am amber rose sunsets, I am graceful, I am outspoken drunk girl in bar but I have not had a drink; I have swallowed everything else until now, in these dreams where I am strong. In these dreams that I have had for 3 nights in a row, you are wrong and Justice is my sneaker on your throat, it is your apology dripping venom off your tongue, it is you asking for my mercy instead of me asking you to stop over and over. In these dreams, I am telling you what you did to me in front of a  room of people that you love, instead of a room full of people that I love asking me how I even got into this situation. In these dreams, I am crushing your words in my hand and planting flowers with the dirt and dust I took out of my throat. I give them as an apology to my partner for the year we spent trying to put me back together and it only kind of working.  In these dreams I am already healed, as a past participle and as a present state, I am not fearful that I will not ever change the way I walk in the street, I can go on my old campus without forgetting how to breathe, I can do anything, really. In these dreams, for 3 nights I have been the kind of strong that other women who have had this happen to them look to for strength, I have rooted my forgiveness deep in my chest where resentment used to lay. In these dreams I am a woman I love who does not blame herself. In these dreams I am hurting you and you cannot speak. I swallow the irony. I am outspoken and loudly tell the world our story- and every time you beg or plead or say “no” I tell it again so they can hear me. In my dreams people finally hear me. I have been sleeping in.