last night, i was forcing the last couple drops
out of the bottle and into my sinful mouth
sitting on the floor of a kitchen that had
Christ hanging on the walls like he
******* died there or something.
in the morning, you arrived back in
your home state where you and your
morphine eyes will haunt my
ambien bedroom.

My teacher once said
That protagonists of novels
Are teenagers in a sense.
Commonly.

These characters are new to life,
But not brand new.
They take chances that wisers
Might not.

They steal things,
Have ***,
Feel hope.
Adults do not.

We all want to read about teenagers
Because teenagers remind us
That life can have a bright outcome
If your teen years set it up properly.

We throw our lives away,
Then spend the rest of it
Reading novels
*Wishing that we didn't.

Sometimes love comes in like a storm without warning,
veiled as a vast ruin with good intentions
entering your heart as an army with no ammunition;
for nobody warned them about what kind of vandalism goes on
behind the wall of thorns that time
can conceive.

Sometimes love goes down easy like the banana medicine
you used to drink as a child,
slowly but surely, the way you would feel wellness well up
inside of you until all your self hatred
evaporated from your heart
with each sugary swallow.

Sometimes love is discreet and strange, reminding you
of days you crossed the street without looking and somehow
did not get hit by anything other than your own stupidity,
making it unable for you to decipher the difference
between the outline of fate and the shadow of coincidence.

Sometimes love appears out of nowhere on the most
ordinary of days during the most ordinary of circumstances,
meaning everything to you but nothing at all to the other person, similar
to the way you can lay beside someone staring
at the clouds on a clear day and see
an angel with a crown of flowers beaming down on you,
when to the other person it’s nothing but a ball of cotton, floating
gently away.

Sometimes love reawakens ancient longings,
desires you used to have and never knew you had;
memories you had forgotten and mornings that made you glad;
causing tears of discovery at how enough you now know that you are,
no matter what has happened, or how deep go your scars.

Sometimes love is enough and sometimes it’s not,
sometimes you’ll keep giving it to someone despite how clear it is
that they just want to be left alone to rot;
and although you can beg for them not to
dig their own grave and declare their defeat,
you know it’s as useless as throwing flowers at their feet
but you continue to love and you continue to pray,
for you more than anyone have seen what can emerge
from the beauty of decay.

2 years ago
i was sitting on an old, ***** love seat
in a musky garage
that belonged to your mother
taking hit after hit
from a pipe made of tin foil
holding hands with you
on that love seat that had me
laughing 'till i didn't know
if i actually existed
and other times, it had me
wishing i didn't exist at all
but that first time you
pressed your lips softly into mine
it didn't feel like a kiss at all,
but more like a trigger being pulled.
for the last 2 years,
i have been stuck on that love seat
not knowing how to exist
in any other way besides
trying to find you on it but
you left a long time ago
and i don't know if i've finally
found my way home
or if i am just disappearing
as the months pass and i
forget more and more what
it felt like to have bullets
for a tongue, sitting next to you
on that old, ***** love seat

and what's worse is that
i couldn't go back if i wanted
and it may be that my life
is getting duller and greyer
every second that i
am forgetting how
to miss you.

Just because you don’t have the love and support from that one person who should, in a perfect world, always be loving and supporting you, does not mean you don’t deserve to be loved. Read this again. And again.

2. It’s both tragic and funny that whenever a good thing happens to you, a bad thing always comes up and tries to interrupt your joy. Just because you’ve always felt like a bad driver in a thunderstorm with no windshield wipers doesn’t mean the sky chooses to torment you. The sky is just being the sky. You have weathered these storms before, and you will weather them again. One day you will see how strong the tempest has made you.

3. You are unconditionally loved by more than one person. Not many people have that. Don’t be afraid to throw that love back out into the world with your helium balloon of a wild heart. And no more late night pity parties with that sappy “I don’t deserve love” refrain.

4. You cannot be mentally stable if your body is constantly trying to keep up with you. Feed it, wash it, clothe it, rest it. Just because you’re sad and scared does not mean your body deserves to suffer. I know taking care of yourself hasn’t really ever been your forte, so go lightly. Drink some water for a start.

5. Just because you’re struggling doesn’t mean going back to your old ways of coping are going to cure you of your struggle. The definition of a crazy person is someone who does something over and over again while expecting different results. You remember that person. You remember those results. How about not going down that road again, yeah?

6. You can doubt everyone’s love until the cows come home but in the end no amount of love from anyone else will ever feel like enough if it doesn’t come from yourself. It’s the oldest, most difficult thing you can ever do and we all need a little reminding every now and again.

7. Stop blaming yourself for still being afraid of being abandoned. There is no deadline on healing from old wounds, they have been embedded in you almost all your life. It wasn’t your fault then, and it’s not your fault now. If people leave, it’s their ******* loss. Your worth does not depend on who does or does not decide to stay.

8. You’ve always loved too fast too hard too much, but that’s just who you are. Love and suffering are synonymous. The sooner you accept this, the less likely you will be to inflict unnecessary suffering upon yourself because of it.

9. Sensitivity and compassion are two of your best qualities. Being ashamed of that is a complete waste of time.

10. Healing is difficult, but you have to keep trying. Stay for the love. Stay for the music. Stay for the summer days of iced tea and copper skin. Stay for the mornings you wake up in a pair of arms that make you feel like you’re home. Stay for coffee and popsicles. Stay for soft kisses and raindrops on your tongue. Stay for the sadness. Stay for the joy. Stay for yourself. Stay.

it was sunday night when you broke
the silence by asking me what i was
thinking about, and i admitted that
i was thinking about the rain before
leaning my cheek on my palm and
turning my head towards you, and
i asked you what you were thinking
about,

and it was quiet, and you unbuckled
your seatbelt and shifted your body
and admitted that you were thinking
about me, and when i leaned over the
console and placed my hands on your
neck; when you pressed your forehead
against mine without smiling; when we
just stared at each other and you silently
told me that maybe we really weren't
just friends,

i was thinking about you, too

Don’t get drunk when you’re already soberly sad. The sadness will become so amplified that you will fall asleep to the feeling of yourself drowning in your own tears.

2. Sleep on the ground without a mattress for one night. You will wake up feeling sore and bruised, and thirsty for the comfort of your own bed. See this as a metaphor for how you feel on the inside. Recognize that the bruises will fade. Find a way to embrace the power of longing.

3. Let him hold you while you cry. Get your snot all over his shirt, sob into his shoulder, let him comfort you. You went without comfort for so long it’s about time you let go and let yourself be loved.

4. Write it out. No one will ever understand your pain down to the bone but you. Bleed out through the pen instead of the skin. There’s no such thing as a page that would rather remain blank.

5. As hard as it is to accept, sometimes the only thing you can do for someone who’s hurting is remind them that you love them.