i sat
in the
bathtub
staring
at the
broken
blood vessels
in my legs
and wondered
if they were
whole
before you left,
too.

"You are my favorite poet" he says
Then curls himself around me
I sit and lick the sugar from the glass
Saturated in self pity
I like the way he looks at me
It's almost as if he's pressing his eyes against mine
My chest feels tight
My stomach churns
I don't want him to go
But he can't stay here with me
Maybe he's right?
Maybe I'm comfortable being alone?
Being sad?
Being un
comfortable ?
I ask him what he means
Its morning
I should know by now
Not to ask questions in the morning
His eyes match the fog now
And we both reek of yesterday
His oversized sweatshirt keeps me from shaking
I still tremble
There's silence that you could cut like a knife
I take off the sweatshirt like I'm shedding my skin and head into six thirty
Sniffling
I feel blind
Afraid
I'm not sure what of?
He's not him
But he sure snaps like him
With big goofy teeth
I'm all chewed up
It's too early for this
It's always too early

He came into my bedroom last night,
As I curled up,
Burrowed deep into the covers
Searching for his arms.
In my head were demons
Chasing little me around.
He came in.
He banished them away,
Tall, beautiful.
Mine.
Above me, he stared at me as I dreamt
Of his eyes,
That mesmerizing voice
Soothing my fear...
He stared one last time.
He leaned down,
And kissed me.
Supple, soft.
Endearingly, as if I was as fragile as I looked,
As if I would break.
He forgot everything I've been through
While I lay, vulnerable.
He kissed me anyways,
Those tender lips...
He took away all the shivers
And took me away to a land far away,
A safer place.

But he stood up, and walked out the door afterwards.
To go to his own safe place.
Somewhere no one could hurt him,
Somewhere no one would come for him.

He just forgot to take me with him.

I told my therapist about you the last time i saw her.
She asked me about the time
when “no”
did not have definition,
only used as a syllable,
a filler word,
something to spice up things in the bedroom.

I told her I loved you.
That we had slept together
several times before it happened
and that for some reason
I still stayed with you after.
It happened in the early morning,
before my mind had any time
to wipe the sleep from its creases.
They say that’s best time to work out,
get up early and run
before the body knows what it’s getting itself into.
Maybe I should’ve started running
before my body made itself something
that you wanted to get into.

I haven’t stopped running since.
Dropping numbers on the scale
like my clumsy hands
turned pounds into soap bars
and my sweat made it harder hold on to.
Now my hip bones rub against my skin
in a competition with my ribs
to see who can break through first.

You used to say you liked the way
my edges didn’t feel like edges
but soft good mornings.
But I didn’t want to remind myself anymore
of your
good mornings
and my always mournings,
black sheets covering my face,
my body.
I am the widow at my own funeral
but nobody knew that I died that day.

I didn’t want an open casket,
I didn’t want open anything.
The space between my thighs
felt like valleys,
miles of emptiness
that you saw as potential,
and I only wanted them to be closed shut,
wired together, locked jaw,
I had nothing to say to you.

I didn’t cry when it was over,
when you rested your body on top of mine
laid your head in the crook of my neck
and whispered how much I meant to you.
I made pretend husband and wife,
made pretend love.

I told myself you loved me
that I should’ve been willing
to open myself armory,
a place to leave your weapons,
maybe that’s why I felt bombs in the pit of my stomach,
you felt my bones rattle under your hands
the aftershock of surprise explosions.
Every time you held me,
it was my anxiety
not love
that made me tremble for you,

You said
if you could wake up next to me every morning
you wouldn’t have to drink so much,
just swallow me.
But i promise
if i could
I would drown you,
drain you.
I wanted to leave you empty,
wanted to leave you
the way you left me,
digging my own grave
with hands crumbling
like broken heirlooms;
something that meant a lot to someone
a long time ago.
But it’s been 4 months
and i’m still picking shards of you
out of my skin,
you dug yourself
so deep into my flesh
that I thought you started to become part
of my DNA.
But like the wrong blood type,
my body rejected you
no matter how much I thought
I needed you to survive.

But here I am,
all splintered finger nails surviving,
turning demons into salt piles and burned bones,
forgetting what your name sounds like
when it rolls off my tongue,
forgetting why I ever thought
I needed you in the first place.

there once was a girl who broke promises like tea glasses. It wasn't hard, really. just a little too much heat, too much pressure. maybe she just didn't pay attention, until there were tea glasses shattered all over the floor.
     but one day the girl worried that someone would see all that broken glass and start to wonder, so she grabbed fistfuls of the mess and she swallowed it all down down down where no one could ever see. and the jagged shards tore at her insides, shredded her gut into ****** ribbons, bedazzled her stomach lining like stars.
     the girl smiled and bled and broke more promises and swallowed and swallowed and swallowed. until one day those pretty tea glass promises ripped her open and everyone could see her mistakes spill out of her as she bled out on the floor.

I want all of you.
I want your eyes
and the memories
that hold their hand,
and shushes it so that,
though it's presence is
known and acknowledged,
it is silenced and calm.
I want your smile
that shines the walkway
down your throat,
past your lungs,
and straight to your core.
I want your skin
and the paintings on them,
paintings of days with no sunlight
and straight lines of red.
I want your love.
Every moment of joy and pain
and sorrow and guilt, I want.
I want every goodmorning,
after a night's worth of goodnight.
I want the fear of saying goodbye to you;
knowing that at any moment,
the pit would find it's way back
home in my stomach,
as you're gasping for your last taste
of sweet, sweet air.
I want your love.

her paris dreams had become jersey jaded
but she held onto the romance at heart
after all you can take the dreams out of the girl
but you'll never stop the girl from being a dreamer
and its the beautiful things in the world
that were close to her heart
and it was the beauty inside her that counted
and she was a field of stars in the night
she was a dreamer and a lover
she was summer and joy
she had paris dreams that were as big as the sky
she had paris dreams as warm as her heart
alive with every breath her dreams lived for her
and she for them
her paris dreams will never really die
they are sunshine
even jaded they are beautiful

oh darling. you never really
wanted to die. you just wanted
to silence the voices in your head, and get rid of the hollowness in your chest. you wanted to **** all the pain you were enduring.
it's quite understandable- everyone understands what it's like to suffer (contrary to your belief,
you're not alone.
suffering is a basic part of human existence).
and sometimes, when you get to be in such a bad place, you're not able to remember anything else. all you can see, all you can think about, all you're surrounded by, is misery and sadness and heartache. and dying seems like the only way out of the endless cycle of negativity.
but emotions are a lot like energy- the kind you learn about science. feelings cannot be created nor destroyed,
only transferred.
so even if you finally gathered the courage to commit suicide, your sadness wouldn't disappear. you'd be passing it down to everyone that loved you, and sometimes even people you barely knew. everyone is affected in some way or another.
and while it seems like there are so many reasons to just die, there are
so many things to live for. the world is a beautiful place- humans just make everything complicated for no reason. but there are so many wondrous things that you have yet to experience. there's an entire universe out there- and if you killed yourself now, you'd never get to explore it.
losing you would not only mean losing your body, your soul, and your presence. it would mean losing all the hopes in dreams stored inside of you- both yours, and your parents' wishes for you. we'd be losing so much of the positive- you are not a negative. you have to understand that.
at least one person loves you, and to them, you're everything.
I need you to live, lovely. for me.