You use too many big words
You say inevitable too often
You are addicted to nicotine
Smoke cigarettes too frequently
You drink too much when you do
And when you do,
You're a mess
I know all of this
But I want to know your secrets,
Your fears,
Your nightmares,
Your happiness,
I want to know it all
I just don't know to ask
Or how to find words big enough to make up for the courage I lack
Maybe a better vocabulary could suffice for the pride I do not have
My interest in you has always been inevitable and I don't mind it
I stopped smoking weeks ago and I've never needed to
But I keep a pack for when and if I need to feel burning sensation
I only drink on rare occasion
And when I do it is never more than a glass
I am not reckless and
I am not a lot like you but I like you
I like your habits
Both good as well as bad
And I want to be one of them.

I don't know what it's like to run a hand along your jawline. I don't know how it would feel to bury my fingers in your hair.
I don't know if you prefer wine to hard liquor.
I don't know if you stretch the moment your alarm goes off in the morning or if you roll back into your sheets after pressing snooze.
I don't know a lot about the scar on the right side of your chest. I've only seen it once.
I don't know what your eyes look like when you really love something.


I remember you asking,
“What’s the hardest thing you’ve ever been through?”
I knew what your response would be before it left your mouth. I hesitated to answer with my own and you said I didn't have to. It is nights like these when I wish I did.


When I see you it is mostly outside of houses where I don't belong and which you are familiar with, places where you have an abundance of friends and I have too many drinks.

You say that we'll talk soon and I remind you that you are terrible at texting. You laugh because it's true. I laugh to keep myself from spilling out my admiration for you. I laugh because your smile provides insight on how to be freer. I laugh with the hopes that doing so will teach me.
_

There is an equal amount of things I know about you and things I don't.
I don’t know if your eyes grow wide and out at the sight of what makes you happy, I don't know how they look when you really love something.
I’d like to find that out.
I’d like to see you looking up at me one day and for me to just know.

I miss you today and
The sky is more blue than I swear it has ever been
It reminds me of your skin looked in cold temperature,
The way your hands would curl from lack of circulation
I miss them too.
It rained yesterday and it reminded me of
How much we both loved thunderstorms and falling asleep to the sound of them
You said you slept better next to me than anyone else but I am more of a hurricane than anything else,
The way my downpour came in tidal waves.
Withstanding both the wind and reckless was a challenge but
It was something you did so effortlessly
I miss you so effortlessly
I do without trying to
Like a body held still with phantom limbs
Like hands that reach forward out of habit and discover a part now missing
I have learned how it feels to long for the nonexistent
To wake in the morning to an absence of comfort laying where you used to rest your head
Some days I don't want to get out of bed but
I do because you would have wanted me to
Like the way the sun wants to watch trees grow instead of hear branches snap
I never intended to split directly in half but the winter is colder than I expected it to be and
My skin has turned bark in its roughness
It is cracking in too many places and it is not very pretty to look at
I spent too long creating myself out of iron for you to have to see me rust like this
I'm sorry.

There are things I want to tell you but
They are things I cannot tell you
Because your ears are not here to listen and if I were to,
The confession would make me more vulnerable than I ever intended on being,
It would scrape me raw and paint me weak to tell you that this life is
A lot harder to navigate without you living it with me
My sense of direction has always been shaky but now every route to future is tangled in your veins
I am used to tracing them to get home and
I don't know how to get there anymore
24 hours have never seemed longer than they do now and
Nights come much sooner when there is no reason to go outside
I have learned that the sun can't blind you if you don't show your face to it
I stay in out of precaution
My sight is fading and
It is colorless without you to fill in the intricacies
I do not see like I used to
I keep them closed because these eyes have nothing to search for knowing they wont find you in their path of vision,
I want to tell you about the moon
That it seems to be growing bigger and bigger as I shrink into myself further and
I can't remember a time when I felt as whole as she appears glowing against blackness
If only I looked that beautiful in half, in crescent form
The stars here are so bright that this city of mine could be mistaken for rural landscape
They stand out every evening and tell me to look at them
I want to tell you to look too
But I know you have already seen them
I know you are the one who put them in the sky in the first place,
Hung them delicately on their hooks and said,

"Look what I built for you,
I put these up carefully with my own hands,
See? I haven't forgotten how to make you smile."

And you're right, you haven't.

It is another one of those early mornings when hatred spews out of my body and aims for itself, I never miss. I have always been good at reaching targets, even better when I myself am bullseye.
I shoot directly for the mirror. Into my thighs, my chest, this mountain range of a body. I send my angry in a direct path towards my folds, my stomach, my skin, in all that is human. I launch bombs on my own territory like it's what I've been sent to do, like I was made to destroy what I have spent my whole life building.
I ask why it so easy to rip apart the things I've put together myself. I ask why it feels so normal to want to break down the rafters of the only shelter I will ever be able to use for protection.
I blame everything else before I blame me. I blame the girls with bodies like sunsets, that contrast my mid-day average sky of a figure. I blame the dresses that I cannot fit into, the way they **** the life out of me every time I can't stretch them past my hips. I blame genetics with absolutely no knowledge of science behind me.
I want to blame society for the hate that has been multiplying inside of me but at the end of the day I am still the one who does the math. It is still me who pours self-deprecation over my head to shower in all of the things I cannot wash out. It is still me who incites hurricane upon every part of myself that is impossible to change by nature. I am the one who detonates my disappointments like the explosion will somehow change the way I look, like the aftermath of destruction will leave me with anything but empty and wreckage.
I often forget that it is me who spoon feeds myself memories of failure at every meal. It is me who hands over guilt every time I reach for the snooze button to fall back asleep. I even shove myself in fault to depression, cover myself in darkness and then wonder why there is no light to be seen. I am the culprit in it all.
In the mornings when my mind is still circling to figure out where it left off, I point it in the direction of negative. I take all of the crooked and pile it up to remind myself of the mismatch. When I take aim at my reflection, I never miss.
I direct the ****** of my mistakes, vulnerability and insecurity directly towards my image. I have become the hitman of my own assassination. My fall into disaster is wholeheartedly my own doing. I am the best of the best when it comes to this form of damage. I never miss.

I'll be honest
I'm not exactly sure how to write myself pretty
I don't think I'm capable of making desire out of words
Or forming the way I sound into something you would want to fall asleep to
I cannot mold my body into a figure that you would want next to yours for more than one night
I have more passion in myself than I know what to do with
I often give it out as hope for people to take in their hands, find something good in all of my chaos
Everyone always advises not to fall face first in love
Forgetting that the those who fall by accident
Often land the hardest
Hitting the ground full force
Cheek against the pavement
I was built with 206 bones in my body
And I will break all of them from my mistakes
Before I dare to stop falling
The crash is worth the high
Ask me every time when I am still hung over from yesterday
And I will always say yes
Having regrets has always seemed better
Than having nothing at all
I was born with steel layed out upon my chest
All of these attempts at language
Are done with the intention
Of removing some weight off of it
I have been made heavy by my own silence on too many occasions
At times I have been told not to speak
That my lips should be kept shut for protection
There are bolts on my jaw
My tongue is sandpaper
And I will risk grinding my teeth for the possibility of igniting a flame
Inside someone who has spent years trying to find a lit match
Let me be the thing that starts a fire
Rhyming doesn't always incite romance
But I can try my best
See the problem is that there are so many ways to say I love you
But not enough to make them love you
The problem is having a million things to say
And a million ways to say them
But not knowing the right way how to
There is no right or wrong here
Only hold back or release
So stutter instead of staying quiet
It is much more beautiful on paper
To disregard format, or style
And structure
I will mess up
As best as I can
And in the morning
Look at it again
Remember how it felt
To live
Then reread,
Review,
And edit.

New year, new me, I say it always
It is a new year but I am still the old, aching heart and tired bones from chasing for so long
These hands fold backwards trying to find something to put in them, really anything that fits will do
It is just like me to constantly be looking to fill the emptiness

New year, new me, I say jokingly
But I do not laugh when I start to miss you
It is a new year but I am still stuck on the last, when one month turned to six
We met in June and on December 31st you decided to cleanse yourself of me entirely
It is January 2nd and I can't say I've done the same

New year, new me, she is not new
I am waiting for the ring to appear on her finger
Your recycled promise will be on whatever diamond cut you choose and
When she slips it on, I almost can swear I'll hear my pinky break from the weight of all the let down it carried
I tried to hold it all, I did

New year, new me
I am a quarter of a half of what used to be whole
I have never been very good at math but you taught me how to count
Days waiting, it has been 151 since you were supposed to come back
I have learned minds change like seasons come, slowly then all at once
It is winter and I don't know who you are anymore

New year, same me
Maybe I'll be different by the time the next one rolls around.

I can't believe I ever wanted you
I can't believe I ever needed you
I can't believe I ever cared for you
I can't believe I ever loved you
I can't believe I still do.