i want to drink myself into a place no one can reach me
i want the room to spin so i can sit still and feel the world moving and cracking and tectonic plates shifting beneath my feet
i want to dance to music i don't like when i'm sober
i want to feel as beautiful as i feel when i'm drunk every day
i want to drink until all i am left with is empty cups and happy hiccups and i want to call my exes and tell them how lucky they were to have me and how bad timing was never a good excuse
i want to wrap a telephone cord around my fingers and then my body and i want to feel electricity in my hands and i want the world to spin because i tell it to

hey, tell me again about your dead brother
and how falling in love with you should never have been an option on this multiple choice test that was our "relationship"
i killed the chia pet you got me for christmas
and now i can't stop watering the dead plants that are starting to fill my house because i have never once been capable of keeping anything good in my life

i guess it makes sense that one of our favorite bands would break up because everything we ever touched turned to dust in our hands

why can't i bury you like you must have buried me?

didn't you know we were supposed to burn the city to the ground?

i've had almost 2 years of radio silence and i can't tell if i just can't hear the music anymore

trying my best to write this as if you’re not running out of time
not everything’s about me but shifting the blame never helped either of us, did it?
i can't help but keep reading and then rereading between the lines of the text messages that i have been getting less and less of since march 13th
recently what i have so far is
"aw, dan
that's incredibly kind"
"what if i get more tired? either from napping or in general"
i don't know what life is going to be like when he finally stops waking up
i guess we are both just waiting to find out

someone should tell the world to stop ******* turning because i didn't sign up for a lifetime of being left behind

can you believe i am still waiting for us to come full-circle?

i sunk the ship and i burned the house down
sing me to sleep or shake me awake
you want honesty?
you’re looking in the wrong mirror, honey
leave a message after the beep

we have been here before
that means something
not sure what but it does

there’s 2 weeks 5 years ago that i would have done anything (i mean anything) to change
don’t you know i would have done it all?
football games, brunch with your mom, climbed the stairs of the museum a hundred times if it meant we would be off-center and a little cloudy like my mom said
i keep writing these hoping you will see just one

there’s an absence in my bed that i can’t help but feel with all of me
there’s an absence in my head that i can’t feel at all
let me know when you get the smoke signals that i started sending again
let me know how leo season treated you this year

closing my eyes so i can think of a time when grade school assignments seemed attachment worthy and the jar of 222 reasons meant hope and a future and reassurance and god i never even made it halfway through the scraps of paper
111 was always a shortcut
i guess i should’ve known that you had an emergency exit, huh
is it weird that your girlfriend shares your moms name?
do you ever walk by that museum with her; you know the one where you said you wanted kids?

i confess i’m a mess but only in the sense that my problems are future tense
i can hear the door knobs rolling down the hall but honeyface, sweetie, grass biscuit
i think i’m unshakeable now

when did the calls past midnight become a part of who we used to be rather than who we were going to be
at what point did you stop loving me and when did you realize she would make you happier when will you realize she will never make you any ******* happier and your self-serving misery won't be fixed by having a different girl between your sheets than the one that promised to love you even when you didn't love her
do you know if she will beg you to stay when you think you found the one who will fill your void you put there by yourself?
i've never been your answer but that doesn't mean i can't ask the questions that put this silence between us

i'm going to start a calvary of all the people you've abandoned on your quest for "self-discovery"
a ****** bandcamp demo ep isn't going to make you any less miserable, babe, i can almost promise you that
all the validation in the world isn't going to undo your damage on the people that you left more broken then when you found them
i'm still too scared to talk to your best friend because our common denominator left us high and dry but i'm sure we've both been trying to pick up the pieces in the aftermath of you leaving us
it's been over a year and i'm still reeling from our last conversation because i have always tried to ignore the inevitable
and call me delusional for thinking that maybe it wasn't my fault

it’s been 365 days of laughing and crying and screaming and kissing and ******* and driving and running and outrunning and laying on the floor wondering if/when things are finally going to change
2019, do be kind to me

as this gemini season crescendos to a screeching dissonant halt, i am unsure if i am going to be able to live with the events that i didn’t entirely force to transpire
when my mouth fills with blood i am unable to tell if the source is from my wounds or yours

i am the 1 am drunk text
i am the family pictures popping up on  your newsfeed
i am the polaroid at the bottom of your desk drawer
i am the modern baseball song that you can't seem to skip
i am the candy wrappers in your car door
i am the cd stuck in your car radio that is just me singing a song i never should have written for you
i am the way a dorm room bed is always just big enough
i am the draft of a poem that was never just right

and

you are the space between the lines of the poems that aren't fixing anything
you are the dried up corsage in the back of my closet
you are the third step on the stairs into the basement where i swear i can still see stains of mascara on the carpet from november 8, 2015
you are the post card i never sent
you are the post card i sent but never should have
you are the phone calls i can't make
you are the nightmares i have where we are both running from something not clear to us


now that i've set the scene are you sure you want to delete your audition tape?
are you sure that your first try was good enough?

this afternoon i saw a cowboy driving a minivan on 84
there’s not a whole lot to be said about that

oh god i was worried i had a lump in my breast that my body was finally following the maternal prophecy that is passed along like a family heirloom
turns out it was just one of my ribs i haven’t felt in years
or maybe ever

i like to pretend the aches and pains are just in various places a heart could be if we were existing on multiple planes
nothing poetic about my body decaying rapidly around me because i need to stop treating it like it’s a leg caught in a trap, trying to limp its way to the end of the highway

i just think it's kind of ****** up that you escaped the fray with barely a scratch
and i still pick at my scabs every day
maybe if i pull myself apart piece by piece there won't be anything left to hurt anymore

to be fair, we were on borrowed time to begin with
i feel the static in my jaw and the way your contact information felt like i was running out of phone calls
am i the object or am i the permanence ?
am i the other shoe waiting to drop or are we the burning building?

if you start to feel your feelings, don’t

dear interdimensional space traveler,
it's been both an honor and a privilege to watch you traverse far and wide and maybe you will find your way back to the year and 4 months when you filled the space on the other side of my mattress
do you miss the gravity that pulled you to me?
do you miss linear time and when we were on the same wavelength?
maybe when you finally "came home" you forgot where that even was
is her apartment floor your new safe haven?
212 miles is too close for us to have given up so easily and you were still light years away
time has stopped here since you left, interdimensional space traveler
i hope our time and space aligns again

i used to paint the town red with the blood from my mouth
i could count the phases of the moon from the crescents caused by the digging of my nails into my hands
it was easier that way

late night side streets accompanied by no one but a playlist and a flashlight
i ran while crossing the road to get to anywhere
sometimes i wonder if the street light near the cemetery still flickers
and if i have any claim to the gravel behind the post office
does your mom ever tell you that i drive by your house?
when i finally woke up beside the lake i didn’t know it would feel like nothing

i've sat here for hours trying to come to some realization that i am nothing and everything all at once, a walking paradox full to the brim but still so ******* empty that it hurts

coming apart at the seams never looked so appealing

don’t tell me there is nowhere to go but up
poetically, metaphorically, and physically i am 6 feet under ground
(basement living baby)
fake plants i can’t **** next to childhood mementos i won’t let go of
there’s so many things i am not ready to let go of

i am taking a plane tomorrow
i will be 1,178.6 miles away from you and i hope i will feel safer
knowing exactly how far away we are from each other helps me to breathe a little easier
my mind is constantly focused on 212 and 222 and november 8th and 2015
i am hoping that new mileage will clear up some space
i am sorry for what happens next, "love"
this distance was a death sentence

we were going to burn the city to the ground
we were going to wake up sleepy sunday mornings with the sounds of life we should have never had to dream about
why does it feel like i’m still waiting for you to come home?

what the **** are you supposed to do when the ghosts of 222 reasons plaster themselves to your bedroom walls and fill your head with all the other 222+ reasons it's all your fault?
how does it make any sense that i have to live in the spaces you broke my heart over and over every day and you got to take a train and leave it all behind
i haven't written a poem in years that didn't ask desperate questions or consist of a thousand different apologies, and with that, i ask you "were you ever really sorry?"

i've been thinking more and more about the definition of true love and i'm realizing every day that it's not the boy who ****** me over twice for the same girl
and it's not the ex who told me he was going to **** himself if we didn't get back together
true love isn't tragic endings
i'm learning that true love is the feeling you get when you're in the passenger side of a car and your best friends are yelling along to a song you didn't know they knew

"hey just wondering but why did your dad unfriend me on facebook?"
i mean he never even called me your girlfriend even after over a year but at this point i am not sure if that counts for anything

"um excuse me but i am triggered by your tweets about your girlfriend"
mainly because they are just recycled versions of things you used to say about me

"but yeah ok that's fine!!!"
hope she tucks you in at night and remembers that you never texted "i love you" to me and that you only posted six pictures of me on instagram during our whole relationship but really who's counting??

"**** the both of you honestly"
thanks for sending your bff to like this tweet because we all know that none of us are ready for the long overdue confrontation that is obsolete

"is it raining where you are?"
i hope it never stops ******* raining wherever you are

talking about forgetting each other and assigning half-lifes to our memories as if they were radioactive in hopes that they'll disintegrate like the hazardous materials they have always been

i showered until there were welts and i scrubbed my body until i bled but still the bruises remained and outlasted the sins of a wednesday night not quite forgotten but never forgiven
perhaps 2 beers too many and 2 phone calls too few
you know like i know that we were on borrowed time
i hope someday you find all my french fries and lost hair ties and think somewhat fondly of, if not me, the idea of who i used to be and could have been
maybe next time i will be able to stop history from repeating itself

i’m glad the tour your band took in 2016 was successful and i hope you can still hear a crowd echoing your words
even though i was the only one who could hum them under my breath
ill take the next train out from hartford if you promise to meet me @ penn station
at least i see you in my dreams, love
they say that dreams are an alternate reality given we spend about 6 years in them
i don’t really know who “they” are but maybe they’re wrong  
and if dreams are all that i will have left of you i suppose i should take what i can get

i don’t want a fall wedding anymore
i don’t want kids anymore (i never really wanted them anyway but i would have flown to the moon if you only asked)
i don’t want to keep up with the band name list and i don’t want a whole state to be surrounded by metaphorical barbed wire but i guess that’s all i can be left with since the last three years have brought me no comfort and no closure

broken mirrors neckties garter belts thigh highs *** drunk in love soft shirts tye dyed sheets polaroids constellations philadelphia uber dinosaur statues keurigs red lights short skirts twitter parking spaces tattoos ***  trains train stations train tracks grey hair modern baseball coffee mugs mason jars museums

break my collar bones again
on the days i find it hard to just exist, i have friends who will squeeze my ankles and my knees and anchor me down to a planet i’m not sure i was ever meant for
sorry i’ve never quite been able to articulate what it means for me to have been around the sun 23 times but **** i wasn’t supposed to make it this far

2 years ago today he said he would be back in 2 minutes
1 year ago today he said he would never leave, even for 2 minutes
3 months ago he said he would be there in 2 minutes
2 months, 29 days, 23 hours and 55 minutes ago he said he had had enough of our minutes together

i've been holding onto the idea of 2 minutes so much longer

sorry that almost everything i've ever written has been about you but really i've always been one to get hung up on the bad things
maybe the reason i can't shake you from me is that i can't possibly wrap my head around the fact that the person i was in love with no longer exists and that this new man that has taken his place is just wearing his skin and i never got to have a proper funeral for the boy you used to be

he told me that "this distance isn't a death sentence and we will serve our time"
i am still serving my time but he got out on bail

don't tell me that we need some space
when there's 212 miles between our beds

don't tell me that i'm your sun
when you stopped letting me peak through the blinds of your darkened bedroom

don't tell me there's 222 reasons to love me
when you were only able to tell me a few for wanting to leave me

don't write public poems about me that i "wasn't supposed to read"
as if i were the one that broke your heart and not the other way around

don't tell me that i'm your best fried
because best friends don't hurt each other like we did

wait, don't tell me you love me
because words like that don't mean anything unless they have somewhere to rest

there’s an 80% chance that i became a vegetarian just so i would never again have the opportunity to taste the pizza that we had that weekend at your brothers apartment when we watched 2 seasons of bojack horseman

does it mean something that we have been apart 5x as long as we were together?

oh god i would do anything to see leaves or fireworks or forget-me-nots or snow or tadpoles or anything extending beyond the current day

i'm sorry that our plans never made it to blueprints 

is there something about me that screams impermanence?

am i the human embodiment of a rest stop?

i should have let them block your number because a bittersweet self-concluding end would have been honey and sweet dreams compared to the ***** and panic attacks that i have started with this saturday morning
try and keep my name out of your mouth because my ears can’t handle the deafening ringing
catch me driving 90 on the highway waiting for my ribs to crack

i need a phone call
i need a rain coat

i stay up most nights these days wondering if you would be proud of me
maybe we needed to fall apart so i could put myself back together and be whole without the pieces i thought were always meant to fit

i wonder if your mom is proud of you
i wonder if she wishes i could have made you stay and i wonder if she knows i miss her
why did you drop out of college?
did you forget how to put yourself back together?
are you happy where you're sleeping?
do you ask yourself similar questions about me?
i wonder if the new versions of us would fall in love just as easily
and for all it's worth
i hope you know you can be so much better and do so much more and you were always meant to travel through space and time and i don't think i want to wait for you anymore

pulling my tired bones and muscles out a bed that seems too big for me now
in a room that once held laughter and love without terms and conditions
i don’t replace the light bulbs anymore and i don’t change the sheets as often as i should and the pile of laundry is suffocating me
i replay the night over and over in my head of you laughing and me spilling whiskey and bodies too close but too far for anything real

i can still hear the chorus of “will you let me in” like it’s my own heartbeat

i’m excited to know you more than sometimes, but sometimes i cry about parties i never got to go to  

and you’ll learn that i love the east coast the way i love the outside of a bed
the only thing i am consistent with is my ability to be half in half out

don’t you miss when things were so out of sorts that it still felt like home?