We do not so much fall in love as we do into desperation.
While I am collapsing in on myself on the bathroom floor
trying to keep my own hands

from tearing me apart

you are tapping on the other side of the door,
whispering “It’s okay, please come out now.”

I am thinking about the way
you licked the lust off of my tongue

and it makes me sick.
I am thinking about the way
your fingers tightened around my throat
when I told you “I’ve never done anything like this before”
and I would give anything
to have the ability to rewind time,

go back to the moment before
I read your message, 

before I hit REPLY, 

before you drowned me 

in the delicious prose of your own sorrow,
before you unraveled my apathy 

with your bare hands 

and forced me to swallow it whole.
I am staring at my face in this ***** mirror
and I am drawing exes over my eyes
in the dust and the toothpaste splatter.
I am waiting for you to just give up.

I am waiting for you to leave me alone.

I am waiting for myself to gather the courage

to wash the tear-streaked makeup off of my face
and open the door,
walk away,

don’t say anything,
escape.

When I am seventeen I go a bit insane and I discover that the whole world is connected to me by strings and I don’t know if I control them or if they control me but I do know that I feel very enlightened and aware when I have not eaten for five days and I drink two pots of coffee a day to stay awake because the nights are still whispering all their darkest secrets and I know that there is a grid of cosmic light keeping everything in tact but why? I see God in the golden dust that exists within each and every one of us and it makes me want to tear out my hair and scream at the top of my lungs when you tell me you can’t find salvation, just look at yourself, look inward, look back, look ahead, look anywhere

I never want to go anywhere without pressed flowers in my notebooks and I always want to have turquoise in my pockets and I never want to stop writing poetry and I will let it bleed me dry if that’s what it wants and I never want to stop staying up at night contemplating the stars and I never want to stop feeling every little thing like an anvil on my chest and I never want to stop agonizing over every little detail of absolutely everything and I never want to treat love like it is some big secret and I never want to stop filling up everyone I know with the same light they have poured into me and I want to keep growing stronger until I can swallow the sky and the sun and open my arms up and wrap myself around the Void until we become one with one another, until we can finally sleep.
Rest easy, sweet dreams.

Over the past few miles of my life
I’ve been dropping friends
Like breadcrumbs
In case I ever had to
Find my way back
To when I was still happy.

There are no goodbyes
Only transitions
To our more distant positions
Multiplying sunrises by sunsets.
We became straight edged puzzle pieces
That slid apart no matter
How close we tried to be.

In the quietest rooms
We could be holding hands
But maybe it’s better
To just keep to ourselves.
And without you here
No one can remind me
This is a heartbeat
Not a time bomb
And these reds and blues inside me
Surely can’t be wires
Needing to be cut.

This is breathing
This is the tempo to the requiem
Because goodbyes don’t say ‘follow me’
And this is a heartbeat
This is a time bomb

I need to know
If you go
and I explode
Who will wipe me from the walls?

You wonder how she'd love you.

In the ways I never could,
In ways too clumsy and honest, just like you,
Parts of myself I let die early on
In favor of thicker skin

That silhouette in your eye betrays you
But I've learned not to ask
What you're thinking about
Those glances just beyond me
Because were you to pry
Into all these boarded tunnels,
You'd find her buried in me a thousand times
Murdered by my suffering

I wonder if you know, you've never been forgiven
But
Love is a magic trick
Trivial to those who understand how it works
But many of us
Are enraptured by the performance

I wonder how she'd love you
If you'd make her feel less lonely
Because she'd pry the nails off
Let you into the attic of her past lives
Your fingers could pull handfuls of her pain
Out of future gardens

Places in my soul
I'd never let you touch
Where I buried my bodies
Where I planted beautiful things
And cultivated this
Still
       rising
Not quite
a phoenix
Or a shooting star
The thing that admits it is ugly
Because ugly is appreciated for what it is
In a way that beauty never could be

There are a million ways
To begin an apology
But nothing is as honest
As admitting
“I ****** up."

Now I’m sleeping on a twin bed
Unable to move on without you
A fist in my mouth
So I can't say I'm sorry
Without breaking my teeth.

You had a raccoon’s grip
On this relationship
And you held on
Even though it killed you
But I’m a practiced martyr
Trained in your guilty pleasures

You called me at 2 in the morning
To say I love you
So please don't hurt yourself tonight
And please
******* eat something
So we go
Every time I'm losing it
You're losing me

You asked if this would be the day
You’d finally have the strength to walk away
If this would be the day
I’d leave my room.

And you're staring at me
I woke up screaming
I can't hear myself but I see you moving
Like something's wrong
With your hands on my shoulders and whispering
I wish I could be your skin
So I could let you feel sunlight
And protect you from yourself
I will wear all of your misery
So you can see what it's doing to me.

I've got your concern wrapped around me
A 2 AM Tourniquet
Then you left
And I am sleeping on a twin bed
With no room for apologies
Or for you
To sleep beside me.

Sometimes I just want to be
Who you want me to be
Because that person seems happy
Or at least content

Not shifting
constantly
And it's hard to admit that these flaws,
Though not contagious,
might be deadly
The surface tension is amazing
I can barely keep it in
and therefore
Am afraid to be touched

But if you left me,
Like all the other half-empty glasses
That had hoped you'd take the time to
see what was inside,

If I don't mind telling you a few
Of the secrets,
because I need to make room
For other things,

I am hungry for the empty spaces
There's no way to eliminate who you really are inside

Beauty,
like chaos,
needs no reason to occur
It simply takes shape
Like watching you sleep
That not-quite smile,
In brutal silence,

The involuntary
loneliness
of insomnia

Unable to accompany you
in your dreams
And I know you could never love me like this
You are trapped outside the empty glass
And it hurts
to think of you
any other way

I wanna someone to hug so tight that all my broken pieces are joined together.

It is so difficult to take your mind off the one you love, when your heart is consumed by them.

Clouds roll over my mind
The electricity in the air too much
I can feel the migraine coming on
And I just want clarity
I just want to be happy
I didn't know what I had

And now, it's all I want.
We were slow dancing in a burning room
and I didn't even know

You weren't real

I was just another challenge
Another way to prove your masculinity
To prove that you could make anyone fall for you

Are you happy now?
Are you proud?
Are my broken pieces enough to give you your next fix?

I can't even publish this poem under my real name

There are appearances to keep  up
People to be a role model for
And no one would want their daughter to end up like me.