It is all a little harder
than it looks,
and I'm afraid it will
never work out
—just too different,
you and I--

There is a reason
that the sun and the
moon never touch.
You are just beginning
and I am coming
to a close.

No, you do not want
someone like me.
I am beat up, broken.
Go, find yourself a nice boy
with a plan,
with a trust fund;
someone to rely on.

You don't need
someone like me.
It is much harder
than it looks
and it might very well may
never work out between us.
These open fields are ripe
for the taking,
a pretty little thing like you
could have your pick.

You don't want someone
like me, but that is not easy
to say because all that I want
is you, you, you.
It is not easy at all,
so many trials and
complications,
no, no, no…

It is a little harder than
it looks to love someone.

My eyes close and darkness takes over.
Then suddenly, like a breath of light,
Pictures of you dance across my mind.
Bringing the warmth of your sun to my veins.

As a smile spreads across my hard face,
I'm shaken back to my living hell.
A place where your touch is extinct.
And our love is a bleeding rose.

Just depressed? Do you even know what depression feels like? Do you know what it's like to make a list of a thousand ways to die and thinking constantly of the day when you choose one? Do you know what it's like to be the happiest you've ever been one minute but find yourself crying yourself to sleep the next? what about not sleeping at all? Do you know what it's like to have to walk the school hallways like you're dragging weights from your ankles? Do you know how it feels to get worried looks from that one teacher who senses your sadness but won't take the step to reach out to you? God, I wish someone would. Do you know what it's like to be so sad you can't even cry and you just sit there like you're dead? For hours? For days? Longer? Do you know what it's like to not even know the reason why you're feeling like you do? Do you know what it's like to even not be able to change how you feel? Do you think it's easy to "just be happy"? Oh believe me I want to be. Do you know what it's like to be at mercy to a chemical imbalance? To rely on pills just to remain "normal"? Oh please, can I just know what it's like to be normal like everyone else? Do you know what it's like for your brain to be your own worst enemy? Do you know what it's like to pretend that you're ok while this is happening to you? While you're dying on the inside and wishing you could speed up the process? Oh and by the way, no one can even help you. No one can truly understand you, except for yourself. No one. Not even the people you swear you love most of all. You know what? Sometimes you don't even understand yourself. All you know is that any happiness is fleeting and surely will soon be gone. Never-- not in a day, month or year-- can you ever find permanent relief. You feel like there are two different people occupying your body. One loves life and laughs at jokes that aren't even funny and falls in love and reads books and listens to good music and loves the sunshine. The other is a miserable and deeply self loathing being that wants to drown in darkness and spreads like a black sickness through your body wishing to take over it. The other is depression. Sadly, the other too often succeeds in taking over. You are no longer the person that loves life and laughs at jokes that aren't even funny and falls in love and reads books and loves the sunshine.  Jokes don't make you laugh anymore. Books are only a collection of meaningless words. Music is only thin repetitive sound. When the sun is out, you'd prefer to stay inside with the curtains drawn shut. As for loving life, you're not even sure you want to live anymore. You become depression; Depression becomes you. Sometimes you still like to pretend to be that happy person, but that person is barely alive anymore. You still pretend because pretending may just be the only thing keeping you sane. Other times you feel like neither the happy person nor the other are present in you. You're simply empty. You're breathing and you feel a pulse at your wrist, but inside you are nothingness. You are merely half-existing. Sometimes the emptiness hurts more than being completely consumed by the other. It hurts. It's painful. More so than any blade one can take to their own skin. I would give anything just to be able to be happy, to NOT have depression anymore, but I can't. I can't and its not fair. I've come to learn that life isn't fair, but why does this have to be my life? Did some awful omnificent being choose to make me like this? If you aren't depressed, you're **** lucky. Why is it becoming just another trend? Why on earth would you pretend to have such a horrible disorder? Why would you glamorize it with pictures of beautiful, delicate girls with pretty curls in little floral dresses dancing through a field with tears in their eyes with movie quote captions in cursive? Its not pretty. Its ugly; its sad. But, hey, you know exactly what depression is like, don't you?

I know exactly how your lips will feel
The moment before they brush mine
Yet your kisses never fail
To take my breath away

I know exactly the path your fingers will trace
Along my cheek to the back of my neck
Yet your touch never fails
To electrocute my skin

I know exactly the look in your eyes
Before you lean your face towards mine
Yet your gaze never fails
To paralyze me

We are an oxymoron
Inexplicable
But we are also puzzle pieces
Perfectly seamless

Growing up never comes when you expect it:
It's when you realize that the suicide note under your mattress
Probably has a few too many commas where semicolons should be,
And a little too much emphasis on the last four years of your life-
Missed due dates, flunked exams, and friendships that were supposed to be forever.
It's when you figure out that the boy you spent your freshman year of college worrying about
Never even knew the name of your favorite book,
Or anything else that really mattered.
It isn't something you can predict, or prepare for-
It isn't a sudden shift of priorities that all of a sudden appear
Somewhere in your subconscious, making it a lot easier to get up at 9am for a statistics class
That you're inevitably going to fail.
It isn't anything you do that will change, but rather
A shift inside of you that slowly shakes your entire being.
Youth is only beautiful until it's corrupted,
By the sultry hands of time, beckoning you forward when all you ever wanted to do was hide.
It slowly seeps down into the darkest corners of your mind,
Swallowing up all that innocent ambition
Flung upon you in the fifth grade by a board of indifferent teachers
Who decided to deem you gifted, introducing you to a world of knowledge
Too fascinating to mingle with the uncertainty of responsibility.
There's something frightening about growing old,
Maybe it's because you spent one too many hours of your childhood
Pretending to be someone else- caught up in a storybook world
Full of daydreams and simplicity, too one dimensional for reality.
It's not that it goes away all of a sudden: all the premature doubt
And impulsive wishes of death, or something like it.
But rather, it takes a different form-
That which was once a big red ball full of passionate emotions,
Has deflated, leaving you with only a faint residue of what you used to feel.
Maybe, you got your wish after all- something had to die, you know,
In order for you to carry on without losing your mind.
It's a sad paradox, this sequence of living,
As intuition slowly deteriorates, and common sense
Slinks in, in its premeditated, yet lackluster manner,
And before you know it, you're not a kid anymore.
Peter Pan flew the coop years ago, but Neverland still remains,
A testimony to all the lost childhoods of the ones
Too eager to lay their stake in the land of milk and honey.

I was walking along the shoreline
On a warm afternoon in July when
I noticed a piece of polished wood
Bobbing helplessly in the shallow water,
So I pulled it from the salty sea and
Admired the intricate carvings and
Detailed line work across the face.
Just as I was running my thumb
Over the still smooth edges, I
Noticed another piece floating
Just a few feet away from me.
Within the hour, I had gathered
An entire armful of wood, and
Within the week, I had an entire
Table full of mismatched pieces.
So I began working unceasingly
At putting the pieces back together.
I started with the inside, the
Smooth heart shaped piece with
The slight cracks and divots,
Followed by a circular piece
That resembled the brain
With the deep crevices.
I then pieced together
The smooth fingertips
And the rugged feet,
And connected every
Limb and joint together
Until a boy of about
Six feet was standing
In front of me.
I snapped on the
Final piece and watched
As he came alive before me.
His eyes as deep as the mahogany
Looked into mine and smiled, as
Though thanking me.
And he turned his
Back to me and
Walked away.
It wasn't until
That moment that
I realized I had poured
Every ounce of myself into
Piecing back together that boy,
So now every ounce of myself
Was walking out my front
Door with a real boy
Who didn't need
Me anymore.

My legs carry me mindlessly through the white-washed walls of the intensive care unit. I am stuck in a labyrinth in which there is no end, there is merely alcoves on either side which take you even further into the maze. Nurses with faces as pale as their uniforms pass me like zombies, their minds calculating numbers on charts which directly correlate to a list of symptoms that equate to something less than diagnosable. I am nothing more than a distant shadow in their busied brains.
Unknowingly, I begin counting the rooms after I pass through the double doors, remembering that yours is the ninth on the right. My heart rate steadily increases, no longer in tune with the clicking monitors that surround me like locusts, calling out to those just as alive and lonely.
I rest my hand on the doorframe of room number ninety-four as I attempt to collect myself. Just as I inhale a deep breath, my vision blurs and every emotion I have (until now) successfully shoved into the deep recesses of my chest now rises up my stomach and into my mouth. I press my lips together, holding back the bile that has taken up unwanted residence on my tongue. Warm tears squeeze their way out from behind my eyes as I swallow it back down, suppressing it once more. I attempt another deep breath, and another, until I realize I am unable to procrastinate any longer.
I hear the rustling of stiff sheets and the slight give of a hard mattress. You're awake.
I clear my throat softly, wanting you to be aware of my presence, although I am certain that the heartbeat that reverberates my eardrums must have given me away miles ago.
A white curtain hangs from the tiled ceiling, held up by metal clamps looped around a pole for easy accessibility and I can't help but wonder if that pole would be strong enough to hold me. But just as I begin planning what sheet and what knot I would use around the pole, I step into view of you.
My hand is pulled to my lips like a magnetic force that is out of my control as I take in the sight of you. Your left eye, which once shone a more brilliant blue than the clear waters of the Caribbean, is now bloodshot and swollen. The left side of your head is bandaged and half of your pale blonde hair is shaved down to your bruised scalp. Your lips, which were once so thin and precious, are now bloodied and blown-up like red balloons. Your bones jut out from beneath your skin, as though your collarbone is rejecting you and begging to be freed. Down your arms I notice the scabs and scars and marks from unsuccessful attempts to hook you to an IV. But there is more than just one bag hanging beside you, and I realize that the other is Morphine.
I take a step closer to you, waiting for your eyes to flutter open like they did so many mornings when I'd wake you with your favorite breakfast (two plain pancakes and a cigarette). Your head tilts slightly to the right but your eyes remain closed. I take another small step, and another, until my waist is just inches from the seemingly disjointed hand hanging limply from the edge of the bed. I reach out and press my shaking fingertips to the hard palm that faces me, hoping for your hand to turn and clasp around mine, silently accepting my every apology.
But your hand remains stiff against my touch.
I memorize the new lines on your hand, the crescent-shaped bruises on your palm and the shallow scratches on the back of your hand where I pressed my lips more times than I could ever possibly count. I trace my way up your arm, my fingertips traveling over the hills of your veins, a familiar territory, and the streams of tubes filled with fluid, an uncharted area. Just as my hand begins the climb up your forearm and into the crease of your elbow, I feel your arm move. But rather than moving towards me, an invitation to venture even closer, it is pulled away from me, a protest.
I take a step back and inhale a deep breath, feeling the rush behind my eyes again, as I notice your right eye is now looking right at me, into me. I search the depths of your gaze in the hope that I will resurface with a strand of hope or affection that I can hold on to for the rest of the day, but I come up empty-handed. All that I can find in your eyes is a direct reflection of the pain that both your heart and body are enduring.  
"I'm so, so, so-"
But before I can even begin to utter my sincerest of apologies, your hand is held inches above the mattress, silencing me. I dive into your eyes again, deeper and deeper, realizing that if I can't find any form of redemption, then I'd rather just drown in them. But you **** me back to reality with only two words.
"Please leave."
I feel the tidal wave crash into my chest as I take another step back.
My worst fear has been realized - you don't want me here.
Suddenly every argument, every fight, every "I'm sorry," every "you don't mean that," every "I love you," every "don't say that," was another wave throwing my helpless body against the cliffs and coral reefs. I am lifeless, my body thrashed beyond recognition, my heart ripped to shreds.
Tears gather behind my eyes and burst through, falling upon my cheeks as though the depths that I have drowned in have finally consumed me.
I reach out once more, my shaking hand yearning for the touch of your skin.
But you pull your head from me, wanting nothing to do with me.
An earthquake shakes my chest and threatens to pull me in half as I backpedal out of the room, temporarily getting wrapped up in the white curtain that I had admired just minutes before.
The rush returns to my head and I can no longer see anything but frothy waves that continue to pull me under, and I can no longer hear anything but the sound of water filling my ears.
My shoulder connects with a sturdy boulder and I fall to the ground, collapsing into nothing more than a puddle, the aftermath of the hurricane that has wrecked my body, and you are no longer able or willing to save me.