You once told me
Something so sweet
About how I could change
Those shadows that hover deep

I believed your wide-eyed stories
Your reassuring truths
But once I saw your teeth
They started to rot
I soon became the filth
Neglected under your tongue

They thought what a waste,
It wasn’t a cigarette burn

You had them put me out
You had them chanting
I was the cancer
That came in flooding
Only it was you that was fleeting
Having them believe
I was a habit worth quitting

I feel like my poems have just become a list of complaints but how can I find the beauty in this storm?
No church has ever heard as many prayers as that hospital room that night.
Your life hung in the house like a crucifix or an old family photo.
HOW DID YOU EXPECT ME TO GET THROUGH THIS?????
Did you think your absence would make anything better?
It hurts.
It's killing me.
You left in paragraphs. You said I'd be fine.
But when you left you took me with you.
Now my bathroom floor knows more about me than I do.
Now I see you everywhere. In the halls, in your sister's eyes, our coffee shop. oh God that coffee shop.
Your presence still paints the walls there.
The coffee isn't strong enough anymore.
All I taste is you.

I'll try not to forget the first time I felt you looking at my white shoes and gold shirt and the way i tried to hide my rosy cheeks each time my eyes scanned the gym to find yours meeting my gaze from across the court. I'll try not to forget the way you got nervous when I showed interest and how you wanted to hold my hand but couldn't. I'll try not to forget how desperately you wanted to kiss me in attendance recovery but couldn't. I'll try not to forget how many times you watched 500 Days of Summer in my absence and all 500 similarities you contrived between that pretty girl with the heart shaped tattoo on the bike in the elevator on the rooftop and the one standing in front of you with a hidden scar down her chest flowers in her hair a crooked smile.
Ill try not to forget how many times you tried to be my friend because I told you that was what I wanted and how many times you couldn't bear that. I'll try not to forget the time you walked to my house in the dark just to read words in the dictionary on a mattress with me.

I'll try to forget the days when those words transformed into the absence of them.

I'll try not to forget the books we found at the flea market and the plant soil you spilled in my car and the talks we had late at night in your driveway and the fear of your mother finding out you were with a girl. I'll try not to forget the difference between sesame and teriyaki chicken because I always thought both looked disgusting but they made you happy so I appreciated them. Ill try not to forget the first night I slept in your bed and the innocently hesitant neck kisses. I'll try not to forget the night you desperately wanted to kiss me- and then desperately kissing you.
And how bad it was,
but how it made the sun shine brighter in that dark room than it ever has outside at noon.
I'll remember intimate conversations and the first time I told you I loved you and the way you didn't believe me and the months we spent not sure of what we wanted and how that uncertainty faded as the warm weather did and how the cold no longer comes from the winter but from the absence of your smile when I wake
I'll remember what you said about absence and this time I'll agree with you; absence makes the heart full and fond and full of longing, not hollow.

I'll remember the start in hopes of never having to try to forget an ending.

You loved me until the star dust
Spilled from my body onto the floor
And the galaxies spinning inside of me
Crashed out of control

I keep finding bullets stuck between my teeth
The same ones you bought the day you decided the ceiling would look better covered in blood.
Maybe that’s why everything I say
sounds like it’s is trying to **** me.
But what do you do
when you stand in front of a mirror
with a gun to your head
and your reflection smiles back at you?
What do you do
When you stand in the middle of a busy road
And every driver is a different version of yourself you’ve tried to ****.
Every version of yourself
No one could love.
My mother used to get in fist fights with the mirror and expect to win
She says I look just like her
Maybe that’s why I wake up and can’t recognize who I am.
I checked the obituaries this morning
Trying to find myself again
It’s a habit I picked up from you
But I never thought your name would end up there before mine.
Sometimes I imagine what death feels like
Sometimes I imagine kissing you instead
By now it feels like I’m imagining the same thing.
Someone once told me that begging you to come home
Isn’t the same as praying
Maybe that’s why God stopped listening
and started smashing the windows of every place I thought we could be happy in.
Your smile looked a lot like the light at the end of the tunnel
Right before the train hits you.
I used to squint my eyes when I looked at you
Like I was looking at the sun
Or a car accident I wanted to be part of
I’m sorry I ever thought you could be anything ugly to me
You were the only beautiful thing in this hideous place.
I couldn't look at you clearly,
because I knew I would see my own face staring back at me and
your eyes were the only place I never wanted to be dead inside of.
You can only break your knuckles so many times
Before you cant hold yourself together anymore.
My hands haven’t stopped shaking since you left
I don’t know how to tell them you’re not coming back.
See, I used to say I never wanted to end up like my father
Now I have to say I never want to end up like you,
Which means I can’t leave without saying goodbye
But I tried to write my eulogy last night
And realized it's hard to write about someone I never knew.

We made a fire; went down in the flames.
We sailed the ocean, and drowned in the waves.
Built a cathedral, but we never prayed.
We had it all, yeah, and we walked away.

Point of no return and now it's just too late to turn around.
I try to forgive you but I struggle cause I don't know how.
We built it up so high and now I'm falling,
it's a long way down.
It's a long way down, from here.

We had a mountain, but took it for granted.
We had a spaceship, but we couldn't land it.
We found an island, but we got stranded.
We had it all. Who could've planned it?

Point of no return and now it's just too late to turn around.
I try to forgive you but I'm struggling cause I don't know how.
We built it up so high and now I'm falling,
it's a long way down, from here.
Such a long way down...
It's a long way down.
It's a long way down.
Such a long way down...
It's a long way down.
It's a long way down.

Everybody wants to roll with the cool times and say
yes when everybody wants yes and
no when everybody wants no but
when it comes down to it, none of that ever made
a real person, none of that ever taught somebody
how to love somebody else. And I think you'll find
in the end, when you don't know who wants yes or no
and when asked what those mean, you don't know
I'll still be here. Saying yes. Saying no. Telling the truth.
In the end, I know how to love. And I love you.