this room is sad
drab
empty and unloved
i think
stupid, useless
aren't exactly the words i would use to describe myself
but you can see signs of wear and tear
recklessness in every corner of my room

incompetent, incapable;
here's the pencil, now make it work
except i've never been taught how to hold a pencil
i suppose that's the type of thing you should know
hold a pencil
and just
write

but the life has been beaten out of me
out of my hand
by poems i'm told i should appreciate
by blanks left in the sky
which beg to be filled in by me
what do i know?
about skies, about poems

i'd love it if i knew what my own room looked like
but lately i've been turning off the lights
only turning them back on in small corners
where i need to see pieces of my poems
i'm not so completely lost,
but then again, i am
ask me where i keep my clothes,
where my books are

the books i'd once known like the back of my hand
mean nothing to me in the dark
my hand means nothing to me in the dark
i may as well be the stuffy air
floating aimlessly

i swear, everyone else has soft nightlights
elaborate chandeliers that cast beautiful shadows across the floors

i know i am standing on the floor,
that i am sitting on the floor,
and those very same floors trap me in;
so i know no more than the floors.

fifteen and fourteen
don't seem worlds apart
but tread lightly, my love
for some lines are so thin,
the clock striking twelve
will push you over.

at fifteen
strangers picked me up
battered and left in pieces
and told me i could pass
for seventeen
so i guess that made me seventeen

fifteen brought love
that lasted one night because a rumor
was being spread that i spread my legs for another boy
but my heart is not a pit stop
and i can only take so many half loves
before i break underneath the weight

and i've learned not to sell small vials
of love
because boys would rather hear that i have a boyfriend
than that i'm not interested

fifteen was my only friend
in an open field where kids held
shards of glass close to their chests
and stabbed people recklessly

fifteen, you left me
and i got cut bad but you came back
and made a sappy poem of my blood
so fifteen, i loved you

or i loved the idea of who you made me
i never let my summer depression define me
but you broke me and rearranged the pieces
into someone that made more sense
someone who hid in every corner of parties
who didn't stand out against the alcohol stains on the couch

i didn't know who i was
until i told myself fifteen made me
because fifteen brought the realisation
that if i didn't **** myself soon
college was a real prospect
and life was a real prospect
that wasn't waiting for me to gather my bearings

where does fifteen end?
you follow me everywhere i go
and i can't seem to shake the feeling that
twenty won't look a lot better
just with larger fields
and sharper glass

fifteen, you held my hand
and poured salt in each of my wounds
and i want to tell you
i wish i never needed you
but my bones have healed
and my heart's set on more
so thank you;

get yourself acquainted with new smells
and let them fill the sad corners of your home;
two months ago i would've told you
i wanted to bottle up his smile and keep it in my pocket
to remind me that i love him even when it got lost between all the heavy words

but he left a heart-shaped hole in my life
and the shape is too intricate for me to fill
with empty love
so i abandoned the space

beds can only be so comfortable
when you get used to them
and sink further into the mattress each day
you become prisoner to an idea of safety
and the feeling of emptiness

i left and found green gardens
roses and sunflowers; i thought
i'd never seen a flower in my life
he'd painted me a life so bleak i think i'd stopped seeing color

maybe i don't love the garden for its' flowers and grass
but i can finally feel the sun against my skin

i'd always thought i was too sensitive
because he was my sun

i promise you
this is not a sad poem
or a love poem
but rather an ode to
me
and all the gardens growing within me;

take the time to know your body
and love your twisted brain

i don’t like the way he looks at me anymore
because it scares me how fast his eyes turned hateful
and my skin is too sensitive to bare the heat
radiating from the sun

and it’s taken me so long to say it without any edge
but i need to find somewhere,
where the air is cleaner
and smiles are softer

and i’ll probably stay here for another year
but i’ve begun to favour bathroom stalls to open fields
filled with sharp kids who cut anyone weaker

and i’ve begun to understand that short
shy girls don’t have to fit in the same mold as everybody else
and i don’t have to break my back for anybody

now that i can breathe
maybe i’ll be alright.

over the last week i realised how many girls
don't even eat their lunches in the bathroom stalls
but sit and let the pipes keep them company

because food and empty stomachs built on empty hearts
never got along
but i found comfort in the soft sighs of the girl sitting in the next stall
tapping her foot along to nothing in particular

it scared me to chew too loudly on my food
so i'd wait until someone flushed a toilet or laughed really loudly
because they didn’t need to know i favoured
bathrooms to the loud silence of high school kids

i didn't particularly love the smell of dettol, the beige walls
or the idea that someday
my recollection of high school would consist
of just that

but to all the kids who destroyed my resolve
lied to me and told me i was translucent; i want
to tell you

that i like the sound of creaking pipes
better than the venom your sharp tongues spit
and i am so glad to say that you are only
a marker of a discovery
that there is so much more to this campus

so trust me when i say
when i’m old and wrinkled, a shell
of who i used to be
i won’t think of you

i miss the way he made my heart feel full
because even when it hurt the weight made me feel like i was worth something
and there was his beautiful smile always on the tip of my tongue
but tangled in his harsh words

and i loved the isolated idea of him sitting alone at home
when my mind distanced his loud laugh from the sadness hidden in an open field
my breath would get caught in my chest and i felt so light
he's just like me
but prettier and softer round the edges

and there is a sad song he once showed me that i can't stop playing
because i miss him and his hands
and the way he held me against the sun
against his chest and i felt
like i was dying because i have so much love for him
and there is not enough light in me to tell him that

he's written in so many of my poems
that i couldn't keep inside and couldn't change
to look prettier
because he was an unfiltered poem that
could always make me cry
and now i can barely write and everything
is caught in my chest

when you fall in love with a boy who says things because they sound right
it gets hard separating your love for him
and your obsession with an idea of who he could be
if he could just love you

and my words stopped having the same beautiful
rhyme when we stopped talking
i wrote this mess of a poem for all your confusing sides
to make sense of you
so do i still love you?

the night of my birthday
i had an epiphany
while a boy was trying to ***** me
underneath the table

while i was surrounded by everyone
i didn’t even know
and maybe memories seem fuller
in my sober head but i thought

i’d rather slit my wrists and
lose the scars
than share oxygen with anyone here

occasionally i’d say
my problem isn’t that i don’t have friends
but that i can’t make friends

and maybe i don’t want to know people
and retell their stories like a signature
but let my stories be known
residing in some other soul

i looked at his smile
and i hated myself because
still i don’t know if he makes me happy
or if i’ve fallen in love with the idea of
who he could be if he could just
love me for more than my skin

i’d love to find the perfect metaphor for him
because he is an ever-changing
open-ended question i’ll
never be able to answer

last week
he was a song stuck in my head and
i loved the idea of being obsessed with
all his verses but i was terrified
because i always got sick of songs i loved

yesterday
he was a hazy memory buried underneath
furtive glances and stolen kisses
and it used to be enough knowing that
he’d love to break me over any other girl

but when i’ve felt the clear screen
between me and everybody else
i thought for a second he loved me
despite my broken skin
and it’s not enough

and distancing myself from my mind
has never seemed to work because lately
loneliness has been a recurring theme and
one thing that keeps me company
is the idea that
one day i'll think of you
and feel okay

i don't know if i will be okay
but i hope you won't be the one holding my hand
and writing my story for me
i hope i’ll be okay