you've properly terrified me
of ever letting you exist outside my imagination
where i can paint you however i like;
however i need to before i fall asleep
and dream of you once more

you've properly terrified me
of my own smile
and made the stretch of lips across my teeth
feel so unnatural and foreign
tight and uncomfortable
i hate smiling, love
so much so that i’d rather weep in front of you
than feign a smile
you’ve shattered my smile

i've forgotten
what soft can be
after i’d gotten so used to the harsh distance between me and your skin
i can’t even remember if it was truly soft
or if that is another figment of my imagination
i just know that you broke me
along with any illusion of love and safety i harboured within

and then
halfway through this poem
you stepped outside my mind
and, realer than ever,
put words in my mouth
so sweet i never thought they could exist within me

you broke any delusion i had of you being perfect
with apologies sewn into your heart
but you weren’t evil either;
you existed in a realm somewhere in between
that my fragile brain could not comprehend,
but one in which my fragile brain could exist
i wasn’t going to break,
because your hands held me up

i was happy enough that my smile made home of my face once more
until, that is,
it started feeling tight and unnatural again;
love, i’m beginning to understand
not even a dozen roses
engraved with ‘i love you’s and the right words in the right order
can rearrange my broken,
rotten heart;
i love you,
but love in this fragmented desert
does not grow that much,
through no fault of your own,
i assure you;
you just chose to damage the wrong girl’s heart.

this is not love
but a fetishisation of
drowning and dying breaths

don’t try and tell me this is how it should feel
that the lack of blood on your hands
somehow makes you innocent
you are implicated through the slashes on my heart,
love, there is no getting around the fact that you wielded a knife
and recklessly stabbed at me

to say that you loved me
is to say you fell in love with how bloodied you left me
don’t misunderstand,
i am not the pain you embedded within me
love is much too fragile for you to understand
or even recognise
and if there was ever any trace of love between us
that would let you blink for a second
and touch me softly
you murdered that

the distance remains, and the empty space helped me see
you are twisted and dark, love,
and i could never fall in love with you
or even look at you

don’t try and tell me i’m broken
i am, but not because i love you
you arranged the pieces of my heart
into ugly slurs that made me feel so worthless
how could you love me, or even pretend you did?

this is not love,
but the residue of the unhealthiest of attachments;
calling you love is kind and caring
and you deserve neither, love.

bring everything i love just within reach
joy with a noose tied around it
and smiles
have become insufficient
because only when we've cut them down
and weighed them against others'
do we find solace in knowing
at least i'm doing something right;
at least i'm normal

of all the people standing in the same room
staring blankly at each other
i seemed to struggle the most
with reconciling words on screens
and human interaction
which has become so alien to us
i almost forgot how to reach out to you

this boy that i liked
that i had invested oxygen and beautiful poems in
had given me fleeting glances and midnight inklings of loneliness
embedded his own pain in the corners of my smile to carry
i let him
because he told me he loved my smile
but it was never enough that i only wept silently
in the privacy of my room

because even there
he'd seemed to find a way in
through my screen
he'd trace every jagged word
and every dark thought
back to me and i'd watch him break me
over and over
paralyzed with the fear that he'd stop loving me
because i wasn't there to make him see through me

i wonder how differently i could write our story
if we weren't so separated
two
different
distant beings
i suppose i was able to see how little you cared
to have never picked up the phone
and ask me how i was doing.

in which i wake up one morning
and find myself no longer cold and starved
in need of the warmth radiating from your eyes

or at least find you
a beautiful still
a video stuck on repeat
of the rise and fall of your chest
so hypnotizing i'd fall in love you at every
inhale;
exhale;

sleep suited you so well
when you were no longer stagnant and rigid
sharp lines melted into the mattress
and water was left to move
as it was meant to be

partially i'd hoped distance would blur every memory
every instinct to be close to you
but i'd begun by having nightmares so bleak
i saw you everywhere in the waking hours
behind my eyelids and right in front of me;
it'd become so distracting i could never really tell when you were truly there
tangible and so authentically you;

then i'd had the dreams
that have burned into my memory
and left a beautiful scar
that i would secretly love to wear with pride
in which some spectacular instance would make you realize
beautiful girls come in so many shapes
and perhaps i could be the beautiful girl
with whom you were enamored
it seemed real because i'd memorized every kiss you'd carelessly throw in my direction,
no matter how fleeting, it was your skin nonetheless
and i cherished it and twisted it into a beautiful tragedy
a real tragedy because i knew i could love you all the same.

then i wake up;
the rise and fall of your chest
the rise and fall of your chest
i think
if i say the words enough they will lose the gut-wrenching impact
and i'll no longer feel this dulled pain
that follows me wherever i go.

you, my love
taught me how to cut my hair
and shed my clothes

you, my love
asked me to go for a swim
and left me drowning because
i didn't know friends could take your breath away too

somehow, you’d drawn pretty lines
between every good thing in my life
and your pretty hands
all you are is a pretty girl
but your skin was so different from mine
i couldn’t help but try and mimic you
become you

i was never as good as you were
at batting my eyelashes at the right guy
i always chose the ones who broke hearts for sport
i never quite got the hang of the distant act
that even i would fall for
and i would never be good at mind-numbing small talk
that we seemed to beg for, just to fill the empty space between our hearts

your life was never real
because pretty girls like you
aren’t just pretty
but mean
and hurtful
and they will leave you
broken and bleeding on the side of the road
because you were a failed experiment

i don’t want to be mesmerised by your eyes anymore
because when i walk past you,
all i see is the despair under your eyes
you can’t fool me
like you did every other pretty girl
you’re just as broken as i am
but i swear to you,
i sleep much easier
knowing i don’t always have to be pretty.

girls
who blur my edges and kiss the sharp lines away
have no place in my heart
which they've teared and cut into a worn ornament
i'm nothing on the outside
and i was cold before you cut me open
but now i'm numb

and when i'm not,
i notice all the blood
down my chest
down my arms
under my eyes, there is nothing flowery
or frivolous about this pain, love
except in your twisted eyes

you're not really in my heart anymore
because girls like you
eventually move onto bigger,
better things
but i'm never the same as i was
you broke me beyond repair
and i have no more breath to invest in loving you

please;
go back to where you came from