so i know you remember the first time you kissed me
how you kissed me
despite how drunk we were

this was a moment i would've loved to remember a lot more clearly
and i know you would too
because you told me

i am too beautiful to kiss drunk
when my two eyes could be four
and my lips aren’t really moving

i think i should not be so naive
to suspect that someone that coherent when they are intoxicated
could have anything within them
other than dark caves and voids that can not be filled

the next day
you taught me how to put pen to paper
and i felt so heartbroken that nothing came out

you drew beautiful portraits in red blood
that moved something in my heart
and made it click right

i do not think i quite understood any of your poems,
but they were so undeniably elegant
i fell in love with them almost as much as you

and i told you so,
so you kissed me

softer than before,
because this time you had the balance
and i had the anxiety boiling under my throat

your kisses
spilt blood over my paper
because you bit my lip so harshly
but then smoothed over your bites
and made them feel like the softest caresses

you were hurting me, though
with every touch
you chipped away at my armour
until i was naked
and i loved the feeling of your eyes dancing over my skin

but you didn't stop there
because underneath your pretty eyes
was a calculating look i ignored

how could you best break me?

and you would shake me until my parts couldn't hold up
throw me until there were individual pieces you could hold between your fingers

i don't know what you did with them
where you kept them
but i didn't miss them when your hands were on my waist
and when you stole my mouth
i couldn't exactly protest
but i wouldn't have if i could

my notebooks saw blood, though
more blood than they'd ever seen
spilling relentlessly like it was held captive in my vessels

this is probably a feeling i will never understand
because as much as i hated my body
and all that it held within
you made it feel right
in hindsight
you probably only ever touched me
because you wanted to make a home out of my body

still, that made me beautiful in your eyes
but you were draining me
just how long could i keep my skin youthful
and glowing when i was losing blood every waking minute?

i think i became a little deaf
to anything that wasn’t your voice
until one day you stopped telling me how beautiful i was
when you stopped writing poems about me
and started writing about another girl

this is how you cut me the deepest
and made me your very own poem
an artwork bleeding pain
and left me empty

and i used to think i had a bottomless pit within me
filled with blood and pain
but i’m running out
and i’m starting to see a little too much of you in my poems
i am starting to look at other girls
with the same calculating look you once cast my way

and i am realising
you never forgot me
perhaps you never intended to hurt me
if you were so empty you sought shelter in me
and killed me when you were trying to survive
i don’t think i could really blame you

besides
you still read my poems
so i know you still think about the first time you kissed me
just like i do

after i’d gotten rid of the vines and thorns
cutting off the circulation in my arms
i’d finally escaped you, my love
you were no longer a constant reminder
that i am broken
and i am never enough
i’d become my own person

and ever since then
floating alone has been so blissfully intoxicating
because, yes,
i was still covered in scars
but i couldn’t hear your voice
or even remember it

now
my feet have touched the ground
and my skin is shocked at how harsh the wind can be
you were ugly and cold
but not all ugliness
and coldness in the world belongs to your heart

and i am so lonely
i will kneel on the ground
grasping at soil and far-gone corpses
in hopes to find someone

to just spend the day with;
not attach myself to,
but someone who’s company doesn’t suffocate me
that i can tell about the pretty girl i may be in love with
and about how sometimes i have dreams
that feel like nightmares

it would be okay
if i had someone
i don’t
and so much of the time i’m numbing myself
building walls between myself and my feelings
i can forget that it’s not okay

but it’s not,
and i wish i had someone to make it okay.

each of your fingers has a body count
of girls wrapped around them,
waiting for you to tuck them in the crook of your neck
girls who are stone cold sober
trying to break your ribs and get to your heart

i am one of those girls
who are naive enough to think it is any warmer inside
and that you are capable of radiating anything
other than temporary lust

and it is disgusting that you think
you can store so many inside your mouth
under your tongue
inside your cheek
because you know they all would probably **** for a spot
and you slowly feed on their insecurities
chipping away at their self esteem

then you spit them out
that is, if they haven’t died in your palms
and they are colder than ever,
if it is even possible
your fingerprints embedded in their skin
they all carry the same scars,
but none of them have thawed enough
to see how truly ugly you are

you are the boy who had me wrapped around his finger
writing poems about how obscenely evil you are
when i know i am going to see you tomorrow
and grasp at your fingertips, trying to claw my way into your heart.

how can you say nothing
in so many words

i used to yell at you for
littering my collarbone with empty words
my neck with love-bites
but i'm the same, love,
if not worse

because i think i'm better
in that i've never held a heart like you have
and beat it to a pulp
but we are made of the same flesh
and ugly in the same ways

my flesh clinging onto my bones
begging not to let my heart fall out
and wanting you to touch it all the same
maybe i could be the type to dig through skin
and find your heart, desperate to keep beating

i can break you just as easily,
if only you let me;

there is a boy i've mentioned in my poems
only a few times,
not enough to elicit the thought that i love him

but i do;
in actuality, i probably don't
since i have a tendency to label things love
from corpses to blooming gardens;
i wouldn't recognise love if it knocked me out
but i like to imagine my poems are about love

so i love him,
and the songs he sings to me
and the words he sews especially for me
but after thousands of love poems,
the word becomes a little bit redundant

even when he says it for the first time
and it tastes new and foreign on my skin
it becomes stale so fast
and i anticipate it

maybe he also misunderstands love
and only likes my corpse
but to me
they are the same

kiss me
even though i choke on your name
and burn when you look away
i promise you i am fragile
in a beautiful way

you are not like any other boy who's touched me
but i won't get mad if you break me;

the sun rises all the same
and eventually gives way to the moon
but i am emptier than a sandbox
filled with abandoned toys and memories

when there are no longer colourful crayons and words
for me to put my sadness into picture books
to be understood

even the poems tucked beneath my tongue suffer
because i try to bleed
but all that comes out is grey
and i am far more concerned with the awful poems
than i am with my colourless blood

this hollowness is the type
which typically accompanies sundown
when there is not enough light surrounding me
to compensate for whatever is eating away at my insides

this hollowness
usually disappears after a shower
and sleep
but the residue of which can hang onto my gut
persistently reminding me

i've never had love that felt safe
in which the world held its breath
and righted itself

not even when i'd sat next to a girl i pretended i loved
who wrote me poems
and smiled at me in all the right ways
and hurt me so poetically, i could never blame her

even she could not get me drunk enough
melting and compliant
to feel like we fit together well

though i've spent a great number of my days
sitting alone in bed wishing she was next to me
i know her laughter is not as infectious as i want to believe
and i want her to kiss my apathy away
trail her fingers and replace my skin with fire
but she could only make my bones
feel too large, skin too tight

still, i want her to kiss me
so i drink enough that my eyes slide shut
and she's so much prettier
and i let her hold me;
force my body to melt and fit against hers
until i can kiss her;

or even remember that
despite my sheer smallness and insignificance
writing poems helps me sleep
like weaving my own tapestry of bedtime stories
something larger than life to me

but i’ve forgotten how to write, i guess
i’ve forgotten how to sleep
and how much i loved both
granted, they felt like secondhand talents
thing i’d learned to love only because this pretty girl did
or this pretty boy told me i made words dance and twist

i’ve forgotten how to breathe, as well,
without every other breath sounding like a heavy sob
that i can’t stifle, simply because everyone keeps me at a distance
i might as well be standing alone
in a hallway with the whitest walls;

again, i’ve forgotten how to write poems
i can’t even find the words to tell you
how empty walking near you feels

it’s a distant memory to me,
writing poems
sleeping
breathing

a bit of the distance i’ve wedged there myself
like when i see someone being held
held like that is the only thing keeping them intact
i feel just a little more cracked

but believe me,
being touched makes me cower in fear
and i feel nothing
not the warmness of another body,
not the softness of someone’s heart,
whose made themselves vulnerable enough that you can see right through them

i can’t make myself that sheer
maybe invisible,
but not so crystal clear that you know what is inside;
it’s disgusting,
and you would not be in in the least bit interested,
unless maybe i was crying.