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

i am broken and scattered across seven continents
but give me time;

just a second
to gather myself;

you’ve got me stuck in the empty spaces
between the pages that nobody talks about
and i can’t write because my fingers are broken
and my hands are so numb

and all my melodies fall flat
because i can’t spin a beautiful cloth out of
this ugly tale

nothing can thaw me;

wasn’t it yesterday that
you held my hand at a crossroads
and told me
love,
it doesn’t matter where we go
as long as i’m with you.

and the winds were harsh and my heart was cold
but i want to say you were right.

"love,
it doesn’t matter;
as long as i’m with you."

but i’m not with you
and i’m floating
because my hands have gotten used to
the cold
but my vision is blurred and i think
i’m chronically dizzy because
you probably took a piece of my mind when you left

why did you leave?

i am going through the motions,
and i am breathing again
but nothing feels real anymore
and i can’t even tell if you ever really existed.

i am giving him the tools to dismantle me,

and i can’t

stop letting him hurt me.

you are always a word
colour-coded love on my page
a story i don't know how to write.

and i always try to because
the pain caught in my throat
has always weighed me down

and it
doesn't matter anymore that the words don't make sense
because when they are on the page
and i am bleeding
you are out of my system;

but i always find another word.

there is no honesty in my tears

when my brow is furrowed and my lower lip trembles,
i am trying to tell you

there is a whole war inside my head.

but no matter how much i know
that stab wounds hurt,

the blood is never real.

nowadays sadness feels a lot like excitement, like my mind trying to get a rise out of my heart. like i can prove i'm a human, and i swear i breathe the same oxygen as you, and when i get cut i bleed all the same.

i don't know if i'm scared of you, or riveted by the idea of you disassembling me, only to find out that it's all a petty act, and i'm gray. i don't know if i want to break you or be broken by you.

either way i'm sick, right?

self-destructive chaos ensues:
the sinuous arch of her back,
the thrill of seedy stalls.
empty words, empty stomach,
on which i drink gasoline.

i drink gasoline.
it tastes bitter,
it tastes like her.
i chug gasoline.

burn my lungs,
fry my brain,
but fill my heart, alas.

i’ve loved and been loved,
seen smiles so whole my heart grew tenfold,
then crumbled because it was too full.

a self-destructive act,
i fell in love with a girl who put all her love
right between us so i couldn’t see her anymore,
and i had to yell to reach her.
so she stopped listening because
all my words turned ugly.

and it took all the breath i had in me
to search the souls of others
and forget how soft hers was to the touch.

an alternative,
i found solace in the mouth of a boy who said
nothing ever could quite measure up
to the beautiful curves of my body.
somewhere in the midst of empty words
and miles of beautiful skin,
i found myself wondering if i fell in love with
the soft way his mouth find mine,
or the pretty words he spoke against my skin.

and so i broke him to see what was inside,
each cracked piece vanishing right in front of me
cutting my fingers
until i could only hold onto a bloodied memory
of the corners of his smile.

i found love in the details,
in two heart-broken heartbreakers
cut from the same cloth;

and i am the reckless seamstress
who holds scissors like they are
a toy, love like it is a toy;

and i am the defect.

a party joke:
and my sobriety is the punchline.

i walk into the room because i'd just been bleeding and i want to forget. at the price of a reputation, or any innocence, i walk in knowing that i'm drinking to escape myself. everyone else knows the birthday boy also wants me drunk.

my sobriety is the punchline, but i can’t even remember the joke.

she is a pop song stuck in a teenaged girl’s head, lyrics to your caption. a tune that is so persistent, but one you can’t quite remember.

i wonder who wrote the words to my song; was it me, a hopeless romantic in search of a melody i couldn’t tire of, or all the guys i use to validate my body? was it me, the girl who holds sharp objects to her skin and scars the words into her heart, or the girl who broke it?

i am every pop anthem, the ones you get drunk to, the ones that preach acceptance and self love. i am the ones that girls get ***** to, and the ones that advocate feminism. i am black and pink.

but i am also a sad poem, the kind that you write instead of killing yourself, the kind whose words are itching to break out of your skin, break your skin. i am the poem that hurts your fingers as you put pen to paper, as you bleed your soul out.