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;

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.

if you shake me hard enough
that my brain liquefies and pours out my eyes
i couldn't tell you what would come out

a translucent stream of drunken mistakes,
the putrid smell of a thousand unrequited loves,
the anxiety biting at my nails,
or nothing, maybe.

maybe the things that fill my head
until it swells
are made purely of oxygen
and the belief that i am anything more
than an animated shell of a human.

nonetheless, my head throbs
with empty and full thoughts,
they resonate within my limbs,
traverse the edges of my fingers and manifest in shaky hands.

my empty thoughts,
they lead me nowhere,
walk with me in circles until i get dizzy.
i have rationalized every feeling of mine
until it's become a linear code i force myself to operate,
until it is no longer what it is

i've built myself into someone i'm not,
because i only have my thoughts,
but they are not me.
so if you shake me hard enough,
until my heart falls through my stomach,
i couldn't tell you what would come out.

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?

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;

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.

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.

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 don’t want to be thirty
and wasting brainpower on
not
hurting myself

i don’t want to be thirty at all
because for three years
i’ve thought that sixteen was the cutoff line
maybe college
but surely, someday,
i’d find it in me to **** myself

but one more year becomes two,
and i don’t even remember
any of the last few months
except crying
and writing poems to make myself feel better
and then not
feeling better

i don’t want to be spending thirty minutes in the shower anymore
digging my nails into my skin
teetering on the edge of picking up a knife,
feeling jealous of fourteen year old me
who got the chance to break my skin
or one month ago me
who was selfish enough to keep cutting her hip
even though she said she'd stop

but to present me
who hasn't drawn blood since then
the milestone
doesn't even feel like one
because this is the worst i've ever felt

and i don’t want to be this volatile,
that talking to someone for five minutes keeps me floating
and that not talking
to one person
will sink me;
this is not life,
and it is killing me
that all i do is not **** myself,
and i am tired of having each sentence start with suicide
bone tired, chillingly casual suicide
because nothing stops it

i’m going to **** myself, aren’t i?
i don’t know where my threshold is
and when i’m going to reach it
but i am barely scraping by
through days that should be a breeze

but what selfish ******* does that?
cuts herself and then promises people who love her that she'll stop
then promising herself to die because maybe they don't love her

me, i guess

i am just
so miserable
and sometimes i don’t care that my parents would be permanently broken
or my friends scarred;
maybe when i’m eighteen
and just a little more alone

maybe when i’m eighteen
i’ll finally **** myself

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?

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

i like being held by you,
head on your chest,
heartbeat echoing in my mind

i like being close to you,
enough to feel the rise and fall of your breathing,
or the smallest twitch in your stomach

i like your arms wrapped around me,
making me feel small
but safe in your hold;
i like it when you squeeze me tighter
like you're scared of letting go
or losing me

i like how warm you are,
how soft and pliant your body is against mine
like it is made to meld
just for me

i like when you trace patterns on my back,
nonchalantly run your fingers up and down my arm;
when you rest your head in the crook of my neck,
and the sensitive skin jumps at your touch

i like your hand on my hip,
on my waist,
under my shirt;
your skin belongs on mine,
and there is an exhilarating warmth
spreading through me at every touch

i like the way my skin begs to be touched,
grabbed, soothed,
triggered only by the heat radiating off you;
i like the way it jumps when you do touch it,
like a christmas wish fulfilled

i like anything that exists in the same space as us,
when there is no room left between our bodies,
like you are my lifeline and i am yours

and, to be honest,
i quite like you too.

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

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;

you fell in love first with the curvature of my hips.

your love started at the base of my spine,
where skin and bone and all that was in between
were imbued with lust;
hips that moved of their own accord
against your own,
hips that jumped at every touch,
however rough or delicate,
and drank in your hands

then your love manifested in the indent of my waist,
fragile and so breakable with your sturdy hands framing me,
steadying me through the frantic rut of our bodies.
next, it materialized in my collarbone, all over my chest
in deep kisses and in your mouth on me,
in the desperation as i pressed myself closer to you
and the sinful things your tongue did to me

and then you kissed me;
between my lips, in every crevice of my mouth,
your love had infiltrated my soul,
marking my insides
and i reveled in the pleasant hum of my body,
knowing this is what it was made for
and that you were all i wanted

it was not sobering enough to realize
that this is not where love was meant to go

your love, in fact, was meant to reside on the surface of my skin,
nowhere near my fragile heart;
i had not planned for the shocking warmth of it there,
or how quickly attached i’d grown to it

it transpired that you hadn’t planned this either,
that you weren’t ready for someone to take a hold of your love
and make a home out of it

now, the memory is on the forefront of my mind,
stuck in my throat mixed with hurt,
because still you kiss a path down my throat,
hold me and bruise my skin,
my heart;
my organs are cold now,
only ceasing to shiver when you touch me

but when you are talking to other girls,
or ignoring me,
the nipping at my heart is merciless
and i feel like i am being devoured alive

i fall in love with hickeys that litter my skin,
praying and hoping i see you once more
before they disappear
taking your love with them

perhaps this is not love,
for it hurts too much to be kindhearted,
soft love that i mistook it for

still, i look for it in your eyes every time
before you close them and kiss me hard.

for every poem i'd ever written,
i wondered what my near candid thoughts
sound like to a stranger;
when i wear my heart on my sleeve
except it's draped in metaphors and vague sentences
how is anyone meant to understand
that this is the beautiful boy i'm talking about?
or that on some very specific day
i endured a trauma no one will fully know?

often i feel sad
in an empty way
like a mug no one drinks out of
and i don't even have enough emotion within me to write poems
so i read other people's poems;
perhaps it will fill some void within me
if i find the perfect set of words to explain everything away
and yet
none of them make sense to me
every trauma, every boy loved
doesn't make sense to me when i haven't experienced it

and perhaps i love poetry for all the wrong reasons,
because i never just
find it pretty;
but instead put the ugliest words inside me on paper
and shape them until i can stand to look at them

and there is little to nothing honest about it
but i am usually choking with these words
and anything remotely true on paper
may just ease my heartache,
so i write;

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.

i found that you are my great big love

these are usually decisions i make myself,
roles i assign to innocent boys,
but you have filled this position regardless of my objections;
though i don’t really have any.

you have become the beat-up sneakers
that are strewn in the hallway of your house,
white and *****,
fraying at the edges

you have become the stuffed animal i bought you,
which you hold every night in your sleep
and i love the ****** bear almost as much as i love you

i see you in your sweater that hangs on the back of my chair;
i am almost too scared to wear it,
to defile its essence as something that belongs to you,
but i can not help but bury my face in it from time to time.
it is like a little pocket of you i can carry
whenever you are not with me

you are the books i lend you,
ones i now associate with the words falling from your lips,
upon which i trip;
you speak beautifully about books,
and though i struggle to keep up,
it is a soft fall that i endure,
one i will gladly endure.

you are a playlist i made
of songs that lay a roadmap of our love,
songs that remind me of different points in relationship,
though you nearly always plague my mind;

it has come to a point where everything
that happens to coincide with your presence in my life
is inherently you;
the joy i possess is you,
the warmth that swarms my body is you,
the smile tugging at my lips

and i love finding you everywhere,
because this is exactly where you belong.
in every corner of my room, of my own skin,
you are proudly displayed;
because you are my great big love, my dear,
and this is exactly where you belong.

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.

an indistinct pang of guilt
when i hear birds chirping in the sun
and they sound nothing like the ones back home
and yet everything about them reminds me
of home

unbeknownst to these birds,
their chatter carries me across a continent
and across a sea
to a home where there are pocket sized versions of my family and i
where my grandmother is busying herself in the kitchen
and my uncle fiddles with the tiny TV facing the living room
filled with a cast of colorful characters
much brighter than anything this TV could give us

unbeknownst to these birds,
they carry me to a sand filled tent
where a single ray of sunlight enters from a gap in the entrance
and illuminates the book in my hands
and outside, their chatter creates a beautiful symphony
punctuated by the crash of waves on the shore
unbeknownst to these birds,
they warm my heart far more than any sun could

i hate these birds
the ones in my plastic backyard, outside my plastic house
guilting me into remembering;
this is not a home,
this is not my home.

i read a novel
about a boy who loved another so
he lost himself in his beautiful smile
and never quite retrieved his whole soul

it broke my heart to read an altered version
of a story that i'd become so familiar with
the idea of which i romanticised in my
sleep deprived head resting on my pillow
wrought with worry about who you told
i was your god and you, my mouthpiece on earth
and who you told you could never love me

because it happened that you'd wear our love on your sleeve
under fleece blankets and choked sighs
but still, you kissed me in the separate rooms of parties
and held my hand when i cried the most

but it also happened that most of my tears
were cried in your expense
and there were people who knew me
as no more than the girl you hated

did you really hate me?
i think the possibility of indifference hurt more
because if you hated me i mattered enough
for my sharpness to affect you,
your delicate skin
as twisted as it is
i loved any version of reality in which
i played a role in your life

but if you didn't care
if you didn't care that i still talk about you
that you've placed a target on my back
for all your friends to abuse my compliance
i'm just an ink smudge you have to look at everyday
but so insignificant you don't remember my name

do you remember all the love i cried onto your skin before you left?
i had wanted it to burn into your heart
so maybe someday you could live to forgive me
and never forget love at the end of each sentence

and i clung onto the hope
of you losing your tunnel vision
but love,
this isn't how it's supposed to be
we're not right, are we?

you pushed me to the brink of
i love you
where love is rain
that doesn't often grace these desert sands
and maybe just a little affection could
save us from this storm
i love you
and i meant it
when i slit my wrists for you
i love you
carved like a bitter song
i can't stop humming
i love you,
always caught in my throat
occupying the space
mixed with oxygen you'd once breathed
i love you
but we were never right
when all we've done
is cut down our hearts
so they could weigh the same
that can't be love

we put an expiration date on
one night stands and drunken texts
but there never was a cut off line
for my sick infatuation
with your skin pressed up against mine
the memory of which only lingered
in the middle of dreams fuller than life
i can delude myself into believing i still love you
and the memory chases me through the waking hours
but i'm tired of running
i'm tired

reinvent yourself like i plan to
strip your mattress of the bloodstained sheets
and find a new corner of the world
to win over prettier girls
as someone who never broke my heart
whose heart was never touched by my evil hands
we could be more
if you wrenched the letters apart
and left me
you could be more.

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.

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.

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.

i’ve been grieving
for the girl who used to live here
who was sprawled on this bed
disgusted by her own body,
my own body,
and yet

i am grieving for her
and the bedsheets are privy to my despair
because i am shapeless and nothing
even though i am still the same body
except now it is the only thing of mine
that i’m not disgusted by

this is a body you want, is it not?
that you wouldn’t mind touching,
getting lost in for a fleeting moment
before you discard of me;
i used to think my body was the reason
i bored you
and that if you didn’t love it,
i shouldn’t either

but i think there was a lot
of my awkward laughter and awful jokes you had to get through
before you realised
maybe i could be
hot

and then it became a matter of
convincing me that you could like my jokes
and me, for all my faults and shortcomings

and there is no one i expected this less from
which is why i handed myself to you
with the tools and a handbook on how to dismantle me
and i told you things that made me
me, things i could never have back

and i gave you my body
with confidence i didn’t know lived within me;
you were the only one i wanted
the only one i wanted to want me
and for one night
i didn’t feel like a pit stop
but someone in love
who could be loved

i didn’t expect this from you
and i don’t know what to do with my body
because i didn’t expect our friendship
to be synonymous with you wanting to **** me
and i couldn’t imagine a world where
sweet, sensitive and awfully bad at flirting
you would make my body disposable

but my body
has been disposed of;
and so has my laugh,
and my jokes,
because you loving me
meant me loving me
and i don’t think you are mean
or evil for not wanting me

but i can’t even hate myself
because i don’t know who i am anymore

i’ve been grieving
for the naive girl who put you on a pedestal
and herself right next to you,
who was more ashamed of herself
than her love for you;

and
one thing
i know about the nameless person
lying in my bed
is that she no longer has it in her
to love herself.

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.

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.

a change of scene
from a boy whose hands are tainted with my blood
whose heart knows the ins and outs of my love
to one whose last name still sounds new
what was his last name, again?

a change of scene
to a boy who smiles demurely
like it is a secret he is capable of something so beautiful
demure isn’t a word you would associate with a boy
but this one is;
soft in every sense of the word
and i’ve come to enjoy hearing him talk
about mundane things and important things

but often i feel i am falling
for the feeling of falling
loving for the sake of loving
often i feel i am being redundant in my proclamations of love
because i simply don’t love him
perhaps a change of scene is just that;
a change, nothing more,
nothing less

but it is entirely true that my heart trips when i see him smile
and that when my face is close to his my mind goes hazy
is this not how i felt last time? was i not in love before?

maybe i love him, i think i love him

maybe the third time’s the charm
maybe this one will stick
this love is somewhat uninspired
like a stand-in to convince myself
i can love someone else
and i can love artificially
without bleeding on the carpet
but it is also innocent
in the way i watch his lip curl
and get distracted when his eyes widen

this love
probably isn’t love
but it is warm and taking its own shape
and it does not cut me deep like i have been before
so what choice do i have?

as much as every perfectly chosen word
inked onto the pages of a love story;
the glances i quickly steal when you look away,
the words i tentatively send at three a.m.
confessing things i didn’t know lived within me
now forming and taking space between us

your arms host thousands of my insecurities and fears
and you seem to hold them so lovingly
so i am no longer scared of giving them life;
the love with which you hold things that are pocket-sized versions of me
is a love embedded in my memory, sparked to life every time i look at you,
you look at me,
i really think we love each other the same way
because the beauty i see in you,
could be seen in me by someone who handled fragile things with care
i think i could be beautiful in that way
which is to say, i think i could be revered,
because this is a beauty i worship,
ever-present in my dreams, and fresh in memory during my waking hours

i am not so delusional to believe i am a god,
but i must have mistaken the softness in your eyes
for a sort of appreciation
love that only you could harbour for me,
because you do not love me
i’ve learned, painfully,
that i am a fool for loving so easy
and that most people do not toss such a delicate feeling around so recklessly
and trustingly,
for good reason
because now this is love blanketed in pain
and anxiety that does anything but cushion the fall

on paper, i swear we make sense
and i can believe that you do not love me
but there are several pieces missing
i must be seeing myself differently in the mirror than you do
because i thought we made sense
but if you do not love me, maybe i am not the person i thought i was with you
that girl is not stupid enough to fall into this type of trap
but i am
you should have told me how ugly i really am;
i must be, if my heart is not one you could embrace

and i need to take back all the pieces i gave you
because it no longer makes sense for you to hold them the way you do
even if there is still space, empty,
i do not want to be touching you
or for you to be touching anything that is remotely me
because i think i could easily believe you love me all over again.

do you want to know
about all the boys who have my skin burned into their memory?
or the boys who’ve touched me enough times that their fingers
move in a certain pattern across my hips
but their minds can’t differentiate between me and the next girl?

you say you want me to tell you about them
but do you want to know about the people
who have rearranged your daughter into someone you don’t recognise?
it’s possibly my fault you don’t know me,
but, mother, i don’t think you would love the fleshy redness of my inverted skin

there are small, but important tokens of me that you’ve collected
like a few of the scars on my wrists,
ones i told you i stopped carving years ago,
but how do you not notice the accumulation of darkened skin
and bandaids in the bin?
mother, i think maybe sometimes you see my rearranged body parts
and then look the other way because it’s not who you want me to be

in your head,
am i just your daughter
or my own person?
am i so indebted to you for giving me my life that you now own it?

i don’t even know what being my own person would mean to you
if all you know about me is carefully selected
by an idiot daughter

mother,
you ask me if i’ve been lying to you,
if i’m sure that last week i went out where i said i would
and i think neither of us are so stupid that we would be fooled
into thinking we are built on anything but an awkward bed of lies,
so, mother, please stop asking me
because i think my mom should be the type of person i can tell about boys
and wrists, and i wish there was some part of me
that felt you were more than just mother

who has never been fifteen and lonely,
who has never thought she was in love with a boy
how can you ask me to be honest with you
when your smile is painted on,
hiding judgments and disappointment before i’ve even disappointed you?

mother, i love you,
but i can’t be honest and perfect at the same time
and i need room to breathe
without having to hide every exhale from you
but i also don’t know how to change my perpetual lying
and awkward movements around you
so, mother, who do you want me to be?

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.

your scents make you

like a sweater laden with the aroma baked cookies,
and the faint hint of your friend's cologne
it is a comfort, hanging on your shoulders

or a sweet girl's perfume
that smells of chamomile and honey
her naive innocence
it is rich, the way it invades your nose

the boy you love
who smells like warmth if it could be bottled up
sweet and sour at the same time,
some drugstore body spray he uses
and yet it reminds you of evenings spent with him,
clinging onto your clothes,
or when some stranger wearing it walks past

even your own smell
beneath this manufactured, manicured
version of you,
is not lost on his skin
or his bedsheets

like the vanilla you used to lather on your skin,
mature and yet demure in its subtle sweetness;
still, your skin tasted of sweat and lust and
you

tell me, what do you smell like?
the clothes that sit in a laundry basket
for a few days,
the candle that burns in your room

i don't know

ask your friends;
they tell you it's a spicy scent;
a medical undertone;
it doesn't even stand out;

here you are,
defining the tang of a boy’s sweat
and what does yours mean to anyone?
nothings, perhaps

and it doesn’t sit well with you;
so you stand in aisles of perfume,
a crowded, over-priced store,
deciding who you want to be

the comforting cookies,
the innocent cup of tea,
it doesn’t even matter
you buy the prettiest bottle,
in lotions, in perfumes, in shower gels
a signature smell, you tell yourself,
maybe will make you make sense

you drench your skin in it for weeks
but you lose the lotion,
you forget to spray the perfume on in the morning,
run out and can’t find the same scent anymore

you borrow your beautiful friend’s perfume for a day
and it reminds you of her
the soft angles of her smile, her mermaid hair
you feel pretty

then it wears off when you get home
and you’re left with
medical, spicy nothing; what does that even mean?

what does it mean
to not know what your own body smells like?
to only have others' smells cling to you
is both a privilege and a hindrance

i am marked by lovers and friends
i have patches of skin that smell like certain boys
but does that not make the skin theirs?

your scent makes you, but i don’t have one.

you talk about ***
like it is tasteful,
your fingers ghosting the inside of my thighs
like it is pure,
but it is not.

you leave a trail of gunpowder,
hide explosives in the crevices of my skin,
and there is nothing tasteful
in the hunger with which you do so,
like you are both in a rush to bruise my neck
and get rid of me after.

there is nothing tasteful about the noises i make,
loud and empty to fill up this loveless space.
do not confuse these sounds
with approval;
with every ****** of your hips,
i am further disjointed from reality.
is that really me, the girl moaning like she is made of lust?

perhaps that noise,
your nails digging into my back,
my knuckles turning white as i hold onto your bed frame,
are the only things keeping me grounded

because i try not to get lost in your kisses
when you only kiss me as a prelude
to ******* me,
and i try to forget that there is a timer
on my free range of your body

still, i let you hold me down,
and i let you kiss me
but there is nothing tasteful about the way you look at me once you are done

i am not ****
but your eyes turn lazy and glaze over me
before moving onto more important things,
and there is
nothing tasteful about the way you strip my confidence

you think i am your masterpiece,
but this is a violent crime against my heart;
your *** is empty
and i don't want it anymore.

it gets a little pathetic
when i'm writing poems about boy number four
and they ring the same tone as the ones before,
when their touches and words and kisses
are interchangeable
and they are reduced to nothing more than
a number

i’m throwing myself a pity party,
in honor of a new milestone;
a pattern repetitive enough that i can predict it months in advance
but do nothing to stop it
i’m throwing myself a pity party,
and you’re all invited

share your stories with one another
about dear old me,
the girl who once had the brightest smile and the sweetest hugs,
who fell slowly and hard for the idea of a boy,
convincing herself she could love him, forcing herself to love him.
how similar are your stories
about the one who thrived on your love
until she was left cold and starved?

i say she loved you, but really
you know she didn’t;
now you know you are a number on a list,
one she doesn’t even know about,
knocked down before she moves down to the next
you now know she is a master of manipulation,
for she has tricked us all into thinking she is the victim
but how conscious of her own manipulations is she?

this girl’s sleep comes in restless fits,
interrupted by images of boys that blend in together;
the one who ****** her in the dark,
the one who turned her heart into a pit stop,
the one who smiled into her eyes while he twisted a knife in her back

and you, boy number four,
the one who has already managed to break her
maybe it gets easier the more worn down she is,
the closer she is to the bottom of the list

maybe she doesn’t know there is a list,
a cut-off line,
a pattern of boys;
the harshest truth this girl has ever faced
is the inevitability of loneliness
and she is blindly going through the motions
of someone looking for love,
though perhaps she can’t even do that

so i am throwing myself a pity party,
and letting my ghosts keep me company.

you are decidedly not the boy i love
no matter how closely you resemble him
and how sweetly you tell me he doesn't love me
i can't mould my fingertips so they fit your skin
i’m sorry
he’s all i think about
and all my fingertips crave

when his smile can be a lifeline
and break me all the same
i can not fool myself, or you,
into believing i love you
when your name is a placeholder that has never fit right
because his is sweet as it leaves my lips
and yours is dry and bland

that is not to say that you are dry and bland
but your smile pales in comparison to his
i’m sorry to tell you i have more love for that boy
than you have words to describe how beautiful i am
even when we both know you don’t find me that pretty

it is entirely possible he doesn’t find me pretty either
but i find him so beautiful i could spend days looking at him
and fall in love with him in a new way each day
even in my head
the thought of him
and how cruel his absence has been to me
makes me love him so much more

and i can safely say
you are decidedly not the boy i love
because i am a little glad every time there is distance between us
and there is always a cloak of insecurities and sadness draped upon my skin
that grows a little heavier when i touch you, and i fumble as i walk
but he manages to pull it off gracefully
tucking it away with care
because i think even my ugliness can be soft to his magical touch

i love him
so much more than i ever believed i could
in a way that is safe and caring
because cold and love spiked with thrill is something i no longer crave
now that i know how warm he is
please don’t touch me
when you know my heart and body belong to him
because i would not want to taint the love i have for him with your fingerprints;

poetry fuckboys exist solely in the notes folder on my laptop
and are only enigmatic because i make them so;
dressed in beautiful metaphors, skipping
to the measured cadences in my voice,
they are a lot more colourful

really, though, my poetry fuckboys
are nothing like the real ones who touch you because they’re bored
and leave grey marks on your skin
and probably i only write them the way i do
because it makes my ugly skin seem ethereal, etched with history
rather than scratched by years of carelessness

poetry lovers aren’t really real either,
at least for me;
more than anything, they are characters
that i fall in love with
because they are made of love songs i listen to
and the illusion that i am capable of love;
fiction based on lovers whose smiles, really,
fall flat and move nothing in my heart

there is nothing real, or subconscious
about the way my fingers ache
for no one in particular,
and attach themselves to those closest to me

boys who sometimes smile at me,
girls that seem to exist only to laugh
full belly laughs

and there are elements in my poems that are perhaps true
and visible if you knew who i wrote about
but this is not even remotely real,
living between pages of poetry
taking comfort in their warmth

and no matter how dressed up poetry is
i am not talented enough to pass a fake
as anything remotely genuine;
even poetry fuckboys and poetry lovers,
to whom i desperately show my poetry to prove i’m real,
realise i get stale pretty fast,
and eventually stop reading my poems.

most of the time i'm sick to my stomach
with the thought that you'd be better off without me;

poison love,
how you've invaded my body
and marked the inside of its skin,
the space between my organs,
the blood running through me

it has started to paralyze me,
poison love,
but there is an edge to that toxicity
that i am continuously falling for

or is it you i am loving?
the line separating the two has begun to blur
because your hands on me
have become synonymous with hurt

and i love it
but still i am scared you will leave me;
poison love, i know i am simple
i am bland and unlovable
but i need you to breathe

i need you

most of the time i'm sick to my stomach
with the thought that you'd be better off without me;
maybe that's exactly the kind of thought i need
to stop feeling so sick.

there is nothing less comforting than the whiteness of a hospital
clinically and methodically assaulting your senses
which have already endured enough to last you a lifetime of pain;
for a place made to heal people, it is awfully lifeless
and cold

i was so cold
the whole time
and i don't know if that was anxiety or real
normal cold
but i was shaking
even when they gave me the scratchy, paper thin blanket
i was shivering

mom
i'm sorry we're even here;
if i'm sorry for what happened, or for telling her
it doesn't matter
because the awkward
and silent acknowledgment of how artificial our love is
is broken;
this is a discomfort that's far worse
because more than anything
this is discomfort

how do i tell you i lied
about every time i left the house
until i was lying about things that didn't matter
inconsequential details i still wanted to hide away from you?
because showing you any part of me felt uncomfortable
like exposing a healing wound to the cold air

a hospital waiting room
is probably the worst place to have this type of conversation
so instead i carry the weight, and sit stiffly next to you
and distract myself with nurses and women in wheelchairs

why are they here?
are their stories as tragically stupid as mine?
because it really is tragically stupid
a poem titled **** kit
should probably be about a girl who was *****

i don’t know if i was *****
i thought i was
then i thought i wasn’t
then it didn’t matter because i was speaking with a nurse
who told me we’d have to report this

i don’t even have any metaphors tucked away
waiting to be eloquently written
about how still the air was
i don’t remember a shift in noise;
all i remember was crying uncontrollably

what an effective way to wreck a girl’s life;
for a minute,
i thought this was karma for lying
surely i was lying
because this wasn’t happening to me

but it still didn’t matter
because i was now talking to a doctor
and my parents stood at the edge of a hospital bed
looking at me like i was contaminated

and when she took her leave
i wanted to beg her to stay,
because i didn’t want to be locked in a room,
feeling contaminated and disgusting,
with such an ugly reality choking the air
shoving itself so far down our throats
that every time i found the courage to speak through the knot in my throat
my dad would look down at me
like he hated me
i think he hated me

i hated myself a little, too,
because nothing would ever be comfortable again
and we would always be sitting on a ticking timebomb
waiting for it to blow up, any minute

when would we acknowledge this?
when would my parents realize
this was realer than any of us were comfortable with
and blow everything to smithereens?

this is what it feels like
to push a boulder down a hill;
because i’m reckless and stupid
i am not a coward
and i’m not scared of some guy who got drunk
and got me drunk
but i am, if anything, stupid

this isn’t a thought experiment;
i have to keep reminding myself,
because what i set in motion would **** people
my parents were just collateral damage
and i think my mom still beats herself up for not standing up to my dad
and he beats himself up for letting his own daughter get to a point
where she felt it was wise to lie to him and hook up with a guy in an abandoned house

but once the dust had settled, and they'd both recovered from the shock of realizing
i was no longer their daughter,
but an incredibly stupid person,
i had become collateral damage as well

there is probably nothing that can prepare you
for the feeling of your own dad calling you a *****
in so many languages,
and so many different words,
you’d think it would lose its’ punch
but it never does
and each time you take a blow
he yells louder
because, why are you crying?

why would you be crying,
when you did this?

i was a stranger to my own family
not because they think i was *****
but probably because they know i don’t think i was *****;
this hospital
has broken me more than anything that boy has done to me

because he is a stupid fifteen year old
who gave some girl he liked ***** because she begged him for it
but these are big, white walls
fully conscious of what they do to anyone roaming these halls
because my life isn’t now divide into
before he ***** me
and after

but before i stepped foot in that hospital
and after.

months after i last saw you
i still remember wanting to kiss you,
finding my face inches away from yours
and swaying with indecision

i remember thinking you were the most beautiful boy to grace the earth,
to ever hold me close while i kissed him

it's been months since i last wanted to kiss you
with that desperate kind of need
but the residue of that feeling lives in my insides;
when i see your face, smiling and innocent,
i remember you were a delicate boy i wanted to kiss;
it is only a fraction of the feeling, but still it consumes me
just as it had before

how have you been?
are you doing better than you were when we last spoke?
our time spent together was sweet and naive in its innocence,
but not without its flaws;
i remember we alternated between wanting to hold each other,
and holding other people;
sometimes wanting nothing more than to be kissed,
other times begging for the distinct sharpness of a knife across our skin

still, i neglect the bad memories,
or rather embrace them for what they were;
you were a beautiful, broken boy
i may have fallen in love a bit too much with your frayed edges,
loved you more when you were worse for the wear,
but i loved you wholly for who you were

it still makes me feel warm thinking of your arms around my waist,
hand on my hip,
pulling me close,
of our silly chit chat well past midnight,
making my heart feel lighter;
these are beautiful and fragile memories that i don’t want to forget,
as much as you may have hurt me once upon a time

this love is dead,
but it is no longer soaked in pain and bitterness;
i am so much happier having had you in my life,
and having been the person to make you smile at some point
that will always be beautiful and wholesome,
no matter what happens in between.

i need you to understand that you didn’t make sense when you went from loving me, to hurting me, to wanting me; to be your firsts, to be yours, to forgetting i was ever that.

all in the span of a short-lived friendship. how am i supposed to wrap my mind around anything? around how distant you are now, and how nothing will make you want me?

how am i not supposed to reminisce, when everything that has happened was only a month ago? or two weeks ago, when you told me i was beautiful, and don’t you ever forget that, or when you spent a whole summer in europe texting me?

talking to me about the most mundane things, those are the conversations etched in my memory; those are the conversations i still don’t want to look at, because that is a low point i can’t ever reach.

you spent a whole summer in europe telling me you wish you could see me and saying the nicest things to me. i spent a summer rooted in my spot, waiting for you to see me, waiting to see you beautiful as always, but happy, nonetheless, that i got to talk to this sweet summer boy.

you talked to me like i was your girlfriend; don’t ever tell me that there wasn’t a point where we were almost that, because i thought: this is what good love must feel like, that comes easy and doesn’t destroy you.

then you did.

the easy answer is you’re just as broken as i am, and just as confused. that could also explain the girl who has swiftly replaced me.

but please be mindful of the hole you left in my life, because you were my good mornings, and goodnights, and afternoons when we weren’t too busy, and on the forefront of my mind when we were.

this is a bandaid ripped way too fast, and i still can’t reconcile the person i fell in love with over the summer, and the boy who won’t even look at me; the cold boy who has it in him to do awful things to me. you are not the same person, but even that doesn’t make it easy to fall out of love.

i am in love with someone who doesn’t exist except in my memories and texts. and if sweet, summer you isn't dead, i need you to never love me again because each time you stop i am left with even less. i'm starting to read again, and smile on days on which we don't talk, and getting here wasn’t easy; so i need us both to stop.