i wanted you to love me on purpose.

i’ve never had feelings for anyone who could be good for me. i’ve never been interested in someone where a good, healthy relationship could’ve resulted, and maybe that’s why i’m so jaded, because everyone i’ve ever liked has just been a distraction or a house on fire— someone i know i shouldn’t be involved with, but i’ll give myself just a few more days to run around frantically with my hands over my eyes, peaking through the cracks between my fingers, searching for things i know i don’t really need, and then i’ll dash out and run down the driveway and the smog will linger for a little while, and the neighbors will complain, and i’ll sit on the curb with my forehead on my knees, holding nothing but intangible regret. next, i’ll either get over it, or obsessively think about him and the ashes smudged on the inside of my eyelids for longer than my sanity. i’ve never really liked someone and been able to daydream about the real possibility of us turning into something greater; of tire swings and painted mailboxes and overgrown, green lawns. it’s always been pretending and fake hope and melodramatic doom. i think it’s messed up my perception of having feelings for someone, because i can never take it seriously— either i know he’s not right for me, or i know the circumstances prohibit the possibility of us. it makes me never want to give anyone a chance (i can’t even see anyone worth chance-giving) because i know how it ends. i don’t like having this closed off heart so early on; i’m too young to be this bitter.

i don’t want to be someone who writes in pencil
and eats too slowly and walks with eyes that
are glued to the sidewalk and tops of strangers’ feet
i’ve been underwater for so long that
i’ve forgotten lungs are meant
to be filled with air; exhaling seems
more like something found
on the second star to the right, rather
than a process that is meant to be
done twenty-three thousand times a day

i feel like an old woman who
looks in the mirror and all she can see
are wrinkles and white hair and tired eyes and
the absence of who she used to be

but i am not someone who turns away
from sunsets and pretends
that darkness is all i’ve ever known;
someone who thinks
the sun will never rise again

because the sun will rise again—
the words hiding inside of me will
find their way out, because
i cannot hold my breath forever

i am not someone who writes in pencil
and erases the bits that are too
honest and too imperfect and too real
to claim as thoughts of my own

i cannot keep my lips pursed and
hands tied behind my back,
i cannot keep pretending i am
a shadow of who i used to be

my tomorrows hold suns much
brighter than ones that have risen
over horizons of my past;
i have not reached the summit yet

there is so much more me
for me to become

each day, i am new.

I think the scent of bug spray on my palms will now forever remind me of you and the late night (early morning) we spent sitting in your car, drawing awfully unskillful portraits on the back of each other’s hands in 
dim light and 3 a.m. stillness. (I wonder if you could tell that doodling on your skin was just an excuse to touch you.) I wanted so badly to let my fingers find yours 
as we laid back in our seats 
and peeked out the rolled down 
windows at the infinite stars scattered above us in the 
early August night sky. I told you I wouldn’t kiss you, 
because I know my heart and 
how relentlessly it would 
replay how your lips felt on mine, and how it would ache knowing
 you couldn’t be mine,
 so I let you kiss my cheek instead,
 and the half a moment that I felt 
your unshaven face brush mine in the middle of the street at five in the morning feels like a fake memory. When you looked at me, I wanted to hide, because I was too afraid to read what words might’ve been written in your eyes, but I felt so content listening to the 
deep tone of your voice 
mix with the obnoxiously loud crickets singing in the trees 
surrounding us. I could’ve sat there with you till the stars disappeared and the sun took their place, but you walked me back home, and you left in the dark, and now I’m sitting in my bed thinking about how the hours between 2 and 5 a.m. have never felt so full.

i thought it’d be poetic
to leave you the same way i found you,
with a contentless text—
a simple entered space
(i knew you wouldn’t catch it)
although you seem to be someone
who thinks very deeply about all someones,
your thoughts about me are puddles
disguised as over-complimenting oceans

and i really do not know
what i am or what i’ve been to you,
or if i’ll be able to keep myself away
from you, or why you’d drive hours
to see me in the middle of the night
when you “plan on kissing at least one
girl in the next three months,”
(could care less if it’s me)

"what would i be waiting for," you asked.

i’m barefoot, chasing a train i know
is on tracks that lead away from where
i want and need to be (but i liked the way
it felt when your hand touched mine)

glad i never gave you any piece of my heart,
because you’re the type of boy who’d
rip it to shreds, hide your claws
behind your back, and tell me that
i should’ve seen it coming
(though you would’ve been right)

maybe you’re just bored,
and that’s why you decorate
your skin with ink and don’t care
about whose lips you’ve touched,
and i wish i could figure you out,
wish i could draw a perfect portrait
with my words (or even just
my thoughts) of who you are,
but i won’t pretend i know you

i hate you and your ***** tattoo
(but i don’t really hate you,
i hate the way i let you make me feel.)

i saw you outside
on my roof tonight
with your messy hair
and cigarette glowing
between your fingertips and
you wouldn’t leave but
you wouldn’t come in
and i kept staring as you
blew puffs of smoke
with your back against my
bedroom window and
i wanted to get up and crawl
outside and sit behind
you and draw pictures on
your back of all the things
i didn’t know how to say but
my blankets felt like lead
so i whispered to my pillow how
much i love you and then
the sun began to rise
and you looked back at me
with ashes beneath your
eyes and i told my pillow
i wish you’d stay
but you didn’t you
never do

i know i am young,
i know i am only seventeen,
but when i think of him
and his incandescent smile,
my heart swells and beats in time
with the cadence of his alluring words

his mind is like no other,
filled with such deep
and captivating thoughts
that flutter from place to place
like a moth, and like a moth
i am drawn to his brilliance

i long to hold his face in my hands
and trace his lips with my fingertips
and when i close my eyes
all i see is the way he looks at me,
as if i’m the one who paints
the summer evening sky

i know i am young,
i know i am only seventeen,
but i think i could spend
the rest of my life searching
and never find anything
nearly as beautiful as
the way he loves me