you gave me the first feelings that i don't have words for

i got some things to do, but i don't want to do 'em
i got some things to say, i will never say 'em to your face
i lost my lungs, i don't really need 'em
i lost my heart, i don't really need it anymore
I AM IN LOVE WITH SOMEBODY AND GUESS WHAT? IT'S NOT YOU
IT'S NOT YOU
you are in love with somebody, yeah, you love yourself so well
love yourself so well
smokey hands and sweaty palms
black water and half-clear lungs
and now i'm not going home
broken bottles and ***** dishes
acid flashbacks in your kitchen
you know i'm not going home
i am in love with somebody and guess what? it's not you
it's not you
you are in love with somebody, yeah, you love yourself so well
love yourself so well
there's someone else
they love them well
someone else
they love them
i got some things to do, but i don't want to do 'em
i got some things to say, i will never say 'em to your face
i got some things to do, but i don't want to do 'em
i got some things to say, i will never say 'em to your face
to your face
there's someone else
they love them well
there is someone else
they love them

we both got sweatshirts for christmas
i hope we can trade sometime

someone told me i fall for kind people because i can't stop letting everyone walk all over me, and at least the kind ones will try not to leave bruises. and i laughed like it was a joke and i was the punchline, but i found another bruise in the mirror last night.

i fell for another kind person, but the problem is that kind people lie. and i never know how to distinguish the black and white from the grey. i'll never know if you like me because you treat everyone like stardust and glass.

but i actually am stardust and glass. i am precious and fragile and everywhere and i need to be held. i want it to be by you. but people that weren't as kind already broke me and now if you touch me the way i want you to you'll cut yourself. and blood doesn't wash out of a doormat.

so i don't initiate conversation. i hope you can't see my broken heart on my sleeve because it has your initials written on it in ink. i haven't decided how close i'll let you look. but maybe one day i'll let you walk all over me and hope that i feel like home.

sitting in traffic staring
at a horizon of red
thinking of her unintentionally

i dyed my hair again
taking comfort in being able to look different
looking different than when i fell for people that were just shells
of bad decisions and ****
people that gave me goosebumps because they were so cold
but i used to mistake the chills for butterflies

i've been worried about repeating myself
cycling around my bad habits
like i'm on a ferris wheel that doubles as a perpetual motion machine
but i haven't texted her in a few weeks so
that must be a good sign
still

i listen the playlists i made when i was so busy over thinking i didn't have time to do my fvcking laundry
i wore her sweater for days on end and i hummed those songs under my breath
and now the melodies just remind me of how starving i was
laying in the bed of nails i made for myself
and they remind me of her. always her. and how she never gave a **** about me, but somehow taught me to give a **** about myself.
these stupid, beautiful songs remind me of how much i pretend to hate her. and they make me want to write poems about the idea of her again
even though i swore i wouldn't. on several occasions.
and so this poem isn't about her, or the idea of her, or the stupid playlists i was obsessed with when i called her mine

this one is about the horizon of red
as i sit stuck in traffic, staring
blurring my vision on purpose
as the crimson lights move at the speed of my slowing heart
trying. trying. trying.
trying to forget about her, as i think of her unintentionally.
trying to live in a world where people don't always mean the 'i love you's that so carelessly drip from their open mouths.
trying to care about those people anyway and pretend that i don't.
trying to love.
trying to love myself.
trying to write more poems in the first person as a form of self care.
trying to figure out if that counts.

trying to not be so fvcking lonly all the time.

my roots are growing in ashy
i can't stop looking at my acne scars

i taste everything good in me
and lick the sin off my fingers

but no one told me that loving myself
would be this exhausting