what it must be like to be one of those girls!
teasing smile, heart of bubblegum and cigarettes
you chase her, yet you have no desire to understand her
no yearning to hear her thoughts on a dark and sleepless night

i want to exchange dreams with you
want to find myself breathless in the depths
of your mind's many oceans
want to feel your arms around me
encircling my waist
that will never be as narrow as hers
a figure of skin and bone that will never measure up

you don't care for substance
you drink from shallow ponds and let their coolness dissolve in the heat of your disinterest
you like how they sparkle in the light
the way my raging ocean never will
and yet i leave myself at your doorstep
knowing you'll never find yourself
looking down

everything about you
confuses my very circuitry
i cannot separate you from the ghost of my own self-hatred
one touch
a tease
a glance
nothing more to you, but every second after you walk away is spent
replaying replaying replaying replaying

sunday mornings come easily, but weekends slip away
like raindrops on a tin roof
monday comes
you and your eyes and your smile
may come, may not
depending on your boredom or need for validation

my circuits continue to replay replay replay
lighting up at the notion of you stopping by
i am wired and assembled for your very presence
the voltage crackles from my skin and i can no longer live in denial
i power off and resume my week, back into my nocturnal crevice
of life without you
life without a hint of your smile
life with a broken circuit, begging to stay

alive

fingertips to wrist
i resist the urge reach out
he's an arm's length away
but completely unreachable
everything about you is so ******* inaccessible
i wish that i could find the words
my insides are tar and lavender
sweet enough, but so tenaciously anchored
that i couldn't bear a "hello"
for fear of losing the ground altogether

my future feels like
mascara
dripping down my panicked face
quietly imminent
i never forgot the way he laughed at me
that day
7 months ago
and though my switchblade heart
moves forward into what will be
i feel myself retrograde into his closed arms
and although good days seem bright and scintillescent
and the space feels infinite, full of hope
i still feel myself retrograde into who i once was
because doubt is not a skin that is easily shed
i retrograde
because moving forward feels like
constriction
feels like
stepping into an icebox on a winter day
i retrograde because
my mind is so broken that backwards is the only way to
move
on.

as i sit and wonder what could possibly be done
i arrive at a realization that my heart is that of a roaring tide
deeper than you deserve to have
but asking for nothing more than the sunshine
that rolls off in drops from your tongue

there is nothing i want more than your crystalline warmth beside me while i cry
and when i laugh i yearn for my sound to echo in the caverns of your mind
yet i can do nothing but watch you watch me
as my heart's decrepit hope
sinks further into the cavity of my chest
and i feel the resounding pain that is the absence of your love on a rainy day

the torture of her beauty can never truly leave my lips
but every one of her smiles causes me pain that you will never know
if i were to try, would it matter?
would i merely become an afterthought? a party joke?
a half-drunk pun told through champagne smiles and friendly glances
could i ever be more to you than what i am now?
a gloriously insignificant extra in your otherwise fulfilled life
so i continue to shake like the tide
without you

just a glance sets my mind into retrograde
no one ever questions the orchestration of an undeclared love
cover your tracks, maintain composure
plan scenarios in your head until you feel like a broken record over and over again
i like you i like you i like you i like you
but then?
                             reality.
I see you in blaring technicolor
and it's more than i asked for
for there is nothing worse
than truly seeing you as you really are