You were poetry. You made my heart beat fast enough to start a car engine, but now I'm suffocating, and you won’t let me catch my breath. You’re a song stuck on repeat - I’m getting sick of you - but you just keep playing. The poem feels repetitive and I’m a lyric away from regurgitating every love song I ever composed for you. The only noise playing in my head is the scarlet letter you wrote back. The letter where you called me as beautiful as a flower, yet ripped the roots of my beauty until there was nothing left to recognize. The letter where you reminded me of the strings you pulled with my veins, the way you controlled the choreography of my body with your presence near; I believed you were an amazing ventriloquist. All you are is a skeleton coming from the back of my closet and I can’t get rid of you in discretion. I want you gone. I don’t know whether to call an exorcist to rebuke the demons in my head or an exterminator to get rid of the termites your corpse has left behind. I want you gone. The memory of your acidic touch is leaving third degree burns that may never heal. The memory of butterflies in my stomach makes me wish a whole zoo trampled me instead. The butterflies have burned a hole inside of me and I can no longer digest chocolate kisses from sweeter times. I now sit in this bed, where we once laid, and write about how badly I want to change this radio station.
You are in every station.
I’m tired of writing tragic rhymes about missing you.
I’m tired of missing you.
This is my final sonnet to you.
And with this, I finally turn the radio off.

Who were you?
You were once a girl with glasses, who hated dolls and any shade of pink on your clothes.
You were once a girl who hated that phrase, no matter how many times you were told.
You were once an individual scared of breaking out of your shell and showing the world your beautiful blue wings.
You were once a young 12-year-old boy; learning the meaning of love and how to apply it to yourself, without finding it in other things…
You were once a troubled 14-year-old who hated his naked reflection and drowned his sorrows in pill bottles and toxic love you knew was enough to ****.
You were once a friend with a heart made of sweets and chocolate; enough to give you cavities or make you ill.
But now, who are you?
When you look in the mirror, what do you see?
Do you see a beautiful blue butterfly, with wings spread wide?
Or do you see that troubled youth, ready to choke on some pills and die?
Do you picture a future? Any future for yourself 10 years down the road?
Or is your mind bombarded by the past and your perspective of the future blurred with the words echoed
In the back of your neck, stopping you from thinking clearly;
Stopping you from sleeping those nights you’re awake and looking at the ceiling?
When I see you, I don’t know who I see anymore.
I don’t know if I see the boy you used to be or a stranger with eyes drained of joy.
Are you just a copy of what you’ve dreaded to become, or are you a paperboy?
Are you a paperboy ready to hurt me with your paper cuts? Please be careful because I am oh so delicate.
You probably know this though; too afraid I’ll break so you don’t even keep in touch.
My apologies if I’m fragile. My apologies if I’m beaten and torn.
I’m just terrified of being left alone, or finding someone plagued with thorns.
I found comfort in a friend like you.
But now, who are you?

"Why do you love her?”
I don’t know, mom. Why don’t you ask yourself the same thing about dad every once in awhile?
Why do you love him?

Does the way he wraps his barbaric hands around your womanhood and rinses it of all pride turn you on?
Or maybe it’s the way his fists move with your tears… the choreography perfectly in sync with the ballad of your captivity… comfort… conformity - same thing, right?

Why do you love him?
Do you not see the chains on your ankles?
These are the same rusty chains that held onto your self-doubt; you’re drowning in a glass of water, mother.
The hinges are loose but you’re so stupid… so in love… your vision is blurry now. Let go of the tears you held back for sixteen years.

“Why do you love her?”
I don’t know, mother. Somewhere between the passion and commotion; the *** and the rage, I forgot.
I think I understand why you’re holding on.. It’s all in the comfort of knowing they will always be there. It’s all in the lack of trying and just being.

I don’t know why I love her.