Thank you for always being here,
when I needed you the most.
When I asked you to come over,
you were there in a matter of minutes and most days,
you even brought your best friend Anxiety,
so we wouldn't be alone.
Some days,
you asked if you could stay over,
because you were all alone and really needed a hug.
My reply was a of course,
I know how it feels like to be alone in this world.

But now,
now you will not leave,
no one else wants you and I'm stuck here with you in my bedroom.
I don't remember how it felt like,
before you came around and it is like having a best friend you just can't be apart from.
It is weird because sometimes I hate you,
other times I can't live without you.
You can make me feel so important,
yet so dead and I wish I did not have to say this,
but dear Depression,
I think it is time for you to leave.

(e.k.j.)

i can't find prettiness in his face anymore,
my phone storage is full so i deleted your saved selfies from my camera roll. i wish that one photo of us had never been taken at that party, where our heads rest on each other and i'm smiling like an idiot because everything was so simple with you
i hate you for trusting me. you're a ******* fool if you think people change, i haven't, i won't. 'i trust you not to touch,' you said when i told you about an ex-lover of mine i wanted to see. i don't even trust myself, what is wrong with you
there's nothing comforting in the sound of your voice, don't trust myself on the phone with you (i can't tell you what i did, i need you to learn to hate me without ever finding out). every murmur of 'i love you', the lyrics to my favourite song, after being on repeat for 4 months i need to burn that cd, get the sound out of my ******* head. i'm sick of it, sick of him, utterly sickened by myself. look at me - writing about 'him' and 'you', both the same person but i can't ******* tell anymore. you're not mine anymore
i lost more at that airport than just my make-up and shampoo

It’s 2:39 in the morning and
I’m sitting on my fold-in couch
with my toothbrush hanging from my mouth.
This is not a poem.
This is the realization that hits me
out of nowhere
so suddenly,
so unexpectedly,
in the midst of something so ordinary.
This is not a poem.
This is me, at 2:40 in the morning,
realizing that you were never good enough for me.
That I chose to put myself down, to ignore
my wishes and desires
so as to please you.
That I made up all these excuses for you,
that I came up with all these reasons to justify
why you were manipulating me,
that I kept telling myself you’d eventually
admit to having loved me all along.
This is not a poem.
I do not need a metaphor to tell you
that I realized I do not need you.
That I realized I never really did.
Right now, at 2:43 in the morning
I have never felt more alive
than in this very second
now that I am free of you.
This is not a poem.
This is a goodbye letter to the me that thought she loved you.
This is me, at 2:45 in the morning,
knowing my worth.
I am made of a billion universes
scattered inside my eyes,
I am a billion trembles,
I am nebulous,
and it’s 2:46 in the morning,
I’m sitting on my fold-in couch
with my toothbrush hanging from my mouth.
This is not a poem.
This is the realization that hits me
out of nowhere
so suddenly,
so unexpectedly,
in the midst of something so ordinary:
I am so much better than anything you’ll ever be.

To F.

You're not the first person I've kissed but you are the first person I want to spend the rest of my life kissing. And it scares me so. I've never been loved - just rejected, at all my attempts of loving, and ever since then I've been afraid, down to the bone, of commitment. Of opening up to someone, of feeling love, of letting myself be loved in return. I've been used and abused, and manipulated, and made fun of. I'm telling you all this so I can emphasize how big a gesture it is on my side to admit that I have feelings for you, that I am willing to make myself vulnerable to you, and to you only. I've been strong for so long that I crave being weak for a little while. So, I'm baring my chest here, and handing you a knife, hoping you won't carve my heart out like the rest of them, scrap whatever remnants of a heart there are from the hole in my ribcage. I've never been domestic, so you need to understand how big a deal it is that I crave your intimacy -- not just having ***, it's not about having ***. I crave waking up next to you, with your arm cuddled to my body, with your leg thrown over my legs: I crave exposing myself to you. Hearing something on the radio and thinking, *Oh, I need to remember this so I can tell him. Seeing something in a window shop and buying it for you just because I know you'll like it. Your being able to order takeout for me from any place, without ever hesitating. Going jogging with you early in the morning, before I've had my coffee and you - your tea. Curling up on the couch watching stupid movies. Touching you just to reassure myself that I'm safe. This, to me, is more intimate than ***. This, to me, is scarier than ***. I used to think I was just lusting after you. Until you held my hand and I knew no one else's hand had ever or would ever fit better in mine. Until you pressed the side of your body to mine like you wanted to be closer to me that physics could allow and I knew I would never feel safer. Until you ran your fingers in circles over my bare knee and I knew this was the most intimate I'd ever felt with someone. Until I read my poetry and you looked at me like I'd put up all the stars in the sky. I am terrified. I am downright cold-blooded terrified of what I feel, and all this, this want, this need that creeps up my body, in every cell. It scares me more than death, more than oblivion, and what scares me even more is that you will take the knife and sink it into my chest down to the hilt, and won't even blink. That you will hurt me like all the rest, that you will leave, or make fun of me, or that you will never love me back. I don't know if love is the right word but I want to know your greatest fears, secrets and desires, and I want you to know mine. I also know I'll never send this to you because I've learned to be strong and to hide my feelings, and to tell myself that this, too, will pass. I'm a coward, because I'd rather be torn up by the pain of watching my love for you die a slow, tortured death than face rejection. I'd rather suffer from the unknown than from the dull, numb hurt of knowing you don't love me. And I will be alone, always. I don't have in me the bravery to face my greatest fear, so I'll let it eat me up. I'll keep myself warm on candlelight because I'm too afraid to light a fire.