Take her to your grave.
Take her to the place where
you buried memories of a past
that still chokes you up on
rainy days,
much like the one she left on.

Kiss her as you make love,
so that she can see the deepest part
of your heart,
the ugly side that makes you shiver
with the realization of just how much you have lost.

You are in love with a girl as bitter
as the rawest parts of you,
but believe me,
on the outside she's absolutely breathtaking,
completely divine.
But once you're covered in crumpled sheets
and messy pasts,
she'll melt into the cracks in the foundation.
Because you see,
she's lost just as much,
if not more,
than you have.

With loss and sin laced into her bones,
she is toxically beautiful.
You'll crave her sly smile in your bloodstream.
You'll crave the feeling of exhilaration dancing across
exhausted limbs expressing the idea of love
but never quite encompassing its true breadth.

She's deadly
and dangerous,
but you'll let her in.
They all do, eventually.
Because, with her big brown eyes,
and trembling fingertips,
you'll love her deeply.
But she'll leave you with the hollowness
of false salvation.
The darkness will come,
and when it does,
she won't be there to watch the tide turn.
But you'll love her anyways.
They all do.

I've been waiting for the dark to come,
and if you're quiet enough,
I'll take you to my grave.
Then maybe you'll see the ugly parts of me,
left behind by old lovers
whose flames burned too bright,
whose voices were too loud for my ears.

If you stay,
I promise to look within the girl
veiled behind secondhand smoke
and bruised knuckles.
I promise to dust off my cobwebbed heart,
and make room for you within the shallow waters
of my soul.

If you stay,
then maybe the tide will finally turn.
Maybe dark eyes will finally become divine.
So for the sake of science
and faith,
will you stay?

I spent the fall
writing poems about how
to get over the hole in my chest.
And I, honest-to-god, burned them all
in a rickety old fireplace
because I no longer wanted to hold onto you.

I cried over the ashes.

I spent the winter
pouring myself into wine glasses
and falling into the beds of strangers that smelt
of stale smoke and memories
of the people that once completed us.

I don't know if I miss you,
or
if I miss the girl I was when I was with you

I spent the spring
drowning myself in a boy
whose hazel eyes reminded me of yours
and whose hands fit perfectly around my waist
and, if I was drunk enough,
and sad enough,
between his ***** sheets,
I could hear your voice whispering my name.

I broke his heart unapologetically,
just to know what it'd be like to
be on the other side.

I spent the summer
in a white-washed building
that was supposedly meant to make me less sad.
But I've learnt that there are no sanitariums
that can erase memories.
So I'll sit here,
listening to songs about getting better,
in hopes that one day,
I'll get there too.