My heart sighs with relief
knowing that even after
all it's been through,
it stills remains just as soft
as it continues to love.

-k.p

In school, I was always getting spoken to about the length of my sentences; I used semicolons more than anyone else my teacher had ever met and he always asked me why I didn't just end the sentence and begin again; I always told him that I was scared to end one if I wasn't sure it was finished yet; what if it wanted another chance? What if it was ready to start again? I wrote an essay in which the entire introduction was one long sentence, it went on for two pages and I had to rewrite it three times because it was not concise enough. I grew worried that I'd end up the same way the rest of my life; what if I was always too scared to end things because I wasn't sure if I would be able to start from scratch? What if I held on to one thing for too long and lost the chance of another one hatching and what if I never learned how to start fresh? I was always used to starting over, but it's different when you're older. You don't start over with the same white heart, you start over, carrying the bruises you got from fighting for years and you start over knowing that any move could be the one that ends your sentence and you start over knowing you're creating run-on after run on but you don't care as long as your words have somewhere safe to go; you don't care as long as they know they're welcome there, because god knows they weren't anywhere else.

tonight, my sister found
that the boy she loves
is kissing another girl
goodnight, and i held her
at 1am as she got used to
the feeling of saltwater
staining her cheeks.

you can not tell me
love is always kind, for i have
never known love to be
anything other than this.

-k.p//we fear what others chase

When you read those corny books about breakup they tell you that no matter how hard you think it might be, you'll get over it. You'll get over him. You'll get over her. You'll get over late summer nights where you swore you would never need anything else. And you felt solace in a book that promised happiness at the end of the road and so you tried to stop missing him. You tried to stop missing her. You replaced them with other people. You kissed that short, skinny boy with greasy hair to see if his lips compared to the ones you grew used to. They didn't. You kissed that tall, chubby girl to see if her lips made you sing like the way you were making music for all those years. They didn't. Nothing you tried to replace your first love with was the same.

And that is the point.

When you fall in love for the very first time, they don't tell you that it's going to hurt when it ends. Well, they might but hell if you'll believe it. You're blinded by something that we would all beg for another chance to do over and I swear to God I would do it the same way again. You were blinded by a force so strong you simply cannot move on in 3 months. Today was supposed to be your 3 year anniversary.

And it wasn't.

When you fall out of love the first time they don't tell you how or when you will get back up. They don't tell you that you will check his Twitter every day. You will see if her Instagram pictures of you two remain. And they don't tell you how badly you'd rather take a knife to the gut when you see they moved on already. It feels the same anyway.

When you fall in love for the second time, though. Everything is different.

When you fall in love for the second time, you wish everything was different. You beg your brain to not **** this one up. You bargain with your heart to let yourself have one night to enjoy what it has for once.
But the games you let sink into your blood and permeate your idea of love come back to life when your heart starts to beat again. You notice different things about the second person you love, like how their hair never stays in their hat the right way or the way they fall asleep laying on their back but always end up on their side holding you really tightly and how you finally feel okay with them, for once, even if it's just for a night. You notice that their hands are a different shape than the first person you love and that they might shape clay differently and it might not hurt you as much as before and you notice you're absolutely terrified of replacing someone else's hands so you use your own to push them away as hard and as far as possible.

And for the second time, you ****** up.
For the second time, with someone new,
you broke all the rules and you hurt someone who loved you.

They don't tell you how to fall in love a second time because they're so shocked you could ever love again after all those nights you spent screaming into your pillow until you lost your voice and fell asleep remembering that one park you used to hold hands at 16. But they will not tell you how to feel that way again because something sunk it's teeth deep into your skin and its venom changed the chemicals within you and now you see love as a game and I'm sorry because it isn't.
I'm sorry you have to hurt people to show them you're changed and I'm sorry that you are stuck in this wave of not knowing who will come into your life and make you sing again.

When you fall in love for the first time, it is in that one park and you swear it's the best feeling in the world. You swear you can fly.
When you fall in love the second time, please don't let it go, you know what it feels like already to watch love die.

I cut myself deep enough to see the bone when I was 16
I fell in love that year as well
They don't tell you what to do after you fall
Because they don't know how hard you will
I cut myself that night in July
I went so deep they had to put me on a lifeline
I am alive now
with skin made of steel
and no one comes in anymore
I fell in love
and you felt me up
you took away my right to say no
overcome with fear
I begged you to stop
they don't teach you how to tell someone
that this has happened before
and every single time
the strength it takes to say no
leaves your throat like a plague
fed by fear and starving for a sound
they don't tell you how hard it is to say no
with your mouth
when your head tells you to be quiet
and the man that haunts your ghostly body
tells you that he does it because he loves you
trigger warning: they don't give you a trigger warning before they hurt you

they just do

it is light
it is how i write and write but that's the only word worthy of describing
it is waking up in the middle of summer on your own time
it is closing your eyes with the sun on your face
comfort in blankets when safety is thousands of miles away
free thinking and blushing and taking day-naps
one thousand questions with repeated answers
it is smiling so hard your face hurts
clean sheets and sitting in empty fields
it is car rides with the windows down
the way the moon reflects across water when the sky is deep purple
it is dancing in the refrigerator light
with no socks on
at three am
to a quiet song we hum the next day
it is coffee in the morning
alcohol that stains your brain and makes you feel like you're underwater
it is the first time we touch
with enough electricity to power a city for a week
it is the weightlessness of your laugh
and messy bedhead
it is the way distance disintegrates like poetry
and your promises in prose
always on my mind
in my words
it is that thing people are writing about when they say,
"when you break my heart, it will hurt like hell"

i don't want to
turn my head and
shut my eyes at
the sight of sunsets
because it's only
a matter of time
before the night
closes in.
i fear i'll always
dismiss beautiful
things because
i know they won't
last forever, and
that causes me to
lose them before
they're even gone.

I remember the first time I looked into your eyes
I felt everything inside you
suddenly felt everything inside me too.
Parts of me I wasn't aware existed started thawing out
I felt my bones start to shake.
I fell for you three years ago to this day.
And since then, I haven't been able to look back.


I remember the 56th time I looked into your eyes
I swore to God you were the one that made life worth living, constantly giving me something to smile about as the world seemed to crash around me in an unescapable pattern and I always fell into you.
I became comfortable with leaning on your shoulders though they too were weary but you never told me to stand up on my own
and I became afraid of being alone after the 154th time
I looked into your eyes and saw my future.

I remember the 876th time I looked into your eyes.
That day still haunts the perimeters of my mind
I felt my chest sink in that day
as you said the words "I'm not in love with you anymore"
after that every time I looked into your eyes I felt absolutely nothing.
I felt crashing, I felt sadness for a bit,
but nothing clicked like it did for years
and I felt the lump in my throat crawl into my brain
and I remember telling you I felt the same.
I wasn't in love with you anymore.
Prior to that, that thought never came up
I couldn't handle the pain of knowing I would have to move on
so I stopped looking into your eyes,
to spare myself the aching,
every time I felt a rush of blood pump to my heart
almost fast enough to make it stop,
and I wondered if it would ever start again.

The very last time I looked into your eyes
I felt a part of me die and I don't mean
it metaphorically,
I mean I felt my insides wither away so fast
they made me feel like I was losing air,
taking every bit of strength to put one foot
in front of the other just to bring myself out of there.
I said goodbye without looking at you for fear I might fall back
just like you let me for years.
I said goodbye without looking back and now I forget what
our last goodbye looked like,
but can't seem to forget how I felt at our first hello,
and I wonder if this is what hell is like.
Knowing that if you could, you'd do things right a second time,
but having that ability stripped away from you by a Greyhound bus
and a parking pass,
and always, constantly, looking back.