The strawberry milk boy. The lights are on but nobody is home kind of boy. The lost boy. There's something about his hands and how ever since that first spark you haven't stopped feeling the burning sensation on your thighs. Something about how every time you're rocking your body over his you want to whisper about loving him but never quite having the gumption. Something about knowing that it never lasts. Something about the broken glass on the kitchen floor and the way you always walk through it without shoes on. Something about knowing you'll get hurt and knowing it shouldn't be like this. Something about needing more. Something about always being the one to say sorry anyway. Something about the end.

I thought you were my medicine but too much medicine can make you even more sick so I changed and said you were my bandage but bandages can be wrapped too tightly and cause further damage to the simplest of wounds. I wish I could come to my senses and admit that you are neither my medicine nor my bandage; you are my sickness and you are the slash across my ******* wrist that is leaking all of this blood and leaving me helpless and dangerously close to death. You are the poison that burns my throat and is slowing killing me and I never wanted to admit to my drinking problem but I'm soon to be six feet under and I don't even know if I want to cry out for help or not anymore.

I smoked all of your stale cigarettes and I wore your t shirt until the scent of your cologne was gone and then I drank every last drop of the alcohol you left behind until every memory I had of you and more had disappeared. but I'm keeping the empty cigarette packet, the bottles and your t shirt in a shoe box in the furthest corner under my bed; I'm keeping train tickets and old photos and I'm keeping the love letters that never meant anything to you. I'm torn between wanting everything about you gone and needing memories of you to keep myself sane.

Today, I looked in the mirror and I noticed that my left collarbone pokes out more than my right. I noticed that one of my eyes is a deeper green that the other, and that one of my arms is just a smidgen longer. In the garden, I noticed that no two roses have the same amount of petals, no two blades of grass are the same height and no two trees have the same number of leaves. See, it got me thinking about you and I. It got me thinking about how neither of us said "I love you more." We rarely said "I love you too." It was always just "I love you." And it got me thinking that if no two roses, if no two trees, if no two arms on the same human body are the same, then maybe my "I love you" was different to yours. I know that when I told you I loved you, I meant I loved you. I loved every part of you, every nook and every cranny of your body, every inch of your mind and every skeleton in your wardrobe. ****, there are so many skeletons. And maybe when you said "I love you" to me, you only meant that you loved the better sides of me. The smiles and the funny hair colours and the softer parts, or the parts that turned you on and touched your whole body until you were shaking underneath me. The parts of me that are whole. Maybe you didn't love my empty spaces. And maybe love is always different, maybe you'll never love me the way I loved you but maybe it's too ******* late for you to try.

This is your knife, and this is my heart.
This is my love, and this is how you show me that it is never enough.
These are my wounds, these are my bandages, and this is your salt.
Choose wisely.
This is my favourite song, and these are all the ways to make it yours.
This is my favourite author, and this is how you fall in love with their words.
These are my walls, and this is how you tear them down.
This is my favourite film, and this is when to kiss me without making me miss my favourite part.
This is the town inside of my head, and this is your house.
This is the key, and this is how you lose it without thinking twice.
This is the rain cloud that follows me around, and this is the umbrella I have been searching for.
This is the bottle you smashed, and these are the cuts I got from cleaning the mess.
This is your cigarette ****, and this the fire it started.
There was my heart, and there are the remains.
There you are, and there is your knife.

"I do care though, I promise."
These are the last words you said to me at this exact moment in time. I'm lying in bed and all I can think of the the time we were walking through London, tired and lost and we didn't know where we were going and I was telling you a story and you weren't listening to a word I was saying. It was then that I decided I should quieten down, a man could never love a woman with a motormouth like mine and from that day onwards I tried my best to keep myself to myself. I bottle things up now to the point where the glass smashes when it gets too full and everything comes out but it's okay because it's not coming from me, it's coming from somewhere else and when I asked you how you'd know if someone cared you told me they'd be there for you. You were never here so you never heard the words that came out when the glass shattered. You never heard and you were never around to see what would happen after, you were never around to see what I would do to myself with the broken pieces that were left on the floor for me to clean up. It doesn't happen often and for that, I am glad, but when it hits it hits hard and you should know that. You should be here because now I'm left questioning whether or not you care, and because of the fact that you taught me to stay quiet I can't even confront you about these things. And now I've always been bad with endings, so I'll say goodbye in the form of broken glass and ****** hands because this is the end.

I don't miss you, but I don't sleep with the covers tucked in anymore. I started changing the sheets more often and I'm doing okay, but I'll never flip my pillow the way you did.

I don't miss you, but I leave crumpled wet towels on the floor now. I bought a new one specifically for my hair when it has just been dyed, it's plain black. I hope your blue towel is stained pink forever.

I don't miss you, but I haven't watched the sunset for the last two weeks. I've started watching the sunrise instead. I'm tired of endings. I'm still doing okay.

I don't miss you, but every time I write about you my heart races and everything turns into darkness. My doctor would probably suggest a pacemaker. I suggest another drink.

I don't miss you, but I had to block your number to stop myself crawling back. I still remember it better than my own.

I don't miss you, but maybe I'm lying to myself.

I don't miss you, but I hope you miss me.

I don't miss you, but maybe I should.

You're seventeen and you're bitter, so ******* bitter, because your friends have gone elsewhere and you've been left all alone and you kissed him but he's been saying her name and the taste isn't what you wanted it to be. You're seventeen and you're smoking now, you're smoking to get rid of the taste of her from your lips because as much as you wish he loved you like he loves her, you're never going to be her and some things are just too close for you to deal with. You're seventeen and it's the evening, your father has gone out and you've been left home alone with a cupboard full of alcohol and a draw full of pills. A handful of this and a glass of that, how bad could it be? You're still seventeen and you're throwing up and you can't control it anymore, you don't know if you really want to die or not but your body is giving up, your brain made that decision the second you stumbled into the bathroom with a bottle in one hand and a blade in the other. You're not seventeen anymore; you're not really anything. You're gone.

I don't know what love is and I don't know if love is real but I do know that the only things I regret in life are not looking back when I walked away from you and not kissing you or showing you how much I cared. I regret letting myself leave and I regret not being there for you when you needed me the most and I regret not noticing the signs that you weren't doing so well. I don't know what love is and I don't know if love is real, but all of my 3am thoughts are based around you and I wish I'd done more to keep you around and if this is what love then you can count me out.

I've never been a fan of the way ***** makes me wrinkle my nose and shake my head as it burns my throat but eventually I reached the point where I could swallow it and not show any sort of reaction. I wish the same thing could happen with the bitter taste of your name on my lips but every time I think I'm getting better at letting you slip past but then I'll choke on a memory and it's like I never even made any progress to start with. People like to say if it was the right person it will never be the wrong time, but you caught me at the height of my addiction and you're the strongest substance I've ever been able to get ahold of; you're bitter and you're strong and you have a grip on me that no one else has and I can hear voices telling me you're no good but you make me feel so ******* high that I can tell myself you're worth the comedown that is full of sadness and blood. And maybe one day I'll stop seeing the good in you but today isn't that day and I wouldn't be surprised if I was dead before I got the chance to leave in one piece. Maybe it's already too late and maybe you've already broken me like the bottles my father used to shatter against the wall or maybe it's more like when he used to put his cigarettes out on my arm and I could see each little piece of skin falling away from myself but either way I don't ever want to feel like that again. I think it might be too late.

I wish I could take back every song I've ever sent to you, every book I've ever shared with you, every secret I've ever told you, every painting I've ever done for you and every photograph I've ever taken for you. I gave you every single piece of me that was up for grabs and then I reached around inside of myself to find more because I thought you were different and I thought you were going to piece each part together to make a complex but beautiful puzzle that only we could solve but instead you handed out the pieces of me to anyone and everyone that had the tiniest bit of interest until I was no longer my own person, or even yours; I belong to anyone you've ever given me to and you played it off as wanting everyone to appreciate the art but now I just wish I had kept myself secret because I'm left with all of these holes and missing parts and I'm forgetting how to function without them and the worst thing about all of this is that never once did you give me any parts of you and I thought you were just mysterious but I've realised you didn't want to make yourself vulnerable like I did to you but you never cared about me enough to stop me from ripping myself to shreds in front of your very eyes, both literally and metaphorically, because that would be too much like giving a **** and you'd be lying if you ever told me you knew how to do that.

I once heard that every cell in the body replaces itself every seven years, and I often hear people saying how lucky they are to one day have a body that will have not been touched by you, but unlucky for me time is of the essence and I want no further delay. I'm ripping the skin from my lips where you last kissed me because I'm scared I was never gentle enough. I'm burning my tongue to rid myself of your taste because I was always too bitter for a sweet thing like you. I'm scratching at my legs until my fingers are raw because they were once wrapped around you and I'm anxious that my grip was too tight. I'm tearing at my fingernails because they once scratched down your back and I'm worried the cuts may have run too deep. I'm pulling myself to pieces until I'm slouched in a puddle of blood, and I need it all to be gone because you tended to my wounds and it sickens me that I let you get into my heart in such an intricate way.

One. No matter how much you scrub at yourself in the shower, you will never wash the feeling of his hands from your skin. You will learn to be okay.
Two. His lips tasted like strawberries and you'll never be able to eat them again without tasting something sour.
Three. Getting under someone else won't fix your problems, but it will help you forget.
Four. Hearing her name will spark a fire so intense in your chest that you'll think all of the flowers have been burnt, but I promise you they will grow back.
Four. It will pass.
Five. He'll never get tired of the way your body feels underneath his.
Six. Let him miss you.
Seven. Let him be angry that he lost you.
Eight. Let him hurt.
Nine. Burn his t-shirt. Burn his boxers. Burn the love notes. Burn everything and let the ashes be the last of him.
Ten. He'll get bored of her too. Don't let him crawl back to your bed.
Eleven. You'll let his empty coffee cup fall to the floor and you'll let it smash and then you'll cry as you pick up the pieces and you'll write a dumb poem about how your heart was his mug and he let it smash and then you will delete it and then you will heal. It will be okay. You will make it.
Twelve. Your first heartbreak will never prepare you for your second love.

Life has had a grip around my neck for so long that I was getting used to feeling so faint and so much like I didn't exist but then you came along and you gave me just enough air to survive and I thought things were finally looking up. You showed me blue skies and cherry blossoms and you taught me to not be afraid of love again and I spent so long wrapped up in the whirlwind of us that I didn't notice when you started pulling away because I was still as in love with you as I was from the start. Winter has never been good for either of us but instead of crashing and burning we fed off of each other and waited it out but Winter will end soon and you will be okay again and as soon as you are okay you won't need me. You will leave in the form of smashed bottles and slammed doors and I will be left to clean up the glass with the echoing sound of nothing, and life will pick me up and throw me against the wall again and I don't know if I can cope without you here for another year.

It's 2:45am on a day of a month and I know neither. I can hear the church bells ringing and I know that I've lost you for good this time; they may as well be funeral bells for whatever the **** we shared because you and I both know we can never work past this now. I cared too much and showed it too little, you cared too much and I couldn't bring myself to have faith in something so surreal to me that I would lay questioning it every single evening through to the next morning morning and if I couldn't even believe it when you told me you cared then how was I expected to be able to love when I've never seen anything but failed relationships and unhappy faces. I've been to one wedding in my life and that ended up with the bride and groom going their separate ways; my parents are mid-divorce and I've never seen my sister stay with someone for longer than a year. I was naïve to think I could ever love when all I've ever breathed is toxic air which killed the flowers in my lungs and the hope in my heart. It's 3:01am now and the church bells haven't rung, I'm starting to think they've realised there's no hope left for you and I, but I'm still clinging onto fraying ropes with worn out hands and a tired grasp on everything.

Moving on from you in the same way the tide moves away from the sand at night; we're running in circles but each time I leave I will learn to distance myself further until I reach the point where I can safely say I'll never reach out to you again, but you will always be longing for me to come back to you. I will leave traces of myself and I will leave you with sharp memories that hurt you to think about, the same way your jagged edges cut anyone whom gets too close because you've built these walls with broken glass poking out of the bricks because I'm not the only one with a ******* drinking problem and I should have stopped trying to pull your walls down the second I realised I couldn't do anything without tearing myself to pieces in the process. You told me I'd never succeed but I was blinded by the sunlight because beaches never were meant to be cloudy. I guess you could argue that you and I never were a sign of anything good. You pulled at my hair and I pulled at your skin searching for any signs that we could ever work out and you always told me I was an optimist but now I'm just starting to wonder if you ever cared at all.

I'm six years old. I'm six years old and my favourite colour is green because it's the colour of my eyes and I think my eyes are the prettiest things I have ever seen.

I'm eight years old. I'm eight years old and I had a nightmare so bad I felt like my eyes were deceiving me. My favourite colour is now the same pale blue as my Mum's floral bedsheets because they make me feel safe.

I'm ten years old now. I'm ten years old and I'm a big girl because I'm allowed to walk to school with my friend instead of my Mum. We walk past fields of buttercups and other pretty flowers but my new favourite colour is the peach of the rose in my front garden.

I'm twelve years old. I'm twelve years old and I can't stand the colour green anymore because the meaner people in my school decided my self worth was less important than their jokes. I don't have a favourite colour anymore, but if you ask I'll say it's purple.

I'm fourteen years old. I'm fourteen which means I've been a teenager for a year and I still can't stand the colour green. My Mum let me dye my hair for the first time and now it is red and red is my favourite colour, but if you asked I would still tell you it's purple.

I'm sixteen now. I'm sixteen and I think I know everything, I met a boy that I like for the first time, my Mum doesn't know, but I think he makes the colour green a bit easier to look at because he told me he loves my eyes and that they are the most beautiful things he has ever seen. He gave me a pair of rose tinted glasses and I'm not quite sure why, but for now my favourite colour is the deep brown of his eyes but if anyone asks, my favourite colour is still purple.

I'm eighteen now. I'm eighteen and I can finally drink without it being illegal, and I have started drinking to forget everything except the colour of my Mum's pale blue floral bedsheets, the peach of the rose in my front garden, the bright red of my hair and the green of my eyes but most of all I'm drinking to forget the purple of the bruises that litter my skin, the purple that I always insisted was my favourite colour for reasons unknown to me.

I should be twenty years old now, and my favourite colour should be the orange of the sunset, the pink of the sunrise or maybe even the yellow of the buttercups in the fields I used to walk past on my way to school, but I did not make it to twenty years old. My favourite colour was never purple and I never asked for my skin to be constantly tainted that way, but you made sure I never healed and now my Mum is laying purple flowers on my grave and she's wishing she fought more to get my favourite colour to be green again like when I was six years old and in love with myself and the world around me, because if I still loved the innocent green then maybe I wouldn't be suffering my greatest nightmare as a child with the only comfort being tucked up in the seemingly endless sea of brown. I always tricked myself and everyone else into thinking things were perfect with rose tinted glasses but the lenses shattered and the last flower you laid on my grave was the peach coloured rose from my front garden, and now the petals have wilted and all of the colour has been drained from me but this new world has more hues than I could have ever dreamed of.

There's a fine line between love and lust. He loves me, he loves me not. We were everything you could dream of; summer days and winter nights. He loves me, he loves me not. We were lazy mornings in bed, we were picnics in the afternoon, we were evenings spent watching golden sunsets and we were late night drives listening to old records. He loves me, he loves me not. We were unexpected rainfall and delayed trains. He loved me, he loved me not. We met in the spring, he was the warmth from the sun and I was the April showers that drowned him out. He loved me, I loved him not.

Hey baby girl, I love you. I love you but stop. Stop acting like you've seen the world when everything you've experienced has been through rose tinted glasses. You know they're gonna smash one day. They're gonna smash and you're gonna be hit with reality but hey, hey pretty baby, I'll still love you. Hey sweets, hey sugar, hey spice. I know your glasses broke but you don't need to smash those bottles anymore. I'll still love you when the lights go out. I love your lips in Koko K and your high necks and your slender frame. Hey pretty baby, remember that dress your Mumma once described as a 'second skin'? Hey, remember the night we drove and drove and drove and stopped at sunrise? Remember the sound of the ocean inside your head? Remember the birds and the trees and the sand and the children screaming and the happy times? Remember asking for my number? Remember saying goodbye? Remember leaning in for the first kiss? Remember the daisies? Remember the shooting stars and the golden mornings? Remember? Hey pretty baby, it's okay if you don't want to remember anymore. I'm still sorry your glasses broke.

I dreamt last night and it was a dream filled with red flowers.
You, pinning me down.
Sweat.
The beach.
Big bodies of water.
Gunshots.
Rivers of blood.
Funerals.
Funeral flowers.

You said that lilies are funeral flowers but I kept dreaming about roses.

You pushed me to the edge and I awoke in a cold sweat and it's like breathing but not getting enough oxygen in and you're drowning and I'm still dreaming about roses.

You kissed me on the cheek and whispered sweet nothings into my ear while we followed the moonlit path through fields and forests and by the time we reached our final destination it was sunrise and I guess I understand now why you say lilies are funeral flowers because they're everywhere now, they're all I can see and you're gone.

You lead me to these lilies and then you left and nothing hurts quite like being alone with your funeral flowers.

I am sitting in my bedroom on a fresh summer morning, and I am thinking about you.
I am sitting in my bedroom on a fresh summer morning, and I am thinking about how gentle your hands are when they run themselves over the steep curves of my body.
I am sitting in my bedroom on a fresh, and somewhat rainy, summer morning, and I am thinking about the burn I got my on thumb last night when I was making a hot chocolate, and I am thinking about how it doesn't hurt. Your hands are electric, your mouth sparks fires in-between my thighs and they burn and burn and burn, but they never hurt.
I am sitting in my bedroom, and it's a rainy summer afternoon with a cool breeze and I can hear the trains passing on the track nearby and I am thinking about you and all the ways we could be great. And how, for the first time in my life, I don't mind being burnt if it means I get to share these fires with you.

I should be used to the sight and sound of you leaving now because it happens so often but every time you slam the door and leave the shouting and the screaming and the sound of broken plates behind the ringing in my ears just gets louder and louder until it's all I can focus on. I thought maybe I could be better for you if I stopped trying to protect the plates you would smash in the future and started fixing the broken pieces from past arguments to get all of my feelings out but now I'm just a limp body on the floor surrounded by the colour that fills the air when we fight. You left and I didn't hear you come back, no one did, and I'm starting to wonder who called the ambulance and left the door open so they could get to me in time. I didn't want to die but I guess I didn't really want to live either and now all I can hear are empty footsteps outside of past lovers crossing paths as ghosts of whom they used to be. Maybe I should be used to the sight of you leaving, but maybe you should get used to the sight of me being nothing more than a ghost.

I woke up in a strange bed this morning. I woke up in a bed that belongs to someone else, a bed with a pillowcase that doesn't match the duvet and a bed that doesn't feel like home. I woke up in a strange bed, but the bed doesn't belong to a stranger. The bed belongs to a past lover. Her hair colour doesn't match her eyebrows, it's blue and her eyebrows are brown, but she feels like home. She holds my hand and it's like I'm holding onto an angel. She drives us around in her old beat up car and it feels like I'm finally free. She brushes her lips against mine and it feels natural, it feels good. Maybe, just maybe, this is what I deserve. It won't be long until her bed feels like home. It won't be long until you're gone.

Missing you is feeling a sadness that seeps so deep into my bones and I carry the weight of it everywhere I go; it's pennies in my purse that I'm never going to spend and it's aches in my chest that never lighten up. It's thinking I can hear the shower running when I'm home alone, it's thinking I saw my phone light up only to find no new messages and it's waking up in the morning and wrapping my blanket tighter even though there will never be a perfect replacement for your arms. It's wasting days away because living without you whispering in my ear, without you holding my hand and without you kissing my forehead feels pointless. It's breathing in but never having enough oxygen to fill my lungs. But it's never cliché. It's never accidentally pouring you a cup of tea or shouting that the shower is free when you're not around to hear. It's not setting an extra place at the table and it's not picking up your favourite *** from the supermarket. Missing you is an empty sadness. Missing you just ******* hurts.

Loving you is like being lead to our bedroom with a trail of rose petals except the catch is they're all ******* dead and you're still not coming home. It's like looking out of the window in summer expecting to see everything in full bloom but the trees are lifeless and bare and the sky is grey and even the birds aren't singing anymore. It's like stepping outside on a summers day but never being able to feel the heat. It's taking an overdose only to find out all of the pills are placebos. It's waiting by the phone only to miss your call because I thought I saw you walking past the window and I wanted to see you one last time. It's putting your old shirt on only to find it doesn't smell like you anymore and it's pouring yourself a cup of tea only to find there isn't any milk left in the fridge. It's driving to your house only to find you don't live there anymore. It's sleeping on your side of the bed so it's warm when you come home only to wake up without you there. But worst of all, it's the feeling you get when you switch on the lights but are still stranded in the dark.

Winter came around in the same way you came into my life; slowly, quietly and gently. Snow fell from the sky and the sun rose later and set earlier in the day. I couldn't help but think that my time might just be running out but you came along and brought warmth to the cold and you lit the path when it got dark. Spring rolled around and we blossomed like the flowers and the leaves on the trees but if I had only ******* known how much we would relate. Summer arrived and you were in your prime; you wore yellow and let your hair grow out, things were finally looking like they would be okay for once. The grass was cut from time to time and I never realised that every time it was trimmed our time was getting stolen away too. Autumn showed and the leaves turned orange and then fell from the trees and you never did like this time of year. Things went from sweet to sour and I should have seen that you were leaving. It's Winter again and you left my life the same way you came except now I'm not sure if the days are getting shorter or if I was just living on borrowed time.

It's selfish, but I hope he misses me. I hope he sees her and misses me. I hope she kisses him and I hope it's never as gentle as the way I would kiss him, I hope she holds his hand when things get tough, but I hope her grip is too tight.

I hope he misses me. I need him to ******* miss me. I hope he looks into her eyes and wishes they were mine, I hope he brushes her hair and wishes it was pink or blue or green or any colour other than hers, I hope he wakes up in the middle of the night wishing he'd never let me go.

I hope he misses me. I hope she walks beside him and I hope he reaches for her hand only to find she's a different height to me and I hope it's not as comfortable. I hope he turns to her in bed and wishes it was me tucked into his side and I ******* hope he stutters when he says her name.

I hope he misses me. I hope he misses me half as much as I miss him. I hope he sees what kind of mistake he's made because I am so ******* kind and I was always so ******* gentle with his heart and I always handled it with so much care. I hope she slips and I hope she drops it. I hope she tries her best but I ******* hope it isn't enough.

I hope he misses me.

Shooting stars will always remind me of the way we kissed and the fields we spent our only summer drunk in and the time when everything was carefree and lovely and the world was kind. Shooting stars remind me of the way you first touched me when everything was new and exciting and we were drunk off of each other's love. Shooting stars remind me of the way we fizzled out and for the first time in my life it didn't hurt when someone was leaving, it only hurt when I realised they were gone but by then it was okay and I could deal with it and shoot up and be as high as the stars that we fell in and out of love to. Shooting stars remind me of the nights we went out, we faked our names to anyone we met with adrenaline running through our veins and glitter around our eyes. Shooting stars remind me of getting older and having more responsibility but still finding the time for a meaningless hookup on your bedroom floor because we were too wasted to make it to the bed. Shooting stars remind me of driving around your town one more time so we could catch a song that reminded us of the times when we were younger and now I guess shooting stars will always remind me of you.

My therapist asked me what makes me happy and all I could think to say was the look in your eyes when you saw the sun setting or the feeling of your fingers tracing my skin or the way your lips tasted when you'd been drinking those sweet cocktails that have more an effect than you'd think, or maybe even the sound of your car pulling into my driveway. She asked me why I always speak about you in past tense when you're still here and I reminded her of our first session when she told me that nothing is permanent and everything is temporary, so you must be temporary too. I want to prepare myself for the day you leave because I know for every minute you're here it's going to be harder to say goodbye. I imagine you being half way out the door, one foot in and one foot out, when I know you're actually sat next to me, too scared to touch in case I break, but with me all the same. I told my therapist that I want to be alone when I die, and if I'm not alone I want everyone to expect it and know that it's going to happen because some people leave you so suddenly you're left with holes in your life I don't want to be the person to hurt you like that.

I've been waiting for the day
that my footsteps
are quiet enough
for me to walk across the room
and not make a sound.

I've been waiting for the day
that the only thing
you can hear
when I sit down
are my bones clicking
against themselves.

and I've been waiting for the day
that I can look at myself
and not want
to make myself sick
because of the way
I see myself.

see,
I don't have
the best perception
of life
or anything, really
I can't tell you
what is real and
what is fantasy
but I can tell you
that my days
are getting shorter
and my time
is running out
and I want you to know
that I have never felt
more loved
than when I was
cuddled up
safe and sound
in your arms.

Have you ever missed someone so much that your arms feel numb without them there to be held in them? So much that you can see their absence pulsing round your body? So much that you'd give anything to be back in their arms, kissing lazily as the sun makes stars out of the dust particles floating around the air? So much that you've started believing that maybe single beds weren't made for just one person? So much that you're starting to think maybe phantom limb syndrome is the only way you'll be able to feel their touch again? So much that you have to pull over on the side of the road because them not being there is causing a sickness inside of you? So much that missing them is the only feeling inside of your body and so much that it's infecting your chest with a sadness that never feels like it's going to go away?

I miss you more than all of these combined.

It used to be high fives and summery smiles and (empty) promises and kisses on cheeks and tugging at daisies and now it's you tugging on my heartstrings when you leave; it's bruised knuckles, broken promises and shattered glass and I didn't think it would hurt this much when you left because after all, "everything is temporary and nothing is forever" but now you're gone and it's like you couldn't bare to leave empty handed. You took fragments of skin and bone; everything you wanted from me was the only good I had left and now I'm back to square one and I wish you weren't so ******* selfish.

You stopped telling me you love me when you started telling her how beautiful she looks in that dress. I should have known better than to think our relationship would last longer than a year but I've always been naïve and I guess some things never change. I spent three months convincing myself that you still cared, two months gripping onto fading memories and one month thinking about every "someday" and every "always" but I guess always to you means something totally different than what it is to me. Three months have passed since you stopped telling me you love me and I hope she makes you happy in the ways that I never could. I hope she kisses your forehead and I hope she strokes the side of your hand with her thumb when you're not doing so well. I guess I'm not doing so well, I haven't been feeling okay since you left me three months ago but maybe I was just living on borrowed time and I guess it's finally time to give it back.