that weather changes. I know, I know that's common sense or it should be, but when you're under a roof that you've always felt safe in things like that don't just click, so now it's getting cold outside and I have shorts that cover my belly button and shorts that, well, don't. that you can sit in coffee shops 3 times a week and feel FINE! she's right, you don't love her anymore, but it's FINE! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

that there's an 100% chance you'll get sick of writing about your own experiences and it'll take everything inside you to convince yourself that there will be someone who doesn't get sick of reading about them. like okay another poem about the time I ran away and got on a plane and broke up with her and realized **** I can do just FINE! all by myself, awesome good job my hands are typing the same stuff over and over and it ***** cause now they're bored? they don't care that this is a different city and you probably don't either. I'm finally leaving him! no one cares. except me, really, but I don't. I'm over it.

that decisions don't get any easier as time goes on because one second I'm like oh yeah let's turn left and then I read robert frost and think of the road less traveled and I'm like wait? which ones less traveled? what am I actually supposed to do with any of this?

that getting a medium instead of a large $5 coffee doesn't stop you from being ******* STUPID for wasting money when you're TECHNICALLY HOMELESS.
that you're toing to be TECHNICALLY HOMELESS.
but what the **** is a home? 'cause I remember one time I wrote that your smell and smile was more of a home than any house I ever lived in blah blah disgusting but last week when you looked at me and said some dumb ******* that I don't even care enough anymore to write about, I just wanted to go back and lie in bed until I get all these months back. because they were a WASTE.
that it's going to be different. you'll settle and then something will change and you'll miss it and you're a really very nostalgic person in general so you tend to look back on things but
that looking back on things is NOT a good idea. you're just going to get sad and want to lie in bed, but you're technically homeless so that ******* *****, sit your *** on that couch and shut up.
that one day, you're going to have to man up. and you think you've man-ed up and you're flexing and **** and you're ready to rip it to shreds, but nah. you're giving yourself too much credit. I'll see it when I believe it, just like everyone else.
that getting drunk off shots that your brothers girlfriend, who happens to be a bartender at that new-ish bar downtown, keeps handing you won't make ANY of it easier, you'll just laugh and drink the pineapple upside down cake shot and like really like how it tastes? so you'll drink three more and go to walk home and she'll hug you goodbye and make sure you're staying in this city for longer than you did last time (aka 16 years) and then you'll laugh and say bye and thank her for not ID'ing you because you've still got 4 years til that's legal and GUESS WHAT. NONE OF IT WILL BE EASIER. you'll just go home and lie on your god forsaken couch and worry about what the **** is next? and what do you do now? and then you'll try really hard not to make the same mistakes again and to stop your dumb lonely brain from going off on itself again and you'll listen to music until you fall asleep at 4 in the morning and you'll be like, ah..... the **** that they don't tell you but probably should before you get on a plane at 5 in the morning and run away from the people you've spent 16 years imagining running away from, but the city is cold now and they're angry at me and won't ship me any warm clothes..........ahhhhh.....serious **** man

sext: wrap me in the blanket that's in the back seat of your car, call her while I'm staring into space, tell her you love her out of no where
sext: uuuuuuuuhhhhh......I don't want to move in with you
sext: I love you but I'm moving a thousand miles away
sext: I love you so I'm moving a thousand miles away
sext: I'm moving a thousand miles away BECAUSE I love you
sext: I want to bite off your tongue
sext: really bad
sext: you shouldn't have told her you love her when I was already off the ledge
sext: I'll bite your lip, it'll bleed, red will pour down your mouth and your clothes and your horns will poke through and BOOM! satan
sext: baby baby BABY you turn me on
sext: especially when your actions completely correlate with what I was always told not to do
sext: I was told not to do you, but, well....ok we were supposed to hangout at a park like this is a ******* indie movie but this cop told me that park was closed? I didn't know parks ******* close? so we met in a parking lot and you mentioned how your roommate wasn't home and la la la la LAAAAA, we ended up on your living room floor and the carpet was covered in my black lace
sext: I'm wearing high heels, tall ones. I'm 5' 11 1/2", you're, ummm...something. someone. oh yeah, I'm in love with you. well, I dunno about that anymore what's love? I defined it and it said "sext: an intense feeling of deep attachment". ah, ok, got it. I now understand you, love. this was supposed to be **** ya no, like me running down the back your legs in my red high heels, sending chills through your veins and breaking all of your bones. ****** ****, right? **** I ruined it when I brought up love  
sext: uh, it's been 3 days since we've talked. I know you said like 3 months ago that we needed to "draw new lines for each other" and "figure out how to have self control and not pounce the other when we're alone and I play smashing pumpkins" but we've ****** like what, 40 times since? and you told me you loved me and begged me not to leave soooooooo....? those lines need to be erased buddy boy
sext: uhg. you don't get it. I'm tired.  got so drunk I could barely stand last night. slept for fourty minutes. then worked a thirteen hour shift. I'm sorry. give me a kiss. no? but this is supposed to be a sext?
sext: nothing you say is equivalent to a sext these days
sext: take your clothes off
sext: take your clothes off
sext: then take mine off
sext: then take mine off
sext: you wear mine, I wear yours
sext: jk babe the clothes are off we're ******* ******

Touch me, I am fragile but I know I will not break. If you look at me long enough your eyes will start to water based on the saltiness of my skin because of the sea's I've swam to get to the place I'm in now. Open, closed, I've ran back and forth a hundred times, I am the weakest link and the leader of the group. If you sawed me in half you'd see three things: my barely pumping heart, a toxic amount of love, and a will to survive.

Touch me, but be gentle, because although I learnt to withstand even the deadliest of summer heat your cold heart isn't something my body is used too. Close your eyes, count to ten, am I on your mind? No. Throw me into the ocean. I'm no use to you then. It's cloudy but it doesn't rain, mid 70's but no humidity, my heart is sore, but I'm breathing. Oh god, I don't know how, but I will continue.

Touch me, be rough, *****, make it a melody and prove to me all I'm missing out on by not being enough for you. Afterward, I want a list of ten things I can change so that I will be enough for you. Make it a hundred if you have too, I just want to be enough for you. Staple it to my forehead, toss me in the ocean. I'm not here for your approval, only my own, and I don't think I'll be content in who I am until I'm something you think is worthwhile. Push me on the ground and kick me as hard as you can, make this pale skin your canvas, I want bruises and blood, six broken bones and a concussion to match. Make me hate you. Babe, all I've got is love.

Touch me, one last time, but don't let go until the end of this lifetime. This love became a competition long ago, and boy do I love to win. Tonight the universe spoke to me and it told me here is where I need to be, and I think it wants me to fight. Put on your armor, give me some weapons, I'm here for the long haul and I'm taking every prisoner I can. Touch me because I am weak and I need to learn to be strong so I can withstand this, 'cause baby this love feels like seeing a doctor coming towards you with a needle the size of your head, "oh don't worry sweetie this will only hurt a tad", *******. I still felt it a week after. But this one, ****. I'll be lucky if it doesn't still sting in a year...

Touch me, please. I'm begging you. I need to feel alive, but you've been suffocating me and my heavy heart. How am I supposed to survive when loving you feels like death?

this is the poem you're too self indulged to write
then everything is going okay it's easy to cover your ears and let your eyes play tricks on themselves and go to work and do your homework and lay in his bed the day after she did and not think anything of it, but once he says that one thing or does that one too many times you manage to pull the horse blinds off and see what's happening.
this is the poem you're not self-indulgent enough to write
love is tricky. it may be one of the most common concepts us as humans cannot seem to figure out but us, as humans, as a species, we need love to exist. without the eyes and hands and time from another person it starts to feel like we aren't really even here, that maybe somehow by being independent and alone you start to fade away, like another person in the crowd whose face you'll never quite be able to remember- but when you're in love, every color seems to go brighter and the feeling in the pit of your stomach makes you drive faster and your legs shake ten times easier. it makes time slower and faster at the same time and the sky seem bluer and the world a little neon.
maybe this is the poem you're too blinded to write
love is not supposed to hurt. love is work, and somewhere along the road you'll have to kick and fight and scream to make that love work but in the beginning, the little bit, it's not supposed to feel like glass on skin it's supposed to be smooth and silky and for whatever reason us as humans, as species, we decided that the more effort we put into something that's difficult the more important to us it should be and the more attached we should feel, but sometimes it's okay to let go. I'm telling that to you, but I'm telling that to me.
this is the poem you're too tired to write, because when you spend your time working and going to class and fighting for the only person who you've ever really felt but you've never been able to keep a grip on and it isn't fair because you deserve to be able to hold onto something other than your own hand, your eyes start to grow weak, and so do your arms and your legs and especially your heart, because when love hurts, when love becomes something that's really terribly bad, what's left? what's supposed to get you through the day when the one emotion that's supposed to lift you up leaves you aching and collapsed on the ground?
this is the poem no one should ever have to write
I struggle to call love an emotion, because in this sense love is a verb. like "I loved with all that I had until I couldn't stand anymore and then I was just collapsed loving you more and more and than you held her hand in front of me and didn't talk to me for three days and I thought if I loved you anymore my skin would burst and I'd just be on the ground aching and hyperventilating and screaming your name wondering why everyone makes love seem good because love is just bad, it's just broken glass and long drives because if you cry anymore your head will fog up again, it's wanting to write but not wanting to write because you've reached the point of a horrible mixture of exhaustion, sadness, pain and adoration that you can't even get the pen to the paper, it's feeling so much that not even words can explain it, like driving by his house because when you see her car out front your arms go numb and for whatever reason you like to make it hurt even more, for some ****** up reason, for some ****** up ******* reason you're a dumb ******* miserable human who only let's herself feel more miserable and let's herself fall more in love and refuses to end the vicious cycle of you and him and him and her and you only wanting him but him wanting you and also kind of wanting her but wanting her more than you and knowing that and just wanting to collapse on the ground. for the 6th time this week, and it's only wednesday"
this is the poem I should have written the
minute I heard there was another one
the minute I found out that love has conditions and that sometimes love is felt when it should not be felt. sometimes it'll pop in your head during a meaningless task and you'll realize you can't run from inside of your head no matter how much you wish you could and during those moments you won't think to write this poem, you'll just collapse. you'll only collapse and call him and tell him you miss him and he'll say something too fast and too quiet and you'll realize she's in front of him so he can't say he loves you back and it'll **** you. but you'll stay on the ground. and you'll stay with him.
this is the poem you're too guilty to write, and too confused and too in love. but you waited and you waited for someone to come and for it to click and for you to get him and him to get you and when it came you didn't realize there'd be conditions, and when you had them in front of you, you didn't realize you could say no to them. so I guess in a way this is a poem you waited to write, but you never realized it'd be so bittersweet. that sometime love poems aren't about love at all, but about losing it and the pain of it all, and being the girl who goes there, and the girl who met him and became really really good at pronouns but really bad at tenses and deciphering between first person and second person, and started talking in third person a few dozen poems ago and forgot how to get back into her own skin.
this is the poem you should never have to write, and if you ever do I hope you notice and you leave. because love might be tricky, but love should also be great. you should only ever be at the brink of collapsing before they come over and pick you up, you should never be on cold tile on your roommates bathroom floor too exhausted to stand up and screaming too loud and crying too hard to move when he's in bed with her, sound asleep. she's warm, and his arms are around her, and you're shivering on cold tile, and you're writing a poem you never thought you'd have to write.

I.

poetry written while I'm lying in my best friends bed in the middle of the night

II.

the way the words "breaking up" coming from your lips sound; the way they feel the same whether it has to do with you leaving me, or you leaving her

III.

you have to respect her, ah... I see. and then there's me

IV.

poetry written by putting hands to a keyboard and just moving until there's no more roman numerals left is poetry that's written in the middle of the night while I'm lying in my best friends bed

V.

I deserve better

VI.

you deserve significantly worse

VII.

here's how I imagine it- my phone rings.
"I broke up with her."
"I don't think we should talk anymore"

VIII.

I didn't lie when I told you I love you but I don't know what love is. you'll always be my first love, but I really don't know what love is

IX.

but it's probably not this

X.

we didn't talk today and I was glad, I had a good day

XI.

twenty two things written while my best friend snores to my right and I wait for you to call tomorrow so I can rush off the phone and pretend I'm still far away

XII.

this was still my city before you came into this life, so why does it feel like it's all in honor of you?

XIII.

today I read that if a trans person starts taking testosterone they need to double up on vitamin C because it kills their immune system so now I have to stay with you until you start the shots so I can bring over 5 cases of OJ and force feed it to you like the child you are

XIV.

the child you look like.

XV.

I dunno, like, I just don't even know how you're going to react, and like, I'm torn between being really curious and wanting to rip the bandaid off and just not wanting to find out, you know?

XVII.

You know what I think?

XVIII.

another-break-up-poem from the *****-who-just-won't-break-up-with-him

XIX.

one time when I was in 5th grade we had to learn Roman numerals and my teacher made us do entire math work sheets answering in them for like a month. her name was Ms. Schwanbeck and I had her the year my mom started dating that one guy that she married that one time. she was also the one who taught me it's L-M-N-O-P that we were singing in the alphabet song and not elephant ***

**.

I dunno, maybe I'm just not strong enough

XXI.

like poetry aside, metaphors and all that ****

XXII.

maybe I'm just not meant to do it anymore

XXIII.

I do love you, I have this whole time

XXIV.

but don't forget that I have no idea what the **** love is

if it's the middle of the night and I'm laying in my best friends bed while she sleeps to my right, and I'm kind of reading poetry and kind of pretending  I'm knee deep in traffic lights and 80 miles an hour to nowhere, and the room is dark and her fan creaks every three seconds on cue, and her washing machine is going because I spilled on the white shirt she was going to wear tomorrow, then maybe I can exhale five times fast let things be as simple as they really want to be.
maybe I'll write a letter to your father and tell him he ******* you up and simultaneously made you the best person to walk around in tucson arizona, and he'll probably smirk condescendingly cause I correctly pronoun you and he thinks there's something wrong with you but he'll be pleased that someone is proud of what he created so he'd let it roll off his back while behind every word I'm only wishing you'd roll off my tongue, like you used too. your maroon sheets were the soundtrack to my summer and I mean that because the noises that were made while I was wrapped in those managed to open my eyes and make my heart beat and system overdrive with all of my other senses like when you stand too close to the amp when your guitars plugged in, like there was this mountain I once saw in place of your head and when I saw that I had to climb it I thought hey atleast at the end I'll be sitting on his face, right, get some head outta this whole ordeal am I right, but instead when I got to the top I was sitting on your shoulders like I was your daughter and we were at a parade and you saying "that's some hard stuff, kiddo" was on repeat in my head like kiddo? kiddo? that is definitely not ***** talk and in actuality I'm a good 4 inches taller than you.
here we go, I plan to have a photoshoot at a laundromat and I get my camera's ready and clear a memory card and my best friend gets all ready to be my model and we laugh and she poses and we pretend not to notice when people eye us suspiciously and then we climb some mountains and I turn and you're nowhere to be found and that ***** why would I climb the mountain that IS  you when I can't even find you and I think that might be a metaphor because you're literally nowhere to be found we haven't talked all day but maybe there's no hidden message and this is all just one really bad long run on sentence about mountains and the head that I'm not getting but I totally should be getting and doing laundry because I spill on everything and write in the middle of the night when my best friends asleep and you're short and I'm tall and I love you and you say you love me but really who the **** knows. who the **** knows what you really mean by any of this at all
maybe I'll write a letter to your baby sister and tell her you slept with someone that was a year younger than her and I'll watch you get all red because you're embarrassed and angry when she calls and questions you and you'll say something like "yeah, her...yeah, the one you've met...yeah, she did stay at my house that night, no what the **** I don't know if we had ***, what the **** stop you're making me uncomfortable, I am not going to go to jail" and you'll be eyeing me angrily and when you get off the phone you'll scold me and I'll laugh all the way to the top of your mountain and when I'm at the top I probably still won't get any head. angry ***, that's a thing, I'll write the same letter and send it to your girlfriend and when you yell at me I'll say something sweet and innocent and put my hair in pigtails and lick a lollipop and say nothings even happening here so why are you yelling and then I'll skip away from you and look so cute you'll call me and ask if we can camp on the mountain tonight like we were supposed to the night before I moved but your girlfriend flipped so we got coffee instead and you pressed ignore until no one could ignore it any longer so you answered and I left.
then I came back.
but I dunno, have you even realized that? like, I'm here..... I'm back now....where's your head at? but more importantly, where's mine.

in hindsight, if I fell in love this easy, I should be able to fall out just as easy, but for whatever reason reversal always seems a lot trickier. faith is just something we use to trick ourselves into thinking everything's okay when in reality there is nothing left, so no, I don't have faith that we'll work this out because that would prove we couldn't. I'm not throwing what we are into the universe and leaving it all up to fate, halfway because I'm a control freak and halfway because it wouldn't be fair to our past, to all that we've been through, to shrug and leave it up to chance.

the night I was planning on leaving you, you were also planning on leaving me. we met up in your bedroom when the sun had just gone down and we were both exhausted, before you'd been at work all day and I'd spent hours in a bookstore, it was a very typical night for us to end up together. I didn't break up with you and you didn't break up with me. does it mean something that both of us had the intention to end it, walk out and not look back? or does it mean something that neither of us went through with it? later you told me the day before when you asked me to meet you in your bedroom at 7, you'd been planning on telling me you had to work it out with her. I laughed and told you that when you asked me to be there at 7, I nodded and decided it was the last time I'd tell you I'd see you there.
in actuality that night we had *** for somewhere around 2 hours and I decided that I wasn't selfless enough to adhere to the cliche of loving someone so much you let them go. you called me baby for the first time that night. to date, you've called me it twice.
in a perfect world, I'd be sitting at a red light trying to catch a glimpse of the accident thirty feet in front of me and I'd pick up my phone and tell you I was having an existential crisis because I was ten seconds away from being hit. in a perfect world, you'd smirk and tell me that's a really selfish mindset because someone actually did get hit and it wasn't me. in a perfect world, I'd lay on your chest and listen to your heartbeat and feel content instead of empty. in a perfect world, your arms around me wouldn't remind me of how lonely I am.
I know this love is real, and honest and incomparable, but I also know this love is selfish, and every time I dry heave in my car because your bedroom light is on and her car is out front while I'm trying to navigate, screaming "I have to break up with him, I'm going to break up with him" over and over and over, believing it less and less with every cry, I only end up loving you more, and that's some ******* *******
in a perfect world, I wouldn't have to write this. I wouldn't have to ask you to step outside because my chest feels so tight I think my skin might just rip, and we wouldn't spend 25 minutes of our 30 minute conversation having small talk just to trick my body out of panicking. in a perfect world, I wouldn't say, "she's waiting on you, are you going to be in trouble?" and you wouldn't say, "I dont know, probably. can you breathe?" and I wouldn't reply, "your voice makes everything a little easier," and you wouldn't say, "I don't like that you are in this place," and I wouldn't whisper, "in a perfect world, we would be perfect together, you know? in a perfect world what we have would be perfect. we'd be perfect," and you wouldn't get sad that I was thinking like that again, you wouldn't sigh and say "I know. I have to go soon honey," and I wouldn't say "I know. I know you do. I'll let you go," and you wouldn't say goodbye and ask me to text you when I got home safely, and I wouldn't say I will and wait for you to hang up before whispering, "I love you so much I think I'm going mental".

in hindsight, this should have never started. sitting here now I can tell you 4,000 ways this could have stopped before it became such a gross mixture of gratifying and the most painful experience to date. I read the other day that our hearts form before our brains so maybe my reluctance to listen to reason has to do with my heart crying out seniority and swearing it knows what it's doing. It's funny to think about the night we started and how many different things fell apart before you saw me and told me you liked my smile and asked me to text you. I wasn't even supposed to be there that night. I could call that fate, that the stars had me and you in mind that night when they got my gig cancelled and called me into work, or I could say something like, "in a perfect world, I could love you, and you could love me, and that could be enough"