you can say you love me
but it will pass through my heart like wind

you can stroke my flushed cheeks and say
"beautiful"

but i won't recognize my own face

and every time i don't believe you
i need you to tell me again

it doesn't stick, nothing sticks

i'm not falling apart
i've just never been put together

you're not the first that's tried
you're not the first that's failed

every night i creep in beside you
and touch the nearest skin so i can count your breaths
the airs you breathe are the sweetest sheep
and when i dream i worry when i am not there to calculate them they will cease
like how words fall away from your ears
when you're not listening close enough

when i think i am coming home to you, i just find a strange man
like an escaped mummy, incoherent, lost and heartless
spouting nonsense and one sided stories
not once listening to mine, just waiting for his turn to speak
convinced i don’t care while he carelessly throws his ***** bandages all over the place
and when he falls back into his tomb i have to pick up the mess
so in the morning it will look like nothing happened
just left with the cold feeling of a ghost passing through,
terrified because he will come back.

just because i can forgive you every time
doesn't mean it doesn't rot inside like an apple core
until one day you take the last poisonous bite
and there'll be nothing left of me
just an empty shell of the girl you once knew
who absorbed so much pain she became death itself
a still born love, a stale heart
it gave too much without getting enough
just because i can still love you every time
doesn't mean i am strong
in fact, it makes me weaker
until one day your world will collapse from my shoulders
and you will have to hold it up yourself.

it's weird how you slowly start collecting parts of someone you're with
how you merge into a world that you didn't know existed before you met them
how everyone has their own world, histories, ghosts
you collect the names and faces of their personal population
knowledge about their deepest thoughts, desires, fears
collecting all of the shared moments for your internal scrapbook
and even their objects: various clothes, dvds, furniture
you collect new songs that you've never heard before, and their gifts, letters, greeting cards
you don't even seem to notice this happening as it becomes so natural to adapt to their world
it's new and exciting and you throw yourself inside so easily, gracefully
and when it doesn't work out after immersing yourself completely
everything shatters and you wonder how you ended up there to begin with
then you find yourself with all these mementos from it, and don't know how they fit now
your personal world was changed because of their world
you have to pull the threads from the veil that's been over your eyes
it's one of the more difficult things in life, removing yourself from an old reality
it haunts you like a town long abandoned but you know better than to ever go back.

once upon a time there was a girl named love
and she danced through the town
with hearts in her eyes and hearts on her sleeves
but all the boys destroyed them one by one
so she replaced them with diamonds so they wouldn't break
but the boys stole them and traded them for pretty girls
then the girl replaced the diamonds with stars
so the boys would burn if they got too close
the girl named love changed her name to afraid because she was
and one day a boy named chance approached her slowly
but she was already on fire and there was nothing he could do
he walked away and she was sorry
the girl named afraid never saw chance again
eventually all of her stars died except for one
and she named it love to remember him.

a poem a day
keeps the therapist away.