Stumbling and mumbling like a bumbling idiot
Feeling like a toddler who is barely learning how to speak
The first steps, tiny baby steps
Into this territory called "love"
"Kiddy crushing, puppy loving" --
That's what they all call it.
Tongue twisters, tying my tongue into tight knots.
These feelings puzzle my brain.
Questioning every movement, every moment
Waiting patiently for everything to click together
Two halves of a whole taken apart
By those who think they are better than us
Word goes around and around
But never seems to land on the truth
Avoiding all the right answers
Even if it was right in the center,
Bolded, capitalized letters, and highlighted
Just for you.
It will slap you in the face and tell you,
"Get your head out of the clouds!"
Because you need to realize that real life is not a fairy tale,
Not a story straight from the classics.
It is not told at night before your bedtime,
Before your parents tuck you in and kiss you goodnight.
It is something learned from experience,
Something that walks in at all the wrong times.
It'll walk in through the doors when you're crying
And it could walk in during breakfast while you're making your favorite morning coffee.
It even walks out, sometimes unannounced
Even during your happiest moments.
Because that's what love is:
Unpredictable

She was taught from a young age that beauty was having pale skin and a bright smile,
But she wasn’t trained to see that beauty itself was somewhere in the writings of a fragile, broken heart.
She was raised in a society where thin bodies were attractive and big bodies were a disgrace
As if it was worse than the crime against  Jews, homosexuals, and the colors of race combined.
Belief that beauty was only found in painted faces with blinding teeth was planted in her brain at such a young age that she forgot how she looked in the mirror because she was too afraid to see her own smile.
She forgot to brush her teeth in the mornings because she was too afraid to ask her mommy, “Mommy, am I as pretty as the ******* the magazine?”
She’s too afraid to hear her mother’s reaction, or her siblings’ reaction, hell, even her father’s reaction.
“No, you’re not as pretty as her,”
That’s what they would say,
But she left before they could finish their sentence:
“No, you’re not as pretty as her. Pretty is an understatement. You’re pretty **** amazing, pretty **** talented, and pretty **** gorgeous, but you sure as hell ain’t just pretty. You’re not beautiful like the distorted girls in television screens, and you’re not beautiful like the chicks on those photoshopped magazines. No, you’re beautiful because you don’t ever see it. You’re beautiful because you hide in the flaws we all grew up in. You’re beautiful because you write your heart out on paper, and you’re beautiful because you give a little piece of your heart out to every person you see. No, you’re not as pretty as those prostitutes like to think they are. No, you’re pretty because you have good judgment and know when to give your heart out to strangers. You’re beautiful because you leave an impact in everyone’s lives, whether it’s good or not, intentional or not. You’re beautiful because you say you aren’t and you believe you aren’t, but you’re pretty **** beautiful for telling everyone that they are instead of saving some of the compliments for yourself. So, no, you will never be as pretty as they are because that’s what they will only stay as - pretty.”
Pretty in photoshoots and pretty in covers,
But they will never ever be as pretty as the girl with the heart too big for its confinements,
Heart too tiny for the world to see.
No, the world will never ever be as pretty as her,
But someday the clouds will drift away,
And the rays of sunshine will come out,
And it will shine on her,
And it will show her that beauty and pretty aren’t just the superficial things she was taught from day one.
Beauty is someone who will leave a mark on this soil,
And she will never look back to see it.
Beauty is someone afraid to believe in everything her parents told her to stay away from.
She doesn’t believe in love because love is too powerful,
And love is too kind, and love is beautiful,
But beauty is something her parents told her not to believe in either,
Because beauty’s an illusion and no one sees the obvious even if it’s right in front of them -
It will be blurred by smoke and ***** and the images that come from drugs.
She was taught to hide beauty or it will hurt you because society doesn’t know how to appreciate it.
They don’t know how to love and find beauty in everything around them,
They all just ignore the girl with the tear tracks on her cheeks and a broken smile and a note on her back that says,
“Beautiful”

He didn't hold my hand
or kiss my cheek
Instead he held me to his chest,
and our arms always seemed to kiss each other.
He didn't share his day with me
nor did he ask me about mine
Instead he shared his music and his art
and encouraged me to do the same.
He told me not to worry too much
because being sad won't get me anywhere.
He reassures me that things will get better
and now getting up in the morning
doesn't seem so bad at all.

When she was 6,
Her wildest dream was to be an astronaut.
Her mom always told her to reach for the stars,
To dream bigger than life
Because she can be anything she wanted to be as long as she was happy.
When she went to her first day of grade school,
The teacher asked the kids to introduce themselves -
Name, age, and goal in life-
And when they flowed out of her mouth like a waterfall,
Spilling into the air with no way of turning back,
The boys giggled and told her that,
"Girls can't be that! That's a guys' job!"
The teacher made no effort to scold them,
Only telling her to ignore their constant teasing
And keep her ambitions to herself because
"Girls can't do that."
When she left that idea behind on the sidewalk of broken dreams,
A wall rose up from the ground
And caged her heart.
She found a haven in art,
Choosing to drown herself in an assortment of paints and oils.
She created beauty from an abyss of "No-you-can'ts" and "you're-a-girl-so-you-cant-do-thats"
But she still hesitated to show her talent to the world,
Wondered why boys always brought up the fact that most of the successful artists were men.
Everything they always told her kept ringing in her ears,
Like how alarms always sound and you can't ever get it out of your head.
She found a demon in her haven,
Found out that sometimes even the most beautiful things can have a dark side
Like how the moon always has a face not illuminated by the sun,
And she forgot how to create beauty.
When she lost all her inspiration to dream big,
To create art,
She cried to her mother,
Tried to find her 6-year-old self in the arms of her creator.
"We age like trees,
Have layers like an onion,
And every time you grow,
We add another ring to our skin.
Peel back the layers and you'll find your inner 6-year-old,
Young and restless
With eyes full of love for life.
Peel the skin back even more,
Like how a hangnail stands out next to your nail,
And peel it back even though it hurts and it bleeds crimson and smells like iron.
We're all aged and different,
All of different genders,
But don't ever be ashamed of being a girl,"
Is what her mother would tell her,
And she'd continue with,
"Don't ever let anyone tell you that being a girl,
A woman,
Is something to be ashamed of.
Don't ever let anyone tell you that you can't do what you want
Simply because you have physical differences.
Babies come from the womb of women,
Children nestle into their mother's ******* when they fall asleep,
Mothers of all creatures care for their young ones until they're fully grown,
So don't ever think that women can't do anything,
Because they can.
Baby, the first woman to ever be in space was a Russian named Valentina,
A word that stood for brave.
I didn't name you brave,
But you could be an astronaut if you wanted to.
Frida Kahlo was a famous artist,
And her name stood for beauty,
But, baby, if you wanted to, you could piece the world together with your bare hands.
My mother, your grandmother,
Her name stood for queen,
And she was the best thing I've ever seen walk on this planet.
My grandmother stood boldly next to her loved one's casket,
And she shed not one tear,
So tell me why it's a burden to be a girl."
When she was 6,
She wanted to be everything she could be,
But everyone always put her down for being a girl.
The insult of being a woman still rung in her ears even now,
A decade older,
Ten years wiser,
More rings embedded in her skin.
It still stung,
Like wounds being opened again only to flush it down with alcohol trying to make the pain go away,
She still heard them curse at her for being a girl,
A full grown woman now,
And she'll still cry like she did before,
Crying to find her inner 6-year-old,
Young and innocent
With dreams of gold,
And she'll peel back her layers,
Taking longer than before,
But always going back to the roots that being a girl isn't all that bad.
She's older now,
With frown lines on her face instead of wrinkles crinkling around her smile,
And all she could dream about is
Rewinding time
And being a 6-year-old girl again

They say that love blinds you;
That once you find “the one,”
They will be the only ones you see,
Whether it’s in a crowded room of familiar faces and strangers you’ve never met before
Or in a city with emotionless people wandering through the streets attempting to find their souls-
It’ll always be just the two of you.
Love hides all the darkness in the world,
All the evil and corruption going on around you,
But it also blinds you from seeing the truth.
You see, when you’re in love with someone,
You do whatever it takes to stay in love with that person.
You forget their flaws,
Erase all their mistakes and scars from their bodies.
You block out what others say about your relationship,
Becoming deaf to all the doubts and reprimanding of the adults that “know better.”
When you’re in love, you want to stay in love.
You want it to be just the two of you in this entirely chaotic world.
See, love makes a person blind.
It makes you walk through the Labyrinth without Ariadne’s ball of string to guide you.
It blindfolds you and refuses to hold your hand and direct you to the end.
It makes you want to do stupid things,
And it makes you want to jump off a cliff.
When you’re crazy and irrevocably in love,
You’ll go psychotic trying to make the other person happy.
You crave for their happiness so much that you forget to focus on your satisfactions.
But what happens if you’re so far in love that you’ve become accustomed to tunnel vision even when you’re far out of love?
You see, I know this girl.
She loves the idea of being in love.
She loves all the romance and the sweetness and all the attention when it comes to being in love.
She loves loving others so much that she forgot to love herself.
She’s so caught up in this idea that she almost forgot to get her head out of the clouds and place her feet on the earth for a minute.
See, I don’t believe in perfect.
There’s always something in this world that will corrupt beauty
And being close to perfect is never enough for society.
We’ve all been brought up in a universe of false hopes and harsh realities,
But we still crave for perfection,
We still want perfect.
She wants a perfect boy and a perfect life,
And it’s nice to know that someone out there is still dreaming and believing in the goodness of the world,
But deep in our veins, we know this dream is unreachable,
And I think it’s time for all of us to keep our feet on the ground and not let our heads get too caught up in the moment,
But we all know that might never happen either.

Underneath the ten pounds of make-up
and the personality you fake to please everyone,
the face they deem
Gorgeous is layered with faux smiles
and tear tracks
Like runaway trains that seem impossible to stop.
Years of pain and anguish;
actions driven by anger;
nights ended with soaked pillows;
thoughts clouded with judgment
for she will always believe she is
UGLY

If I were to describe the distance between us,
I wouldn’t know what to compare it to.
They say that the Moon is approximately 238,900 miles away from planet Earth,
Pluto is about 3.67 billion miles away from the Sun,
And the Milky Way is roughly 120,000 light years in diameter.
You’re about 1,275.6 miles away from me,
But it seems like the miles between us is greater than the distance between galaxies and stars alike.
They always told me that distance makes the heart grow fonder,
But how does that work when my heart only ever aches because you’re so far away?

I miss you
But these three syllables don’t quite add up,
They don’t make sense.
“I miss you so ******* much” doesn’t quite compare to the emptiness I feel when you’re not around,
It doesn’t compare to the distance between us.

You found a hidden vein into my heart,
Picked the lock of the cage
And stole my fist-sized *****,
Never intending to return it,
Only planning to use it,
Manipulate it,
Mold it like clay
And make it seem easy to shapeshift.
I made you my home planet,
The one I came to when I was down,
When I was all bruised in a rainbow of colors.
They say that home is where the heart is,
But what is a home
When your heart is in someone else’s hands?

I made you my home body,
But I was merely a nobody,
A distant star 2,000 light years away
That always seemed to be forgotten,
Only ever remembered when I shone too brightly in your eyes.

I was your Neverland,
The second star to the right,
A place for those who wished to never grow up.
You were my Peter Pan,
My lost boy
Who only ever wanted to be found,
But in a sudden turn of events,
You grew up without me.
I lost track of your age,
You were just a boy the last time I saw your face,
Chubby-cheeked and wide-grinned
With your feathered hat high up above your head.
I was your Wendy,
A believer in you,
The lover you loved so dearly,
I was your darling.
You left
And aged so nicely,
Grew tall so swiftly,
And I was merely the ant in your shoe,
A pest on your land of ageless dreams.
I was forgotten,
And I wish you believed in me like you believed in fairies,
Wish you sprinkled dust on me
So you can watch me soar and pass by you,
Wish you saved me from drowning in you like how you saved me at Mermaid’s Lagoon,
Wish you had never grown up without me.
We swore eternity to each other,
Promised each other infinity,
Vowed to never ever grow up here.
You told me you loved me,
And then you disappeared.
I forgot about your story for a while
Until you reappeared so suddenly,
Though you lost me from your memory,
And I can feel the distance between us grow even more,
Felt home vanish quicker than a heartbeat,
Felt you shrinking smaller than I could have ever wanted.
You were my Peter Pan,
My Never Land,
My home planet,
My whole universe,
And if this isn’t love,
Then, please, tell me what was it?

Dear you,

Love me.
Just love me for who I am, and not for who I’m not
Because that’s not me, and you know it isn’t
But you still look at me like I am her
And you still see her smile attached to mine
And I can see it on your face whenever we kiss
But I just want you to love me.

Just ******* love me for me
Because I love you
But I don’t want to
And I want to love you in slow motion like her
And I want you to love me because all of me loves all of you
And just ******* love me.

I want you to love me like you love your favorite songs
And I want you to know every inch of me like you know ever melody of your one favorite song,
That one song I religiously listened to because I know that’s you,
I know that’s who you are,
Where you came from,
All your dreams and fears,
And I will listen to it every three minutes and fifty-six seconds of every waking day
And I want it to sink into my bones like it sunk into your head
And I just want you to memorize me like you memorized that song
So you can sing my vices and virtues
And you can hum all my imperfections
But you will still love me,
Still love every note of me like you love that song because that’s me and that’s you
And I don’t care if you can’t sing or if you can’t play an instrument
But **** it, just love me for me and not what I’m not.

Love me.
Love me like I’m the world,
Like how you want to travel to new places no matter how dangerous and scary it is.
I want you know me like the map,
And know all the roads and streets and intersections of every city.
Love me like I’m the book in the hidden part of the library,
That one book that always gets shoved aside and forgotten,
And love me from the inside-out,
And love all my crevices and hidden meanings and riddles
And love me from cover to cover,
Title page to blank page at the end,
And even if it ends, you’re still wanting to read again just to get to know it better,
Just love me like that.

Love me like a magician loves to deceive people,
And he always has a trick up his sleeve and you just don’t know his deepest intentions,
But remember to always be cautious because the closer you think you are, the less you’ll actually see
But love me regardless of how much of a complexity I am,
And just be the little boy for a second,
Be the boy who believes in magic and believe in me even if my acts are questionable,
Just remember that sometimes, things are better left unsaid.

Just love me despite all of my “I-don’t-knows” and “maybes” and “sures”
And love me because even if questions are left unanswered,
I promise to stay true to my word,
And just please remember that I won’t break our promises.
Our promises are our always and our always are our okays,
Just love me like how she loved him even though she didn’t want to because she was scared to,
And just love me like he loved her even if she was a grenade waiting to explode as if it was a bomb on a lifetime-timer,
Just love me even when I’m sick and the clock stops ticking.

Love me as if Cupid struck its arrow at you when you weren’t looking,
But please don’t believe that our love is fake and an illusion,
Don’t lust for me and quote unquote “love” me because you think I’m a prize to be won,
But love me because I am a prize
And even if you did get me,
It doesn’t mean that you won, just don’t be boastful.
Love me, but don’t put me on a pedestal,
I just want you to love me.

Just love me like I’m mysterious,
Someone you’ve never met before or only passed once or twice before,
And I want you to get to know me like you want to know what’s going on in their lives,
And even if you’ve dug far deep into my brain,
I want you to still love me enough to dig deeper
And get past all my imperfections and habits that I was born to hate but live to love,
And I want you to love them more than you love my good parts.
Just love all the wicked parts of me because people tend to have more passion for things that they despise
And I want you to love and hate all of me
But I hope that you never pick hate over love
Because I just want you to love me.

I want you to love all of me like you loved all of her
And I know it’s hard for heartbreak to leave
And it always passes on like a kidney stone
And it hurts and it burns and you just want it all to be over with already
But it won’t leave and it’s going to take awhile
But in the mean time just let me love all the pieces of you that you hate
And let me love you so that I can put the puzzle pieces of your broken heart together
And I don’t care if it’s flimsy paper that break apart after two days,
I’m going to sew it back together and hope that no one else breaks it up,
But ******* if I’m the one to break it,
I hope that you forgive me because I didn’t mean to.
I just meant to love you
But we just never worked out.
But I still loved you past tense
Regardless of what happened between everything
We fell apart like a broken vase
And I don’t think there’s a glue strong enough to fix it
But please just know that I tried to fix our stupid little hearts
And I loved you even for a little while.

Love, me.

It’s 3:08 AM and I’m lying in bed thinking of what could have been,
Wondering whether or not the constellations in the night sky have shifted
And even though they probably haven’t,
I wonder why everything beneath it has changed.
I can’t seem to sleep without these thoughts,
The thoughts of infinity and oblivion,
The feeling of an abysmal eternity,
Consuming me from the inside out.
While everything seems to end,
There’s always something else coming out of it,
Something precious and something extraordinary.
I don’t know when I’ll be at peace with this temporality;
It’s almost as if my mind’s its own universe,
With all the neurons and nerves all interconnected to form blazing suns for other planets
And galaxies too far beyond reach for me to even fathom.
It’s 3:15 now and I’m still wondering how we came to be,
How we got here in the first place,
And I don’t know the answer to my own question.
I want to know why the Creator made me,
Made you,
Made us.
I want to know why He put us here on this god forsaken planet,
And why He deemed it was necessary for us to find a connection within each other,
Underneath all the other galaxies of the universe.
I want to know why,
But He won’t give me the answer either.
It’s been 18 minutes past 3 am,
The hour of which most spirits are awake,
And I’m hoping that I’ll get to cross paths with my loved one once more,
And I’m hoping that you’re up late at night wondering about me too.
I can’t sleep and I don’t know if I want to
Because all I will think about when I close my eyes is how stupid it is that I can’t even answer my own questions
And I can’t even figure out why I was here in the first place
And why I’m so angry at you when I shouldn’t be.
I just want this temporality to cease these unanswered questions and let me go to sleep,
But even I can’t escape from the universe that unravels once my eyes close.

I was born with birthmarks etched onto my skin
And I’ve acquired many scars
From all the battles I’ve fought with myself
But it wasn’t until you came marching into my battlefield
On your white horse
Disguised as my knight-in-shining armor
That I gained the title
“WARNING: MAY HARM YOU”
Put onto my suit.

I’ve received medal of honors
From barely escaping the war zone
But never have I ever received an award
As charming as this,
Especially when it came from
The self-proclaimed commander-in-chief of the red army.
All the false pacts we’ve written before
No longer matter,
And it only took a couple of months
For us to forget the promised truths.
You know I only meant to save you,
To leave you unharmed,
And you meant the same for me
But instead of standing side-by-side
On the trenches we’ve built together,
We landed on opposing fields.
I claimed you my savior,
Yet all I get is the title of WARNING?

We’ve written peace treaties before,
We were allies once upon a time,
And you thought I was the princess;
You wanted to swoop me up
And take me on a ride on your stupid horse that can’t even gallop correctly.
You thought I wanted the crown
And all the glory that came from being royal.
You didn’t want me up on the front with you,
You needed me safe, I know,
But I can fight for myself
Even if it’s you I’m up against.
So give me my glass slipper now,
I can put it on myself.
Give me a sword instead of this plastic tiara on my head,
I don’t need your hand to get me back up,
So don’t offer it
Unless you want it cut off
And returned to you on a silver platter.

It’s funny how things work out,
How they never go the way we ever want it to,
And I swear
I would’ve hid my armor a long time ago
If I hadn’t known that this would turn into an all-out war.
We slipped and tripped
And came running back full-force
But betrayal happens every so often,
Our backs were turned towards each other
And I could say the steel from this knife I hide under my dress
Slipped
Like we did
And fell onto your back
And I could say that I tripped
On these glass slippers you gave me
But they’re both false truths
Like the pacts we wrote before.

So forgive me
For being a back-stabbing princess
And go on,
Call me and label me as a warning
Stamped with your approval,
And I swear
I’ll wear it with
Honor and pride
Like how I wore your heart on my sleeve once upon a time,
And I’ll have it etched onto me
In permanent ink
So it can stain my pretty skin
Forever and ever.
Just like my birthmarks and my scars,
It will stay with me wherever I go,
Until the day I die,
Until the day I’m buried six feet under
With all of my past mistakes.

Go on,
Warn other people
About how much harm my presence will bring into their lives,
But it’s not like I never warned you either,
So don’t act like you were hurt the most
After the whole ordeal is done.
We’re both as bruised
And scarred as the other;
Don’t act like the victim here
Because you injured me as well,
Or have you forgotten?
Did you forget that you left me alone
Without telling me?
Did you forget that you gave me no explanation,
No written apology?
Have you forgotten that?
I can’t say that I blame you,
I would’ve left me too
If I had the chance,
But because you so blindingly placed this title upon me,
I will wear it honorably
Because of this war
Because of you
That way others won’t have to get into my battlefield
With false hopes
And wild dreams
About saving a princess dressed in all kinds of dresses.
I’ll meet them up in the front,
And they will see me
With this sword drenched to the hilt
And with my white armor
Stained scarlet
From the blood of those who’ve betrayed me
And they’ll see you as the warning of what they’re about to get into.

I am strong, but I am considered weak.
They don’t know where I came from, where I was born.
I am an Amazonian war princess,
the reincarnation of Diana Prince.
I am the descendant of Queen Hippolyta, and I was born in a place where the souls of murdered women were resurrected by the goddesses.
I am a force to be reckoned with.
I shouldn’t be ashamed of what I am, and they shouldn’t see me as something less than a penny.
I should be revered.
I am a force in the winds, and I am the force that pulls the tides of the waters surrounding land.
I am not hesitant to create storms that sink battleships that carry your husbands.
I am a siren, a creature of the sea, and I am beautiful, but I am not to be seen as only that.
I have the power to attract men with my beauty, and I can lure them into the depths of the big blue.
I am uncontrollable, and I am mysterious.
I can have you wrapped around my finger the moment you look into my eyes.
I am a woman and I am important.
Life can’t begin without me, and when I’m gone, you will be nothing but a lone soul walking around empty roads.
You will be lifeless, for I have ripped out your heart with my fangs,
And I am a lioness, a female queen and I was born to rule.
I wasn’t meant to be under your control, under your power.
I was meant to be greater than this, greater than you will ever be,
And you have no right to go against what I am destined to be.
I am a child of the earth,
The child of Mother Nature,
And I am a natural disaster.
I was born to create wreckage,
And I am the storm paving its way through your fingertips.
You weren’t the one to pull me up when I lost my battles and you weren’t there to clean up my gaping wounds.
It was me who got up from my knees and won the war, and you had no involvement in it.
I was raised to be independent, and I only know how to better myself for myself and not for you.
I am a woman, and I am not dainty and I won’t hide behind my mother like I used to.
I am a woman and I am an enigma,
And you weren’t supposed to know the fine details of my life.
I am tacked onto a name, but names are attached to different faces, and they’re not me.
I am a woman, and I am me.
I am a woman of wonders and that’s all I will be to you because you will never know me, a wonder woman.

I wanted to puke my heart out to you
And I wanted to stop daydreaming about you
But now you're just a significant part of the past -
A past that I am so willing to forget.
Now all I want is to set fire to the memories
And lock the remains in the basement of my thoughts.
I used to believe that you were my world,
The controller of everything that involved me,
But you disappeared
And I can't say the same anymore.
You left with no trace,
No  tracks to follow you back home;
Not even a goodbye.
Forced to clean up the mess you left behind,
I was able to wipe the remnants of my tears
With the remains of the memories
But they're gone now, too

I may have loved you deeper than an ocean,
But now I’m drowning in it.

You texted me last night.
If you had done that a year or two ago,
My stomach would have been rushing with butterflies,
My heart would have stopped,
I would have lost the ability to speak,
I would have texted back in a heartbeat.
You texted me again last night,
Wondering what I was up to,
Acting as if nothing was wrong,
Acting as if it hasn’t been months since the last time we talked.
You wanted to know what I was up to,
And our conversation flowed like how it did before.
Our words floated out of our mouths like how the rain fell from the sky,
Slowly but sometimes all at once.
You wanted to know what I was up to
And we were fine until you asked me to give myself to you.
I was fine until I figured out that you only wanted me for something physical,
For an easy kiss,
A skin to touch,
A diamond to ****.
I was pure
And you wanted to destroy everything about me,
My sanctuary,
My ******* body,
You wanted to destroy my very being.
I realized then that you were an animal,
A boy,
Not a man,
Who wanted nothing but a **** in the daytime
So you can get off
And I realized then that if I had given it up,
Not only would I have given up my purity,
I would have given myself to you,
Someone so ******* vile and atrocious
And I would never have been the same.
I was the last number in your phonebook,
And you named me the side *****,
The person you would only ever call for easy ***
And for something to taint.
You forgot my name,
Forgot that I have an identity,
You only ever call me when you remember I have a body,
And even then you only use me for **** that only ever benefits you.
I’m ******* sorry you’re such an immature person
And you don’t know how to treat a woman right.
I wonder what your mother thinks of you,
How your sister looks at you,
I want to know if they see you like I do.
I used to hold you up like a trophy,
Held you up to the sky
Because I thought you were better than this,
But now I look at you in disgust
Because you’re a monster.
I don’t know what the **** I saw in you,
You were everything I wanted at the time,
Everything I needed,
But I was only ever the last number in your phonebook.
You treated me as if I was a phone number on a billboard,
Everyone forgets them until it’s needed,
But I’m not your mistress,
Your little harlot,
The person you can go to after you’ve smoked a bowl
And had crack in your system.
Don’t ******* treat me like I’m a door with an Open sign that allows everybody in,
I’m not your *****.
So text me again,
Call me if you have to.
Instead there’s going to be bile up my throat
And my heartbeat will race,
But not because I’m happy,
No, no
It will ******* race because I hate you
And I’m excited because I want to do every cruel thing I can possibly do to you,
But I’m not you,
I won’t ever be the monster that you turned out to be,
I’m just sorry you have to live with yourself.
So text me again when I’m no longer the last person on your phonebook,
But I’m not going to reply again.

There's more to me than my name and my physical appearance
I don't dress to please you and make you comfortable
I don't say things according to your rules
The scars on my elbows and my knees contain more stories than all the lies you puked out
Tears were embedded on my cheeks long before you came around
And the mirror I look into every morning create jagged lines across my wrist
The face I see is a mask no one can ever truly rip off
It's stitched onto my bones and attached to my veins and if one were to ****** it from its place
I'd bleed to death
Crimson and rusty on the floor while my heart still pumps out blood and my lungs still breathe in air
My bones are weakened from all the standing up I have to do
I get knocked down too easily and I have to force myself to fight against gravity
And reach up to grab the hands of those trying to help me
My knees are tired of being bruised from all this shoving around and it's worried that one day I'll just give up and not get back up
But sometimes all we need is that extra push, that extra fall, to finally realize that gravity shouldn't control our lives
We can't live our entire journey just staying in one spot
Gravity is pulling us down while faith and hope is pushing us back up
So maybe we should all try and dust our knees off a little bit
Sigh and take a deep breath
And keep walking because that's all they want us to do

There were many questions that swirled around my mind,
And my mind almost always seemed to drift to these riddles every night before I fell asleep.
They were questions that were always left unanswered,
Always left floating midair and in between space and reality.
One was whether or not I wanted to grow up,
The other was if I still loved him,
Another was if I could ever come into terms with the idea of moving on and loving someone else.
I never liked moving on from the past,
And I always seemed to move backwards in my memory,
Replaying all the recorded scenes of life when I was two years old.
I paused and rewinded, paused and rewinded, paused and rewinded —
As if that would help time slow down and stick to the better half of my life.
Well, that wasn’t the case and the world seemed to have a mind of her own.
She played the tape and fast forwarded into the future,
Never once letting me have a second to pause and take a breather.
He moved on like a natural disaster,
A beautiful creation made by Mother Earth herself,
And he was too engrossed in his own superiority that he forgot to take my hand and lead me to safety.
I loved him in many ways and more than my toes and fingers combined.
He was a beautiful creature,
Almost ethereal to the point that I was too afraid to reach out and grasp him.
I loved him in a way more intimate than a mother loving her child,
Someone who sacrifices everything for her loved one’s happiness and to protect him from seeing the dangers of the world.
I loved him more than a mother carrying her unborn child in her womb,
A baby soon to be born into the unknown and into a life full of endless questions that can never be answered.
I loved him more than a barren woman who craved only to hold her own blood in her hands but never seeming to get what she wanted.
I loved him more than anything,
And yet he always found a way to leave before I could even utter the three words, the three syllables, that have become so accustomed to sitting on my lips.

P.S. I know I told you that some things are better left unsaid,
But I just need you to know a couple of things:

1. I miss you.
I miss all the little things and all the big things,
But overall I just miss all of you.
I know I made it seem like I was okay,
But I’m not
And I’m sorry I hurt you,
I never meant to,
I’m just trying my hardest to get over this bridge built above the tears that I’ve cried over
And I’m trying to mend something that I never knew needed to be mended,
But I just miss you.
I miss how you always seemed to know the right things to say at the right time
And I miss how you were always so stubborn and you always wanted to be right
And we always argued but you didn’t want to admit it.
I miss how tightly you would hold me,
As if I was going to slip from your fingertips and you just begged for me to stay longer in your arms,
I’m just sorry that I always was the one to let go sooner,
And I didn’t mean to, I didn’t want to.
I miss how you would touch me at all times,
Not sexually or in any way demeaning and demanding,
But as if you just wanted to know I was still there.
You would nudge me and budge me and playfully push me,
And you would play with my face because you said my cheeks were cute,
And you would play with my hair and my scalp so much to the point where I scratch my head nowadays and hope my hand becomes your fingers
And I can sleep away my anxiety
And I know you’ll be there in the morning,
But that’s just not gonna happen anymore, is it?
I never was one for affection but I miss it
I miss how you’d rub my knees when we watched your favorite shows
And have I mentioned that I miss that too even though I never got the point of it?
We used to watch your favorite sport all the time, and I never understood it but I tried for the sake of you
I miss watching your games,
Being your number one supporter even though I never acted like it,
But I was ******* proud to be a supporter of number 21.
I hated the way you reeked like sweat after
But I miss seeing you in your natural state,
All worked up with your hair a mess and you were so laidback that way.
If I could have my sweater smell like you in your musk, I would have it and keep it any day.
I miss how you would send me your music,
And you probably dedicated them to me,
But I just acted like I didn’t know anything.
It’s just now I can’t listen to your favorite artists without thinking of you
And I just miss you, I guess.

2. If I had a list of things that I regretted,
Your name wouldn’t be on it.
I do, however, regret not being able to spend my days with you.
I wish I tried,
I know I could have but I didn’t and I’m sorry.
If I could change what happened between us,
I would do so in a heartbeat
And if I could wish that things would go the way we wanted it to,
I would call Genie,
Ask to have more wishes,
And wish for things to be set right.
I’d hold you tight and never let go,
Get down on my knees
And pray to the god I didn’t know I believed in to let me have one more day with you so I can get everything back in order.

3. I don’t have much to say
And I guess that’s my problem.
I think too much
But I say too little.
Things that I meant to say
I never did.
I was always a believer that some things are better left unsaid,
But I guess that I need to tell you that when you left
I took you in like a sunset
I basked under your purple and orange skies
There’s a phenomenon about them,
How a green light flashes every time the sun meets the horizon
As if the two were about to kiss,
And I wanted to know if it was true.
I waited and I waited and I waited
But I never saw it;
Your sun disappeared faster than a blink of an eye
And I didn’t even get to say goodbye.
All I had left was your post-beauty
And I could only wait for the darkness to pass and for the moon to take over
But even then, I could only hope that the sun would rise faster and for the days to pass until the time I get to see you again.

4. I’m an emotional wreck
I like to think that I’m fine
But I’m a car crash,
A train wreck,
A plane crash on an open field
And I only carry the souls of those who have left me behind.
Maybe that’s why I have anxiety,
I don’t want to be alone in the ocean away from all civilization,
But they always told me that isolation’s a way to get to know yourself better,
I just don’t know if I believe in that anymore.
For ten months I relied on you,
Cried to you about stupid problems and stupid people
And you understood my cracks better than I did.
You kept me grounded when all I wanted was to be up in the clouds
But I lost you faster than the speed of an angel,
And maybe you were my angel,
Unforeseen and something from Heaven.
I just never figured it out,
Figured you out
And I wish I did when I had the chance
But I got left behind by God’s child
When I only ever wanted to be the same.
You accepted me when I felt like I didn’t belong,
Praised me when I was at my lowest
Now tell me, who’s going to replace you?

5. I know.
I know things won’t be the same no matter how hard I try to fix it.
I can try to mix all the glues together
And stick the broken vase together
But it’s not going to be smooth
And you’ll still see the cracks.
It’s sad how easily some things can be broken
And how it takes days for wounds to heal
Some may take longer to repair
But broken hearts can’t be mended no matter how hard you try,
How long you wait.
We can replace mirrors,
Replace plates,
Fix cars after a crash,
Repair planes when they malfunction,
But it’s sad how we’re only supposed to live with one heart.
They say that we were born attached to someone else,
We were born with two hearts
But we got separated
And our purpose is to find our other half.
There’s four sides to ever puzzle piece
And we can fit each side to another
But the picture can only be whole when all the right sides are attached to one another.
I like to think that that was us for awhile.
We fit together perfectly
But our picture never got finished.
We stopped putting each other together because it was a childish game to play.
We were each other’s halves for awhile
But we weren’t meant for each other.
I think this was us,
But I didn’t want to believe that at the time.

I know some things are better left unsaid,
But I needed you to know these five things.
All stories have a beginning, middle, and end;
Ours was just written in letter,
And this is our post script.

I have counted the number of days that I have worn black for him.
Count my fingers:
Ten digits out of my ten.
For ten days,
I mourned the death of him,
For the departure of his soul from his physical body.
I was on my knees for too long
That I do not even remember its original state.
Forgive me, Father,
For I have sinned.
I have mourned too long over the loss of a loved one,
Mourned too long for a lost love that cannot ever be found,
One that flew too far;
I lost all communication to it,
My brain that was once intertwined with my heart
Was now separated,
And I can no longer remember how to comprehend this loss.
Forgive me, Father,
For I have mourned too much for something that seemed irreplaceable.
I have become too selfish,
Too vain,
And I know you said
That love is patient,
That love is always kind,
That love is never boastful,
But forgive me, Father,
For I have loved him too fast
When all I wanted was to love him slowly,
Slower than the hands of Father Time
Is ticking too fast,
Too quickly for my mouth to catch,
And it has left a bitter after taste on my tongue.
I cannot count how many frown lines,
How many stretch marks,
How many scars
I have etched onto my skin.
See,
I am too vain.
I have become too aware of this appearance,
This mask that conceals me,
And I was drawn to his skin
And the way it was flawless
Even with the whipped blood on his back
And the way his shoulders slumped
From the weight of his burdens.
I wanted to wash his pain away,
To erase them from his sanity
And keep it to myself for safekeeping.
See,
I loved him more than myself.
I would have given up my everything for his happiness,
I would have kept him from all the hurt,
From all the sin he ran away from,
I wanted him for my own selfish needs.
I would have kept him alive
For the sake of me
And in spite of you.
Forgive me, Father,
For I have sinned a great deal
And I pray that you forgive me for them.
I have mourned too long for something that was never real,
I was tempted by the smell of something sweet,
Something delightful
And it was right in the midst of your perfect haven.
Forgive me, Father,
For I was too weak to turn away from the temptation,
And now I am being punished for this foolish mistake.
For ten days,
I mourned for the missing part of me.
The hands that he held so tightly before
Were now replaced by the beads of the chain
That surrounded my tiny neck,
And each shift of my dainty fingers
Make the pressure more unbearable.
Each prayer I give out to the sky
Have been left unanswered;
All my wishes have been left in the dark corners of the church corridors.
The syllables of each rehearsed word I utter
Have formed scarlet welts in my back,
Please
Forgive me, Father,
For mourning him for too long,
Even if it was a day more than you wanted me;
I just did not want him to go,
To leave me behind on this earth,
When I could have been with him
For much longer.

Depression hits like a warm winter day,
With a storm making a surprise guest star.
Droplets of you came floating out from the sky
And onto me.
You soaked my face with your holy water,
Covered me and shielded me from the sun.
Your rain masked out my tears,
And I guess you never noticed.
I watched you unfold right in front of my eyes,
Slowly and calculating,
Like how predators seek out their prey.
I needed something vital,
My lips were dry
And you were the quenching water,
But I could only watch your torturous waves flow out from the clouds up above,
You’re holy water sent from heaven,
A sign from God that you were something I needed,
But can’t have.

I inhaled you like oxygen,
Took you in,
Showed you my insides,
Let you see parts of me
I didn't even know.
You were intoxicating,
So inviting,
Something that was vital to me,
I breathed you out,
And you left with
Every nook
And cranny
Of my lungs.
You became something poisonous,
Something dangerous.
If I were to inhale you back in,
I would suffocate,
But I did it anyway,
I breathed you in,
Then spit you back out,
I repeated this process
Over and over again
Until my lungs felt about right,
Until they felt compressed and tight,
Until they collapsed on itself,
And I will do this over and over again,
Take a deep breath
And take all of you in
Only to exhale you back out.
This process is painful,
Gaining you
Only to lose you.

Our story was left unfinished,
Got cut off mid-sentence
And in between the beginning and the end.
Maybe that was how it was supposed to be;
Maybe my 365-paged novel
That was dedicated solely to you
Was meant to be left unwritten,
And that no matter how many times I edit it,
How many times I scribble over mistakes,
How many times I try to erase the unnecessary things I never meant to say,
The main characters weren’t meant for each other
Even if they believed it.
I didn’t mean for this to end so abruptly;
I was so ready to draft out the sequels,
But I was left uninspired
And the words just didn’t come out right.
Our story was left unfinished,
But that doesn’t mean it was never important,
That it wasn’t special,
That it doesn’t deserve recognition.
It will stick out from the bookcase
It’s stored in
And even as the pages are filled with dust
And overspilling thoughts across the margins,
I will remember to always come back to it,
Always remember to go back to the doggy-eared pages
Meant for memories that we wrote together,
Always remember to read over the passages
That I highlighted
That were of the moments we created.
One day,
You are going to find someone
Who will write about your story
About how you came to be,
And she will write sequels
Meant only for you,
And you’ll read it to your children,
And your story will get published
Even with its mistakes
And doggy eared pages
And highlighted areas.
One day
That will happen
And I hope to read it
Someday
So I can imagine how happy you are
With the person who was meant to write you novels,
And not just poems
And love notes on binder paper
And unwritten stories about your adventures together,
And this will happen
Someday.

Can you pinpoint the exact place on the map
Where we went wrong?
Tell me,
How long did it take
For our world to crumble down
Into tiny microscopic pieces of sand
That’s been stuffed inside an hourglass?
Tell me,
Why does it still hurt
So much like being stabbed in the gut,
Why all the butterflies that used to reside in my belly
Have been transformed into a deep sea of gushing blood,
That what used to be in my veins
Are now pouring out into this open letter
I’m writing for every person
I’ve hurt before.
Tell me
Where I went wrong,
Why I can’t seem to find the coordinates of the person I used to be?
Tell me
What exactly changed?
Why I can’t seem to look into the mirror
Without seeing a complete stranger
Being reflected back at me,
Why everything seems to be going in different directions,
Why I’m feeling so lost
When I’ve been crawling on the floor trailing after something that’s too good to be true.
Tell me,
Do you remember how everything used to be?
How everything was perfection dipped in gold,
How we used to laugh together
Without a care in the world
And how I thought your giggles
Sounded like an angel’s voice?
Do you remember
How we used to stay up together
Talking about your problems,
About your well-constructed plan
Of having kids,
How you were going to name one of your daughters after me?
Do you remember a place on Father Time,
When we were important to each other,
When we called each other soulmates by blood,
That I would be written into your journal
For all of eternity,
That whatever will happen in the future,
We will always remember the bond that we had?
Do you remember that?
Tell me,
Do you sit around after dark
Thinking of what could have been,
Praying to God
That this will all turn around,
That we could forgive each other for everything that happened,
And all the miscommunication that we placed between us
Only needed a simple call
To fix the distance we knitted together with our bare hands.
Tell me
Do you cry late at night
Like I do?
Do you ever feel lonely
Because I’m not there to kiss your forehead?
Tell me,
Where did everything go wrong?
Can you find me a place on this globe
Where we can mend this broken relationship together,
Where there’s a fountain that stitches up broken people
And shattered friendships?
Will there ever be a time
And place in this world
Where we can put aside our differences
And move on
From this massive grave we put up?
Tell me,
Will there ever be a time where you forgive me?

I always imagined myself getting on a plane
To get to your arms,
But now that I see another in them,
It makes me want to shrink back
And revel in my thoughts.

You made it clear that you didn't want me around
Even if I had willingly gave you my affections.
I trusted you with things,
Things that were buried with my past.

I never hated you because you were my other half,
A half of a broken heart,
Half of a broken person.
Both needed stitches,
One that only you could mend.

But now I hate you because you're happy,
You're happy with someone else
and not me.
You've erased me from your memory,
And made new ones with someone else.

I'm happy you're happy,
But I would've been content if I was there, too.

We were like lines that intersected at a certain point,
Only to drift apart in opposite directions after we made memories.
It was as if some other force by nature was urging us to go our separate ways,
As if It knew better than to keep us together.
We always found our way back to our merging point,
Always returning to the past that we never really left behind.
There was never any closure,
Never any goodbyes;
We just left the other,
And maybe it was for the best.
Maybe some people were meant to intersect at only one point,
While other paths just never cross at all,
And sometimes, if one is lucky,
They’ll find a person that is in all of the points of their line.

I never knew what death tasted like
Until my lips touched yours.