kissing you was like swerving into oncoming traffic

i can never tell if i am more haunted by empty picture frames or the ashes of their contents

you taught me that the saying "pick your battles" meant not answering when love was at the door

sometimes when i drink whiskey i swear i can hear your voice in the creases of my bedsheets & i sleep on the floor

i still catch myself running my hands over things you touched the most, looking for the echoes of your fingertips

i practice things i'll never say to you

i remember the day you told me you didn't like poetry, how "everything's already been said" & how "nothing meaningful can be captured without being cliche" you know, i don't miss you like the sun and moon, i do not miss you like tide bent waves crashing on the shoreline, i miss you like a chernobyl  swingset misses children

rumor has it that drowning is a lot like coming home, that drinking bleach can **** the butterflies in your stomach

for your love of cigarettes, i would have been an ashtray

this halloween i want to dress up as the you when you loved yourself and show up on your doorstep

i never understood what you meant when you said i was an instrument, back when you would cup your hands around my chest and breathe through the holes in my heart, i still wonder if the sounds i made remind you of wind chimes

i never paid much attention to abandoned buildings until i became one

in my dreams all the flowers smell like your perfume

i am the only person who has ever wished for the same snowflake to fall twice

if i could go back, and rewrite the definition of audacity, it would be how when we lost the bet of love, you said "we never shook on it"

i love you, if the feeling is not mutual, please pretend this was a poem

the only apology i want from you, is to have you repeat the names of children we will never have in your parents living room until they *****

we are the same person if you find yourself up at 4am dry heaving promises, or if you are kept awake by the laughter of those who've abandoned you

nobody ever told you that goodbyes taste like the back of stamps

sometimes i'm convinced that the only reason we hug, is so you can check my back for exit wounds

She's the kind of girl.
Yes.
She's the kind of girl who could make your heart stop beating like a
bullet.
But could bring you back faster that your emergency room defibrillator.
She's the kind of girl who conducts the orchestra of hurricanes in your heart with just a glance from across a flooded room.
She's the kind of girl who makes use of your telescope eyes
to show you what your love will be
but can pull a shutter down too,
but only to save you.

The kind of girl who lights fires to keep you warm and not
to burn you down.
The kind of girl who holds you close without a dagger up her sleeve.
The kind of girl who holds you close whilst being an ocean away.
The kind of girl who would rip away your flesh and blood
to prove that you're more than what you're made of.
The kind of girl a failed skipping stone would fall into.
The kind of girl who holds you strong whilst being beaten down onto her own knees.
The kind of girl who lets her heart speak instead of her mouth.
The kind of girl whose eyes have experienced a more austere flood than you ever will.
The kind of girl who would take Cupid's mismatched arrow for you.
The kind of girl who would hold you still whilst an earthquake tears you from what you thought you knew and felt.
The kind of girl who breaks the mirrors which have held you captive for years.
The kind of girl who bites her fingernails, so nobody can remain underneath.
The kind of girl who believes that the heart is made for more than to pump blood.
The kind of girl who knows your lungs could never survive the flood.
The kind of girl who brings even the world to a halt.
The kind of girl who shouts from the sun to the moon,
and from the moon to the sun,
not because she understands,
but because she yearns for their love.
The kind of girl who possess wildfire hands.
The kind of girl you'd let burn you down.
The kind of girl.