You are beautiful.

Do not roll your eyes at me.
I see you.
You have never been kissed.
Boys treat you like you are contagious
and at night the popular girl's laughter
rings in your mind like an alarm clock—
you do not sleep very much.
You are nebulas and dark holes,
purple and black.
Do you not understand my metaphor?
I know what you do at night.
In the mirror you try to destroy
pieces of you that make people hate you.
That make you hate you.
Pinch and pull and twist
squeeze and squeeze,
squeeze your eyes shut—
bruises do not look better in the dark.

I know you.
So listen to me when I tell you:
Do not let years of your life
become a blur of starving
and binging starving and binging
starving and binging.
Do not form an addiction
to the growl of your stomach.
Do not wear your clothes
like an apology.
When your weight is the classroom guessing game,
when a hug from a boy is the result of a triple-dog dare,
when the girls draw pictures of you on bathroom stalls,
do not think of the peace that never waking up could bring.
Do not give up.

I am you
and I know what I am talking about.
Seven years, one eating disorder, and 50 pounds later,
I will always be in recovery
and you are still who I see in the mirror.
I am sorry I did not love you.

But trust me now,
this body is not your prison,
it is a home.
You are made of stardust
and sea water and of the
earth beneath you.
You are more than a number--
you are not as simple
as they want you to be.

I.
You made me happy
when skies were grey,
when skies were blue,
when skies were purple
and orange and pink
and looked like a promise,
when skies were dark
and were shining with wishes—
You made me happy.

II.
When I couldn't sleep
I replayed the way
you said my name
over and over and over.
It rang in my head
like a police car's siren.

III.
In between being asleep
and awake my mind
would flash back to the night
where in a drunken haze,
time stopped.
Do you remember
the way you looked at me?
Could you tell that I
couldn't breathe?
The air was thick
with everything we weren't
saying and I wonder—do you
remember?
When your mind is
most vulnerable,
do you think of me?

IV.
You smiled at me
like you loved me
and stared at me like
I was a mystery you wanted to spend
your whole life figuring out
and said my name like
it was sacred
and these things should've
made more sense.
These things
should have meant
more.

V.
In one night
we went from
almost something
to absolutely nothing.
In two sentences
you let me
let you go.

You were supposed
to come
back.

VI.
Everything hurts me.
The way you
wouldn't look at me.
The way you
spat words at me,
like every syllable
burned your lips
on the way out of
your mouth.
The way you
let me walk out
the door without
a second glance.

We weren't meant to hurt each other like this.

VII.
I cried for months.
In bed,
on a park bench,
sitting on a patio at night,
perched on the sink of a public restroom,
with my feet floating in a fountain,
over the phone to a voice, hundreds of miles away.

I cried for months.

VIII.
I want you to know,
it mattered to me.
Even if I meant nothing to you,
you mattered.

VIV.
I've never been very good at letting go.
God knows how hard I try.
I'm sorry it is taking me so long.
I'm sorry I can't look at you still
I'm sorry I have to ignore you but
it easier this way.

Some nights I don't sleep because
what if I can't let you go,
what if time goes on
and I meet someone new
and regardless of moons
and suns and other men's mouths,
I still want you?

I told you,
I am not good at letting go.
My mind is not one to allow it.

X.
I could have loved you.

I'm sorry.

I can't remember when
we stopped chasing each other.
Now you don't know me and I
can't recognize you anymore.
Did we decide to stop caring
or did it happen
the same way the leaves fall from trees?
A natural progression.

You see,
after I decided I couldn't risk
being something someone could stop loving
and you decided you didn't want to try to love me,
we still revolved around each other for months.
For months
we shared the same world,
living on different sides of the same reality;
parallel lines—always in sight
but never touching.

Your light has faded from my universe,
and I only see you now in glimpses.
You are the flicker of flame in between trees. I can see you
but I can not stop you from destruction. I can see
you but I can not touch you.

Look,
I only want you to be happy.
That is what everyone says
but now I know why.
When you can't be the one
to give someone light,
you would do anything
to save them from the dark.

I know I can not save you.
but I promise—
you can save yourself.

Tell me about the bridge.

So far up,
baby, I know
you think you are invincible.
Alcohol and stardust
run through you and
nothing hurts you anymore.
You don't need anyone.
These days you feel nothing besides
the bottle sweating in your hand—
the less you feel the better.

This is how you live.
This is how you survive
in the world that you didn't choose,
but sure as hell chose you.

Nothing will break you.
Nothing nothing nothing
nothing—tell me again
what you don't need.  
God ******, you aren't
even fooling yourself.

So, tell me about the bridge.

You said you were fine.

I was born on a Sunday.
My eyes change colors
depending on the weather.
I am 5' 2'' but feel like I am 5' 6".
I don't know how to do Calculus.
I am okay with that.

My first name means "one who listens".
I wish my middle name meant "one who speaks"
because my God, I am a wishing well
and people have the tendency to toss
their secrets into me. And their loss, their pain,
their anger, their sadness, their regret
it fills up a part of me that I thought was infinite.
I am on the constant verge of spilling over and
when I walk I feel like a garbage bag, dragged
against cement, one sidewalk scrape away
from coming undone. I am expected to keep
everyone's mess inside.

My friends tend give me **** for the amount of
time I can spend staring in the mirror.
The secret here isn't that I'm vain,
it's that approaching my reflection is like
ripping off a band-aid because looking
myself in the eye still makes my stomach flip.
60 pounds of weight lost does not
silence the echoes of words that
convinced me that life as a size zero
was the only life worth living and
I had been alive nine sizes too long.
I can't always remember that I am beautiful.

And I have this collection
of words that I should
have said. When I am alone,
I bring them out from
my closet and introduce
them to the ghosts of
people I have lost,
of the people I could not fix,
of the people I should forget
but can't forget because I
don't want to forget because
there's something about keeping
wounds open that feels better
than letting them heal—
I have always been one to pick at scabs.

This is my declaration of honesty—

My name is Sam.
I can't ride a bike
but I can write you a poem.
I am afraid of perpetually falling
in love with people who won't  love me back.
There is a man in a cell I live to forget.
I am convinced Heaven looks like Ireland
and that soul mates come in multiples.
My voice shakes when I say what I think.
and for once,
this poem isn't for you.

This is a poem for me.