I promised myself that I'd never share this.
Then I read it at open mic night in front of you and your mother.

Because the longer it has been
Since the last time we looked at each other
In awe
In love
In shock that we found one another
Amidst the **** in everybody else
The easier it is
To paint our story a hue of rose
To take the broken shards of trust
And make my mind weld them back together
Because as the days pass by and the calendar pages are ripped away from their future
I can’t help but regret not being able to rip those pages with you
Because when you held my hand and promised me your heart just at that very moment
But you couldn’t give me a guarantee of forever
I still felt that if every church caught on fire and burned to the ground
If every Bible was thrown into a fire and disappeared into oblivion,
I would still have faith
Faith in you.

Because every sweet nothing you whispered into my ear
Was written for somebody else
You recycle your lines
Your poetic lines
On girls you “can’t live without”
Oh
I can write stories
About a boy who writes poems
And thinks of himself as a tragic, cynical soul, whom no one understands,
Who falls in love
With an attractive whimsical girl with a “wild soul”
Who commits petty sins and dyes her hair wacky colors
And helps him reconnect with the beauty of life
And completes him in a way that nobody understands
Sorry it didn’t end up like that
I’d much rather look at reality just as it is
Yeah, you can write poetry
But I can write truths
And the truth is, you held my hand half-heartedly

Can I pry your fingers from the things that you hold onto
But have a bigger hold on you
They slowly dragged you down
Under the waves
And are drowning you without a sound
Can I try to make you smile
Can I block you from the rain
Can I stick you with a needle
And **** out all the pain
That permeates your bones
Travels through your veins
Pumps into your heart
And suffocates your brain

Every single day is just another gift
But if it’s not wrapped up with a bow
And handed over with a smile
Can it really be worth the thank you note?
They say anger eats you from the inside
And hatred burns you more than the one it’s meant for
I feel the ground underneath me shifting
Feeling less and less sturdy as the days go by
The anger surging through my veins like burning magma
Letting it drip into all of my cracks
And the madder I get
The hotter it burns
To the point of eruption.
Because lava can level an entire city
And once it hardens in my cracks
I’m going to just give up

Listen to what I am not saying
To the worlds I have yet to breathe
To the life I haven’t given all of my emotions
To the sound of me being weak
Listen to the scars I have carved
Less than gently down my skin
Listen to the pools in my eyes
Before they begin to drip

You’re fading like a bruise
Like the ones your mouth left on my neck and shoulders
With its loving pressure
Your lips, which parted to ******* mouth like it was salvation
No longer part to speak to me
You whispered my name like a prayer
Now you speak it like a curse

I kissed you like forgiveness
And you held me like I was hope.
We held each other like bandages hold two separated pieces of skin together
And prevent the source of life from spilling out.

You’re fading
Like a bruise
Like the one you left on my mind with your brilliant conversation and meaningless poetry
Like the one you left on my heart
When you opened it and poured your love into it
Only to draw it back out
Like a needle ******* the life out of me at the doctor
I wasn’t given a bandage to stop the bleeding
But I’ve figured it out.

I’ve never heard of a man
who can make flawed look so beautiful
the way you do
Forget-me-not green
But you have forgotten me
Left a bruise on my life
That I’m not sure
Will heal
But I’ll keep ripping petals off of flowers

I miss the beads of sweat that stuck to your skin
Like the way my lips found those beads and kissed them off of you
Like they were precious
They were a part of you
And after we would make love
I would lick them off of you
Because the more of you that I had in me
Made me feel a bit more whole
I miss the way you carried yourself
Whenever we would walk together
Like you were the king of the world
Like I was a treasure
I miss the way you would kiss me when desire got the best of us
When your lips would just barely touch mine
While our bodies flowed to a rhythm and our heartbeats fed off each other
I miss the way I missed you when you weren’t around
Because I knew that I’d see you again
Because missing you now
Hurts more than I imagined

Maybe it’s okay to be vulnerable
To let go of my fears
To forget all the crap from over the years
To be able to feel
Whether it’s good or its bad
To be able to cry, laugh, worry, be mad
To open myself up for your judgment
Or love
To let myself go, float free for a while
Why do I think that others will hate me
Deny me attention, reject or just break me

If I cannot be free
Then I cannot live
Maybe it’s time I forget and forgive

I act so confident, so comfortable, and collected
But all that I do is set myself up for rejection

I’m scared of feeling the pain of a wound
So deep in my heart
That my ego is bruised
That I’ll forget how to live, how to love,
How to grow
So maybe that’s why I can’t let the real me show

I wear a mask everyday
A layer of paint
To cover my flaws
My past, my regrets,
I’m an imperfect person in this imperfect world
I’m an overly sensitive, insecure girl

I try and I try to deny all the facts
I’m happy,
no wait, that’s a lie
Every time that I cover my eyes to keep the tears held up, they drip down even more
So I cover the tear stains
Fill in the cracks, of my unbreakable mask

I guess I’ll just start this process off slow
Peel off one little layer at a time
Start off really shallow
Maybe work my way in
Try to discover who I’ve always been

Learn to accept myself for all that I am
Be at peace with myself and let some love in

I’ve got walls all around me
They’re not very thin
But sometimes they allow for sunshine to seep in
You’ve become my sunshine
In my world of dull grey
You’ve become my source of smiling
Each and everyday
You’ve become the thing I cherish most
So please
Don’t let go.

More.
More.
More.
The smooth and shiny toothbrush with the sea foam green stripes on it,
The toothbrush that she used to facilitate the tooth decay and destruction of enamel. Ironic, huh.

The toothbrush that she carried around with her at the bottom of her  purse everywhere she went. Just in case.

The object of shame.
The object of disappointment.
The most important object she brought with her.

The object that tickled the back of her throat until it hit the right spot, and once it did, relieved her of her sins, of her mistakes, of her worries.

The time-turner.
Bulimics can travel through time, take things back.

Purge until they black out, break into cold sweats, with tears streaming down their face. More, more, more.

There’s more in there, get out. Get dizzy. Sit down. Give it 5 minutes. Try again.

Holding anger in your hand
Hatred in your soul constantly
Snapping like a rubber band
Who the **** told you that you were a man?
Preying on the one who’s supposed to love you most
Striking your insignificant other down in the privacy of your home
Does it make you feel strong?
Making your wife hurt and cry
Seeing her die a little bit more inside
Every day that you touch her is like a romance novel to you
Giving kisses with your fists
Love marks with your kicks
Instead of gently stroking your fingers across her skin
You look for somewhere new to begin
Hit her here
Or maybe there
While your two little girls can do nothing but stare
At the man they love most
Strike down
The one who gives them everything
You’re a ****** up soul
Worth little to nothing
You deserve to be *****, stabbed, and brutally slaughtered
Don’t lay your hideous hand on another ******* soul
You ******* mother-******
With a heart made of stone

It has been 268 days, 1 hour, and 27 minutes since you left the world Mel.

I felt you the other day,
As the leaves were changing their colors
I felt you the other day
Just like the trees feel the breath of winter upon their backs
and Fall inevitably turns to Winter
And the leaves disappear
And just like the leaves fall to the ground and get carried away
So do my memories of you
One at a time, I’m losing them
Since the day you died, fall has been in season
I had a tree full of brilliantly colored memories
And as time has passed on
The weather is having its way with my mind
No season lasts forever
And this one,
I wish it would
Because every day brings me another 1440 minutes
Away from your existence
I’m forgetting.
The first to go was your smell
So I held on tighter to every moment I spent with you
I wrote them all down, you know.
But my mind doesn’t understand how badly my heart needs to hold on
I’m forgetting
Your voice.
Your eyes.
Next it was your laugh
And all your little corks that I held so dear.
It’s been a while. Hasn’t it?

I felt you the other day
Without even thinking of you at all
I just knew you were there
Looking down at me
You know, sometimes I sit for hours
And focus solely on you and try to remember
And I torture myself
With the thought of you being gone
Until I feel a little bit of comfort,
And in that comfort, I know you are there
But as of late,
I don’t feel better
Sometimes I sit for hours and cry until I can’t see,
Until I can’t breathe,
Until I can’t speak
I have to.
Because if I don’t,
Then it makes me ashamed
I feel guilty
For forgetting to miss you.
I miss you everyday
It’s just sometimes, it hurts harder one day than it does the next

I felt you the other day
I felt your presence in mine
It was comforting
And shattering
I’ve learned that the wound never really heals
We just find a stronger medicine
I felt you the other day
As I sat in the red chair that people you didn’t know
Decided to dedicate to you
As an act of kindness so that we’d remember you
It’s been here for 218 days, and a little change
I’d like to burn it and pretend you never left
I’ve noticed that it’s easier to talk to you during the night-time
When I’m looking at the stars
Because it’s easier to remember when it’s darker
The sunlight just distracts me

I’ve breathed a million breaths since the day you left
Inhaled life and exhaled the stale air that somebody else
Will fill their lungs with
Yesterday is gone and tomorrow hasn’t happened yet and
I’ve spent today missing you
Today turns into yesterday
And tonight bleeds into tomorrow
And I’m still denying the truth
That you’re gone

Your voice will never reach my ears
Your heart will never pound upon your chest
Your breath will never pour into the atmosphere
And you've left us all here
and maybe we’re resentful cause none of us were ready
Goodbyes **** the passion out of you
Put your reality on pause while the world continues spinning
They take your breath from you
While reality drowns you and your lungs give out.
And you end up panting for breath
As you choke back the sobs that the world needs to hear

I sat next to your grave today
And the wind, made drunk with your presence,
Breathed against me
We talked, you and me
I talked
And you listened
I saw your mom
She told me that “you’re better off than we are”
And maybe you are
But it still makes me bitter
I’ve heard that nothing is destroyed,
everything is just transformed
So the trees are cut down and thrown in a fire
The logs are turned into ash
And blown away with the wind
Your shell is resting 6 feet below me
Flowers are growing
The grass has come back
You are in them
And that is eternity

And I hope you went
With a smile
I hope it was as easy and as quick as
Leaning back in a chair the color of the sun
while listening to lazy piano music
Can we reverse time?
Or has the timing been assigned?
Every moment has a purpose
Maybe death is misunderstood
Grief can cloud the mind
You roam free, no longer confined
Your destiny no longer follows a design
Wherever this journey took you
Don’t forget to paint the skyline
With your presence

It’s a little unfair and a little unclear
As to why you had to leave
How can life be so cruel?
It’s hard to believe
That moments turn to memories
And some memories turn to regrets
Regrets turn into lessons
And lessons paint vignettes
That become your background
Just a part of your past
We may be through with the past,
but the past is not through with us

Life changes and seasons go on
People pass away
Memories live on
Sceneries shift
Faces are interchanged
Life keeps on keeping on
And hearts get maimed
Human connections
Are all that truly remain
The fragile beats of the heart
Never stop when you’re in pain