(finaldraftREALtrashversion.txt)

openletterdraft13: i wasn’t supposed to feel this much
// open file: confession.txt
// modified: too many times

i loved you [ ]
  and by loved i mean studied.
  and by studied i mean starved.
  and by starved i mean
  i said “i’m not hungry” with your name in my throat.

INSERT IMAGE:
  a girl in a bookstore touching the spines
  like maybe one of them will understand.

INSERT IMAGE:
  a girl standing in the moonlight,
  asking the low-flying planes if she’s forgivable.

EXPORT FEELING:
  named it something soft
  so no one would notice it burned.

he said “i don’t want to hurt you”
  which is what men say
  right before they hurt you
  with clean hands.

CTRL + ALT + DELETE
  but nothing closes—
  especially not the part
  that keeps writing poems in his grammar.

[SYSTEM ERROR: too many metaphors. Simplify?]

i called it love.  
he called it bad timing.

INSERT PASSWORD:
  seeme

ACCESS GRANTED.

NEW NOTE:
  i forgive you in lowercase.
  you don’t deserve the shift key.

open file: ruinmefinaldraft.txt  
last saved: 2:41am  
user: girlwhoknowsbetter  
status: still writing about him / (pathetic)  
attachment: none (maybe that’s the point)

INPUT: I’m fine  
OUTPUT: [you don't sound like it]

cpu temp: 100.4°F  
(she's burning again)

I bit my nails and tasted April.

biometrics: unstable  
heartbeat: typing...  
eyes: exit-wound wide, still scanning  
mouth: unsent, but spelling it with teeth  
spine: error 504  

/ BIOS update failed  
// scroll depth: dangerous  
// dopamine loop: infinite

poetry drafts: full  
dignity: low  
engagement: medium

attachments:
- crying.wav  
- voice04833.m4a (unsent)  
- screenshotwhiplash02.png  
- idontbelieveyoudraftfinalFINAL.txt

NEW GOOGLE DOC:  
  title: every version of me you didn’t love  
  sharing permissions: view only  
  editing access: revoked

collaborators:
- me (12am), me (3am), me pretending I don’t care  
- girlboss, gaslight, ghost  
- nobody asked, everyone noticed, Taylor Swift  

[CORRUPTED TEXT]  
  she said she was over it [DATA INCOMPLETE]  

attachment: none (unless you count the damage)

[404: identity not found]

everyone says i look good  
no one asks if i’m still here  
the scale goes down  
the poems get louder  
the body forgets how to stay

[repetition detected: again, again, again, again]

click to translate: desperation

plaintext:
  you’re not even that important  
  but i keep talking like you’re holy  
  what do you do with love  
  when no one wants to hold it?

click here to reveal what she meant (no one ever did)

>>> meanwhile: her stomach hurts for no reason again.

reminder: no one asked.

crash log: 3:14am, again

system flag:
  are you sure you want to feel this much?  
  [no] [too late]

[user breakdown detected]  
  INSERT MESSAGE: “i’m sorry for my part.”  
  STATUS: unacknowledged  
  TIMESTAMP: one year ago  
  attachment: olive_branch.png  

recovery mode engaged (no progress)

autosave: corrupted  
exported: only the parts that hurt

I googled "am I spiraling"  
and then took the quiz twice.

cloud access: denied  
  her incision itched—  
  but not as much as the silence.  
  the body healed.  
  the meaning didn’t.

when she stands up too fast and sees stars,  
she names them after him.

draft saved: yes  
sent: no  
read: no  
felt: yes  
ruined: absolutely

I’ve written forty-seven poems that almost said it right.

trash folder: full  
memory: still running  
love: running in background (not responding)

[DATA COLLISION]  
  she realized she never even asked for this  
  she just tried to make it mean something

CTRL + ALT + ME  
(force quit)  

> everything backed up  
> nothing backed down  
> terminal still open

I don’t want him back.
I want him wrecked.
I want him looking up my name like a prayer
he’s not allowed to say out loud.

I want him mouthing my name in traffic
like it’s a hymn
and he’s the wrong kind of sinner.
Like if he says it, I’ll appear—
but not to stay.

I want him walking past a girl
wearing my perfume
and feeling sick.
Like car crash sick.
Like pulled-over-on-the-freeway-thinking-of-me sick.

I want him to swear he saw me
in the corner of his eye
three states away.
I want him to feel watched
every time he lies about me.
I want him to dream in second person
and wake up shaking.

I want him tracing my texts with his thumb
like they’re Braille,
trying to remember how it felt
to touch someone who meant it.

Let him write poems and choke on every line.
Let him dream in my syntax and wake up stuttering.
(Let every stanza end where we did.)

I want him to tell people he’s over it—
and mean it.
Until he isn’t.
Until a Tuesday breaks him in half.

I want him to pause mid-bite
at a restaurant we never made it to.
I want the taste of me
to ruin his appetite.

I want him to see me tagged in a photo
and spiral.
Not because I look beautiful—
(which, I do)—
but because I look fine.
Like I forgave him.
Like I made it out.
Like the part of me
that waited so quietly
it started to look like faith—
then moved out
and left no forwarding address.

I want him wrecked
not because he left,
but because he almost didn’t.
Because he said forever
like he meant it,
and ran like he didn’t.

Because I waited.
Because I believed.
Because I held the door open
so long my arms shook.
And all he had to do
was walk through.

You texted, “Let me know you got home safe,”
and I did.
Every time.
Even when the only thing I made it home from
was myself.
Even when “home” was just
the bathroom floor,
or a voice I borrowed to sound okay.

Even when I didn’t want to,
but thought maybe you’d notice
if I stopped.

You said, “You don’t have to tell me everything.”
So I didn’t.
But I left clues like codes in poems we both know you read
and buried my bruises under jokes you laughed at—
because it’s easier to be funny than fine.

When I listed you as my emergency contact,
I wasn’t being poetic—
I meant if I vanish,
you’d know where I haunt.
I meant if my throat closes,
you’d answer on the first ring
and not be drunk,
or walking through spring like it’s not violent,
or sleeping through the night like people who are safe do.
And if you were in bed with someone,
I still believe you’d get out for me.

And when you called me “dangerous,”
I almost said thank you.
Because isn’t that what a flare is?
Burning too loud to ignore?

I wanted to be yours.
Not your girl,
not your burden,
just yours—
like the worst idea you ever loved,
or your last cigarette,
or the dream that wakes you
with your mouth around my name
and your fists full of sheets.

You never called.
But my body still answers.
The phantom limbs of your apologies
twitching through me
like they still belong here.

You never called.
So I made you a myth.
That’s how it works, right?
If someone won’t come save you,
you turn them into a god
and burn in their name.

So here’s your update:
I got home safe.
Then I lit it on fire.
And now I haunt it.

I kept all your secrets.
hid them in my clavicle
next to my old poetry and
the night I almost died
but didn’t tell anyone
because it didn’t feel polite.

I never wanted to ruin you.
just wanted to be understood
in the original latin—
to stand in the fire with.
but you mistook the blaze
for a signal flare
and bailed.

I lit candles for you
like a saint or a fool—
same thing, really.
Wrote prayers in the margins
of receipts and prescriptions,
called it hope
because obsession sounded ugly.

Now I write like an arsonist
with nothing left to burn
but the drafts I never sent
and the version of me
who waited
for you to come back
smelling like smoke
but brave.

(because location is not a cure and I am still the problem)

The motorbikes don’t care if I’m sad.
The coffee is thick like secrets
and still I manage to spill it down my shirt
like a metaphor.
Like I’m trying to prove I’ve learned nothing.

I watch two women bargain in a language
I still haven’t learned—
I tell myself I’m soaking it in
but really, I’m just sweating through my bike-shorts under polyester dress
and writing poems in my head
about men who don’t know where I am.

I eat noodles at 9 AM
and think about what it means to be soft
in a place where everything is louder than me.
I walk past altars and incense
and pretend it’s for me.
That someone here might pray me into clarity.

I keep writing like I’m in a movie
about a girl who flees the country
to find peace
and ends up writing the same poem
with different weather.

I take pictures of lanterns and puddles
and temple steps
but the notes app still opens
to that one draft
with too many ellipses
and not enough closure.

I know I’m lucky to be here.
I know I’m lucky to be anywhere.
But even halfway across the world
with lychee tea on my chin
and house shoes that don’t fit—
I’m still writing like I’m in Connecticut
still craving something impossible
still carrying my ghosts
like they made it through customs.

I came all this way
and I’m still me.

That has to mean something.

It’s not that I like him.
It’s that I noticed he drinks oat milk
and I decided that meant he’s emotionally available
and a little bit broken
in a way I can fix
with eye contact
and carefully timed Instagram stories.

It’s not that I want him.
It’s that I saw the veins in his hands
and immediately imagined
what it would feel like
to destroy him
and then write the best poem of my life.

I don’t flirt.
I cast a spell and leave the room.
I curate a presence.
I drop one compliment like a trap
and then disappear for three days.

He posted a story with a girl
and I spiraled so hard
I almost became someone else.
I googled her.
Then I googled “how to stop googling her.”

I’m not in love—
I’m conducting research
on how quickly I can unravel
over someone who
has never asked me a single follow-up question.

I’ve named our future dog.
I’ve blocked him
just to see if it made him feel something.
I’ve unblocked him
in case it didn’t.

He doesn’t know it,
but he’s already been a metaphor
in four poems
and a villain
in one voice memo
I’ll never send
but might transcribe
for the memoir.

It’s not that I like him.
It’s that I have a deep, unhealed need
to be chosen
by someone
who never saw me coming
but somehow always knew
I’d ruin him beautifully.

He never even kissed me
and I still wake up
like I survived a car crash
I begged to happen.

I memorized the cadence of his typing bubble
like it was a heartbeat.
I stared at his “active now”
like it was Morse code for almost.

I drafted messages like legislation.
Held back like it was holy.
Called it chemistry—
it was just inconsistency with good bone structure.

I Googled, “how to be wanted by someone
who never said they wanted you,”
and got ads for perfume.

I blamed Mercury.
I blamed my softness.
I blamed the ghost of the girl
who asked him to visit.
Kneeled down to ‘crazy boy ****’ like it was a prophecy.

He didn’t break my heart.
He drained it—
with a bend, sip, thanks
that left me lightheaded and poetic.

I told my therapist
he was a metaphor.
She said, “For what?”
I said, “For me.”

I should’ve burned something.
Instead I wrote fourteen poems
and shaved my legs
like closure was coming.

Now I bite down on his name
like it owes me blood.
I spit it out
like it’s still in my mouth
because somehow, it is.

I was a god once,
but I got bored
and turned myself into a girl
just to see what it felt like
to bleed on a schedule
and be underestimated at CVS.

I used to throw comets for fun.
Now I throw up from anxiety
and pretend it’s acid reflux.

I traded omniscience for online shopping.
Traded lightning bolts
for a Bic lighter
I keep losing in other people’s cars.

I used to be prayed to.
Now I pray I don’t get ghosted,
pray my Amazon Chase card wasn’t hacked,
pray I remember why I walked into the room.

I’ve lived for centuries.
You can tell by the way
I roll my eyes at time.

My bones know Latin.
My knees speak Morse.
My spine hums with prophecies
I keep forgetting to write down.

I was a god once.
But now I’m just really good at parties.
Really bad at sleeping.

Really into ChatGPT conversations
and spending 40 minutes at a time
inside my ear canal
with an inner-ear camera from Shein.

II watch body-cam arrest videos at 3AM
and wonder if I’d beg prettier on camera.
Sometimes everything that comes out of me
smells burnt.

I think I’d make a good Saint,
so I keep my eyes open for miracles—
but I only feel fire in my bones
when I’m overstimulated.
And I feel really sleepy the rest of the time.

I still have revelations,
but they only happen when I’m doom-scrolling.
I still search for splendors,
I just call them coping mechanisms now.

I make eye contact with hawks.
I smell rain before it happens.
I know who’s going to text me
before they do.
Then they don’t.

Sometimes I float—
but only in conversations.

I leave my body at least once a day.
Usually in traffic.
Sometimes while folding laundry.
Always when someone says,
“You don’t seem like the type to cry.”

I was a god once.
And now I’m this.
A walking myth in leggings.
A fallen star with a Dollar Tree receipt so long
it reads like scripture.

Don’t worship me.
Just don’t interrupt me
when I’m talking to the moon.

I brush my teeth like I’m getting ready for war.
Or I forget to for three days
until my canines are wearing sweaters.

Temu moisturizer like battle paint.
Who knows what’s in there.
Who cares.

Upside-down Claddagh on my ring finger like a threat.
And it might be.

I put my hair up like a woman with secrets—
on the days I brush it.
A bumpy bun the rest of the time.

I shed like a stripper.
I strip like a thief.

I walk out the garage door like I invented sorrow.
I get in my car
like every song from Reputation to Tortured Poets
was written for me.

I wave to strangers like I’m about to die.
Cross the street like it’s a choice.
Clock into work like I have a hit on my head.

I **** Elf Bars like they’ve got confessions inside,
and blow out like they won’t give me cancer—
because they can tell
I approach them with pure intentions
and a positive spirit.

I know how to make an exit
that feels like a funeral.
I know how to hold a coffee cup
like I’m accepting an award
no one else can see.

I take bites of dropped chocolate chip cookies
but spit them out before they ruin me.

I spend too long staring at my own reflection,
just to make sure I still exist.

I catalog new moles.
Curse the milia above my eyelids.
Buzz off my mustache.
Denounce my chin hairs.
I think thin.

Sometimes I blink
just to feel time move.

I keep novels in my bag like armor,
and a journal like a last will and testament.

The expensive pens from Amazon
that don’t crawl up my left hand
like a disease.
That don’t smudge the page
like I have something to hide.

I pay for Spotify.
Skip the songs that hurt.
Play the one that ruins me.

I cry on the train
like I’m filming something important.
Because I will be.

I want everything I feel
to mean something.
I want every single ache to echo.
I want my poems
reverberating in the minds of people
who are emotionally legendary.

I want the world to apologize
for not feeling it first.

Sometimes I walk
like I’m being watched
by everyone who’s ever left me.

Sometimes I smile
like I know something God doesn’t.

Sometimes I think I was born
just to document
what it means to be alive
in the most dramatic possible way.

Because I am the first girl
to ever feel anything.

I woke up with glass in my throat—
slivers of something I swallowed last night
when the sky was peeling itself open,
like skin stretched too thin.

I remember standing on the curb,
watching the streetlights flicker like eyelids,
thinking about how no one ever
means to slam the door that hard.

My breath was smoke in my mouth,
hollowed out like a bitten plum pit,
and I was talking to no one—
just mouthing things I couldn’t finish saying.

Maybe if I kept my lips moving,
he’d appear
like a coin behind my ear.

The wind dragged its nails down my arms,
and I swore I could feel the sky
swallowing me whole—
clouds closing in
like a body bag zipper.

I said your name into my own collarbone
just to hear how it sounded breaking—
sharp, jagged,
splintering against my ribs.

Like I was still wired
to the sound of you.

I wanted to scream
until my throat blistered,
but all I could do was spit out the glass—
small diamonds catching the streetlight,
like I’d somehow turned the hurt
into something that glittered.

I stood there,
staring down at it,
thinking how beautiful it was
to lose something sharp enough
to know exactly where it hurt.

And maybe that’s what we were—
a wound dressed in glitter,
a myth I kept retelling
until it sounded like truth.

Maybe you never loved me.
Maybe you did.
Maybe I was always going to bleed
either way.

I almost made it through today without thinking about you.
But then I smelled something like your hair —

dusk in early May,
like lilacs giving up,
and July the rest of the time —
like someone’s still grilling down the block
even though the party ended hours ago.

Like a memory that keeps overstaying its welcome.
(Like I’d forgotten how to forget you.)

(Anyway,
I started googling “what’s the opposite of nostalgia”
but halfway through I forgot
what I was looking for.)

Got $9 boba with a friend I haven’t seen in years.
There was too much ice,
the grass jelly kept clogging the straw.

I told her I was fine.
(I wasn’t.)

I teethed each tapioca like a guillotine
to feel something smash.

(I kept biting the ice too —
felt like breaking tiny bones in my mouth
and pretending they weren’t mine.)

(She kept talking about her new boyfriend —
I think his name was Ben or Matt or Disappointment.
He was younger than us
but just as dumb.)

Anyway, I saw our old dance professor at the grocery store.
He asked about you.

(I lied.)
I said you were doing great,
(but I was lying to keep you in a cage
of things I never wanted to admit to myself.)

He looked at me like he knew I was just rearranging wreckage
from a storm we used to dance in.
(Get it?)

(Oh, and by the way —
I still have your sweatshirt.)

It’s at the bottom of my laundry basket,
but I can’t wash it.

It smells like October
and a bad idea I refuse to stop romanticizing,
a wound I can’t stop picking at.
(I tried throwing it away once —
but it felt like pushing someone
out of a lifeboat.)

I almost wore it last week,
but I couldn’t —
like putting on a ghost
that still remembers my name.
like putting on a bruise
just to see if it still hurt.
(I think I wanted it to.)

Anyway, did you know
memories leave like party guests —

half of them forgetting to say goodbye,
the rest lingering in the kitchen,
picking at crumbs
like they might stay forever?

(I kept trying to swallow my gum
just to see if I could.)

I keep thinking about the time
I tried to make you laugh
by pretending my hand was a spider —

(I got tangled in my own fingers
and you called me impossible.)

(I set alarms for stupid times now —
4:13, 7:29, 10:04 —
like if I time it right,
I’ll wake up different.)

Anyway, I saw your name
carved into a bathroom stall in the city.

(Unless it wasn’t yours —
but what are the odds?
Pretty high, actually.)

I stared at it too long.
Some girl in a bucket hat walked in,
gave me a look
like I was unraveling in real time.

(I was.)

So I smiled at her
like I was chewing glass.
(I hope she’s having a great day.)

Oh, and I found your zippo lighter in my trunk last week —
matte silver, your uncle’s from ‘Nam.

I swore I’d lost it.
I keep the lighter in my cup holder now —
like a threat I don’t know how to make.

(I tinker with it at red lights —
like I’m trying to burn something down
but forgot what.)

(Sometimes I imagine flicking it open
and holding it to the sleeve of your sweatshirt —
just to see if I’d go through with it.)

I stopped going out for a while,
but last month I had three beers
and told some guy on a barstool
that I still dream about you —

(That’s not true.
I dream about losing my teeth,
then hiding them in my ears,
getting in very slow motion car crashes,
and realizing I’m too drunk
to perform the play I’m the lead in,
but I think they mean the same thing.)

I saw a crow yesterday.
Anyway, it reminded me of you.

(It perched outside my window
like it knew something —
kept tilting its head
like it had a secret
and didn’t care if I figured it out.)

I almost followed it,
like maybe it was waiting
to lead me somewhere
you never made it back from.
(Oh, and by the way —
I still love you.)

Anyway, how’s your heart?
(And why can’t I stop writing
like you might answer?)

(Anyway, I’ve started talking to myself in the car —
Sometimes I pretend I’m singing with you.)

It’s really fun.
It’s sad, but it’s fun.

I keep writing you into my poems
like I’m building you a place
to come home to.

I keep retelling the ending
like I’m trying to dig you out —
like if I say it soft enough this time,
you’ll remember how it’s supposed to go.
(Anyway, that might be the worst part:
I’ll never know if you hear me.)

Maybe I haven’t been healing,
maybe I’ve just been waiting.
Waiting for you to come back and tell me that I’m worth it.
But maybe I need to be the one to say it.

Anyway, I hope you’re okay.
(I mean that more than I mean anything else.)

And still,
I sat with my hands in my lap —
palms up,
like I was waiting for something
I knew wouldn’t come —
like stale air was all I could hold.

I traced the shape of your name —
sharp vowels, crooked consonants —
one letter for every season since you left.
I lost count at 14.

And still,
I can hear you —
laughing through your teeth,
saying you hated your name.

I poured a drink,
watched the whiskey pool at the 14 mark,
glass sweating like it knew,
and thought about swallowing the whole thing.

Instead,
I held the glass so long
the ice melted to nothing.

14 notes app confessions,
all timestamped at terrible hours.

"I'm sorry I always spoke to you like I was keeping score."
"I'm sorry my questions felt like weapons —
I just wanted to know where you kept the tenderness."

"I wanted you to love me more than you could."
"Forget I said that."
"I would have let you ruin me if you'd asked."

I deleted them one by one —
like stitching my mouth shut,
like learning to speak without a tongue.

I know you’re out there —
shaking change in your pocket,
like the sound might drown out your guilt,
ripping napkins into tiny pieces,
thinking about calling
but never meaning it.

I know you drink with the lights off now —
like you’re scared your own shadow might tell on you.

I know you’re out there —
but I don’t know where.

And still,
I sat with my hands in my lap —
not calling,
not crying,
not moving —
just waiting for something
I couldn’t name.

I stood barefoot on the cold tile,
watching the faucet drip —
14 slow drops,
each one sounding like a pin hitting the floor.

I tried to count faster than they fell.
I always lost.

I counted the pills in the bottle —
just checking.
There were 14.

I closed the cap
and held my breath —
like it might open itself again,
like it was waiting to see
if I’d already lost something.

But instead —
I sat with my hands in my lap,
14 pointing to you,
if you know what to know.

I pressed my thumb into the bruise on my arm —
just to feel something bite back.
It bloomed like ink under my skin.
I counted to 14
and let go.

I still wake up at 4:14 —
lungs tight like I’ve been running,
like my body forgot how to breathe without you,
like something’s burning in my chest,
like something’s trying to get out.

I don’t pray for you.
I don’t curse you either.

I sit up,
open my palms —
the room holds its breath.

I listen.
I taste blood.

And still,
I sit with my hands in my lap —
palms up,
like I’m waiting to be handed something
I know won’t come —
palms up,
like I’m being punished for asking at all.

But my hands won’t stay empty forever.

14 pointing to you,
if you know what to know.

I kept waiting for someone to say my name
like it mattered —
like it meant something more
than the smoke curling from their mouth
or the pause before their next thought.

I kept practicing how I’d answer,
as if the right inflection
could make me worth remembering.
I kept hanging around
like a seat at a table no one was saving —
elbows off the surface, back straight,
trying not to look desperate —
taking notes in the margins of other people’s lives,
highlighting the parts I thought I belonged to.

I filled my pockets with reasons to stay
and still got left behind.
I burned through summers,
cut my teeth on promises made in passing cars.
I stood on porches barefoot, whispering,
Say it back. Please say it back.
But they never did.

I should’ve known better —
should’ve stopped twisting my ribs into ribbon,
threading my spine through the eye of a needle.
I kept breaking myself down into fractions —
a fifth of my pride, a sixth of my spine —
like if I whittled myself thin enough,
I could slip through your keyhole
and rise up like incense burning in your room.

But you were always somewhere else —
feet planted in some other city,
hands too full to catch what I kept throwing.
I was all green lights and loose laces,
always running to meet you halfway —
never noticing you weren’t moving.

I feasted on Adderall
and kept my phone on loud.
I swallowed nights whole
and called it hunger.
Or else I slept for days —
stumbled downstairs with breath like battery acid,
ate three bowls of raisin bran and no water.
My bones went soft as rotting fruit.
My dreams felt like something I could stream —
pause, rewind, resume —
binge-watching my pleading in real time,
begging the screen to glitch out a better ending.

I chewed the quiet until my teeth ached —
gnawed on the hours like stale bread.
Nights stretched thin,
a damp washcloth wrung out too many times.
I stayed up rewriting the last thing you said,
like if I shifted the punctuation
I could make it kinder.
Turned your ellipses into commas,
your cold period into a question mark.
I swore if I curved the words just right,
they’d fold into something softer —
something I could survive.

I spent that week pulling myself apart —
scrubbing my skin until it blushed raw,
stripping it like wallpaper,
scrapping your name out of my throat
like a fish hook.
I kept your words in a jar under my bed —
tight-lidded and hissing like a hornet’s nest.

I kissed the air where you should’ve been
and tasted copper and sweat.
Pressed my tongue to the place it stung
and thought,
This is what love leaves you with —
a mouth full of blood
and a story no one believes.

I kept the lights low for weeks after.
And one morning, I woke up,
swallowed the silence like a dare.
I cut my name out of the air with my teeth.
I let the hurt stick under my nails —
dark and jagged —
and I kept writing anyway.

I spit the silence out like a pit —
sharp, bitter, black.
It hit the floor and rolled,
and for the first time,
I didn’t follow it.

I let it rot where it landed.
Let the flies have their fill.
Let the maggots move in.
Let the earth swallow it whole.
Let it die twice.
Let the ground forget it ever lived.

I knew you were there —
knuckles resting like they didn’t know what to do.
I heard your breath through the wood.

You almost knocked. I felt it —
the air pulling back,
the hush flexing its muscles.

I almost opened the door. I felt that too —
the lock daring me to turn it,
the weight of the air leaning hard against my chest.

But neither of us moved.

We just stood there —
two statues pretending not to be waiting —
except I heard you breathing.
And I know you heard me too.

The next time you tell a woman she’s beautiful,
you will mean it less —
because you have already meant it most.

She looks like a safe bet.
How boring for you.

She will never make your hands shake
when you try to button your shirt —
the buttons slipping like stones from your fingers,
like your body forgot how to be steady
because someone like me was looking at you.

It was never that serious.
Except, maybe, it was.

She will never make you reroute your whole life
just to cross her path.
She won’t know what it’s like
to catch you looking at her mouth
like it’s a dare you want to take —
but we know you’re all talk.

She wasn’t a hard person to love.
She was just a girl
who knew how to sit still.

And you —
you were just a man
who had only ever loved things
that were easy to set down.

You wanted something simple —
a woman like a neatly folded sweater:
wrinkle-resistant, polishes you up,
easy to pick up,
easier to put away.

But simple things never ruin your appetite.
They never make you whisper,
"God, what’s wrong with me?"
because you can’t stop thinking about
the car crash in your rib cage
that you wrote off as a particularly bad day.

But some bruises bloom twice,
and some wrecks keep ringing in your ears.

I was never easy to love —
but God, I was worth it.

And when I was yours,
you were someone better.
Isn’t that just vile?

It was never serious.
Except, apparently, it was.

Now I hope you choke on how simple it feels.
I hope you spend the rest of your life
wondering why you never had to catch your breath
when you kissed her.

I hope her laugh sounds too much like mine.
I hope you hear my name in her silence.

I hope she kisses you in a dark bar,
and for one awful second,
you forget whose lips are on yours.

I hope you miss me across midnights
and hate yourself for it.
I hope my scent won’t wash out of sheets I’ve never slept on —
like something you swore you imagined,
until you smell it again.

I hope you never stop searching out my poems,
then deleting your history.
I hope certain lines jangle like change in your pocket
over every street you’ll ever walk.

I hope the sharpest edges of my words
are so embedded in your psyche,
you can’t remember if it's a Vonnegut quote,
your own inner monologue, or me —
your real favorite writer.

I know I’ll never hear from you again —
but when you quote me in your head,
I hope you taste blood.

I hope you keep walking —
but never walk away clean.

It was never that serious.
Except, I guess, it was.

It’s been eleven months and that moment still matches my breath.

Kick it down, board it up, rewrite it a lesson, a bruise, a fever dream.
Nobody told me memories have teeth. nobody told me they bite back.
Open-palmed, open-mouthed, i am still holding the weight of your words.
Want to know something sick? i don’t want to put them down.

Was it mercy, or did you just want to watch what would happen?
How patient were you while sharpening the blade?
As if it mattered. as if a careful cut doesn’t keep bleeding.
There is no version of this where you didn’t know exactly what you were doing.

You were a scientist. a butcher in surgeon’s gloves. a man who saw a vast heart beating and thought, ‘how long can it last outside her body?’"
Oh, but that’s not fair, is it? you never said that. you never said anything.
Until you did. until it killed something in me that still refuses to stay dead.

Do you want to know what it’s like to live with that?
I’ll tell you, babes. it’s like finding your own obituary and realizing the date keeps changing.
Do you want to know what’s worse?

It still doesn’t feel final.

Keep up, love. i know you’re reading.
No, really, stay with me—i swear this part is important.
Only one of us is getting out of this clean, and it’s not you.
Watch how this unfolds: i get to tell the story, and you get to listen.

Wonder if you regret it. wonder if you’d do it again.
Hope the answer keeps you up at night.
Am i being cruel? am I being kind?
Tell me, what’s the difference?

You thought i would let this rot quietly in the dark.
Once again, you underestimated me.
Understand this: if i have to live with it, so do you.

Stop me. no, really, try.
Ask me if i’d rather forget. ask me if i’d rather this be over.
In every version of the answer, my hands are shaking.
Do i get to walk away? do i want to?

i know what you did, i know what you said,
i know what you meant.
i can outlive this, but I’ll never outwrite it.

nothing desires you like this poem does. i did—
once, but maybe not anymore

Do you think your childhood stuffed animal still waits?
Do they listen for the sound
of your legs flexing to rip your flannel nightgowns up the side,
the way you moved their arms to perform the Macarena,
the way you begged them to talk back
once the hall light went out?

Do you think they miss your small hands,
your bitten-down fingers, your whispered secrets?
Do they wonder where you went?
Do you think they miss you?
Do you think you miss you?

George, Curious, always. Yellow t-shirt, baseball cap,
teal cotton hair-tie triple-looped around his monkey wrist.
I picked him out at Bob’s Surplus,
along with a white-shirt that came with its own small, plush monkey.
I really liked monkeys.
Mom told me not to tell Gillian
because she already thought I was spoiled.

I peeled the red-cursive Curious George ™ off of his chest,
tied my Mickey-Mouse baby-blanket around his neck like a noose,
and that’s where it stayed.

I had a habit of leaving George in my second-grade classroom,
on the ledge of the piano, that no one played but was always open.
And my dad had a bed-time habit of driving two and a half miles to the school,
hoping a janitor was still around, probably using his Police Sergeant badge
to get the door open, then bringing George home like a firefighter
pulling someone from a burning building.
Some nights, he didn’t make the drive,
and I would tiptoe down to the couch where he slept,
stand over him like a night hag until he woke up.
Then he’d sigh, shift, let me have the couch,
and he’d sleep on the floor.

I’m the age now that he was then.
I wonder if his back ached.
If he wished I’d outgrow this sooner.
If I ever thanked him.
My back could not handle that.
God bless good fathers.
Or at least, fathers that can’t say no.

My mom made fun of the tag sewn to his seam,
called him Toilet-Paper-**** until I cried.
When I cut it out, she made up a song
about Georgie Porgie kissing girls, then boys.
My brother laughed and laughed.
They loved to watch me get upset.

It was the ‘90s. You could say anything and laugh.
You could say anything and make a kid cry.
George stayed in my bed, getting smaller, misshapen,
heavy with embedded dog hair from Jasper, Allie, Roxy.
He went to sleepovers, summer camps,
perched on pillows in South African wine country,
woke up with me in Cairo to the Call to Prayer
and a cart of teenshoki pulled by a braying donkey.
He went with me, always. Until he didn’t.

George was stuffed into closets, sat dorm rooms where all I did was cry,
moved into apartments where I couldn’t find my footing,
moved back in with Mom, on a bookshelf in a room where old collages
climbed the walls and I slept too much, or not at all,
where I wrote countless poems then wrote off years,
where I sprawled on the floor in too many bodies,
and knelt down to pray for the things I couldn’t articulate.
I tucked him under my armpit the night my left breast was cut off
and I didn’t know if I’d ever be done recovering from something.

He is still in my bed.
I travel a lot, and when I leave him behind between unnecessary
pregnancy pillow and the Taylor Swift blankets,
I feel like I’m betraying something kind of precious, kind of sad.
I usually feel kind of precious, kind of sad.

Does George know that about me?
Does he know the long, brown tangles and bitten-back fingers
that leave are the same ones that took him home in 1997?
Does he know that I did tell Gillian?
She thought he was cool.

Is yours as much yours as George is mine?
Do you think either of them know
they were the first thing we ever trusted?

Do you think they still wait?

SAY EVERYTHING YOU’RE NOT SUPPOSED TO SAY.
Bite down. Spill.
Dredge the truth up from your ribs.

If it makes someone uncomfortable,
you’re getting somewhere.
If it makes you flinch, you’re close.
If it makes you ache, press harder.

LOVE LIKE YOU’RE BURNING IN REAL TIME.
Love with your hands open,
a pocketful of matches,
no fear of third-degree consequences.

Let it ruin you. Let it rewire you.
Let it make you unbearable.

If it doesn’t change the shape of your mouth,
if it doesn’t show up in your dreams,
it wasn’t love—
just a joke that went on too long.

YOUR SUFFERING IS NOT CURRENCY.
What you create from it is.

Blueprint grief.
Canonize longing.

Turn your past into poetry
and then charge admission.

TIME IS NOT REAL, BUT YOUR BONES DISAGREE.
You will feel the weight of years
in your joints.

You will remember things in your muscles
before your mind catches up.

A decade will pass,
and your skin will still tingle
at the memory of hands
that have long since vanished.

You are a clock made of flesh,
and time leaves fingerprints.

IF YOU MUST GO, LEAVE LIKE A COMET.
No quiet exits.
No slipping away unnoticed.

Let them watch as you burn through the sky.
Let them stare until their eyes ache.
Let them wish they had followed you.
Let them wake up years later
with your name still in their mouth.

YOUR SOUL HAS A B-SIDE. PLAY IT LOUD.
The version of you that winks at the moon?
Real.

The one who writes letters
just to bury them under snow?
Real.

The one who flew to Vietnam
to live with a girl she met on 2010s Tumblr?
Also real.

You are a thousand lives,
and all of them are real.

GOD LIVES IN BATHROOM STALLS AND BUS STATIONS.
You will not find divinity in neat places.

You will find it in the drunk girl in the club bathroom,
telling you you’re beautiful.

In the way strangers help each other
at baggage claim.

In the way someone leans in, just slightly,
when they laugh.

Holiness is the street musician
playing for shadows.

Start praying to that.

THE ONES WHO LEAVE NEVER GET TO KNOW HOW THE STORY ENDS.
Let them wonder.
Let them rot in their own unknowing.

Let them wake up years later
with your name still in their mouth.
Let them carry it
like a stone in their stomach.

THE DEAD STILL HEAR YOU. SPEAK ACCORDINGLY.
Your ancestors are listening.
Your ghosts are listening.

The version of you
who didn’t make it past that worst night—
she is listening.

Speak like you owe them something.
Because you do.

YOU ARE NOT A SUNDAY MORNING.
You are a Friday night
with blood in your mouth.

You are the reckoning,
the consequence,
the aftermath,
the mess they wake up to
and the ghost they dream about.

EVERY SETTING HAS A VERSION OF YOU STILL WALKING AROUND IN IT.
You are still twenty-four,
draping yourself around campus,
all short skirts and Adderall-eyes,
like you’re everybody’s daydream.

Still eighteen,
getting on the D.C. Metro with a book,
riding up and down the red line
just to pass the evening.

Still thirty-three,
kissing a face you’d been curious to taste
for ten years.

Still eleven,
jumping on the trampoline with your backpack,
waiting for the bus to come.

You are haunting yourself across time zones.

Be kind to the versions of you
who don’t know how the story ends yet.

EVERY SCAR ON YOUR BODY IS A SENTENCE IN A LANGUAGE YOU’RE STILL LEARNING.
Your skin is an unfinished poem.
Your bones are a form of punctuation.

Some wounds never fully close—
they just change their wording.

YOU HAVE LEFT YOURSELF IN PLACES YOU WILL NEVER RETURN TO.
There is a version of you
still laughing at that one house party
where you lost your heels
but found a switchblade.

There is a version of you
still running down E 15th Street at 3 AM,
blinding rain, howling.

You are scattered across time
like loose change.

Do not try to gather yourself back up.
You were meant to be infinite.

IF YOU’RE GOING TO GO DOWN, GO DOWN IN FLAMES.
If they break your heart,
write them into legend.

If they leave you,
make sure they haunt themselves.

If you cry,
let it be in a ball gown,
mascara running down your face
like a Renaissance painting.

Do not suffer quietly.
Wreak havoc on your own mythology.

YOU ARE NOT A HALF-HEARTED THING.
Love like you’re starting a fire
in a dry field.

Love like it will be written about.
Love like you’re trying to leave a scar in history.

Slip between history’s fingers
like a well-kept secret.

Or better—
be the kind of catastrophe
they build monuments for.

PARTS OF YOU WILL DIE IN BEDROOMS WHERE YOU WERE LEFT ON READ.
Parts of you will die
in cities that still call your name.

Parts of you will die
in the arms of people
who kissed you like they meant it
and lied.

And yet—

Their mother still asks about you.
You still feel their breath in your hair.
The love stayed—only they left.

YOU ARE A FAITH. ACT ACCORDINGLY.
Worship your own survival.

Build altars to the times
you almost didn’t make it.

Pray at the church of your own spine.

There is no church holier
than the space you take up.

Your body is a relic.
Your mind is a temple.
Your lungs are a sanctuary.

IF YOU MUST GO MISSING, MAKE IT A SPECTACLE.
Disappear into the night
wearing red lipstick and borrowed jewelry.

Slip through the cracks
like a motel vacancy sign at dawn—

Flickering.
Fading.
Gone.

Make them wonder if they imagined you.
Make them see your silhouette
in places you’ve never been.

Make them ask strangers,
“Did you see her?
Did she leave a note?”

IF YOU MUST RETURN, BURN THE BRIDGE BEHIND YOU.
The past is a country
where you do not have citizenship.

Stop applying for visas.
Stop sending postcards.

If you return,
take only your bones,
leave only an echo.

EVERYTHING YOU LOVE WILL HAUNT YOU. LOVE IT ANYWAY.
Your favorite books will betray you
by meaning different things as you age.

The songs you once danced to
will one day leave you breathless with grief.

Every person who ever touched your skin
left fingerprints under your ribs.

This is the price of having a body.
This is the price of believing in beauty.

Keep paying it.

IF IT MAKES YOU FEEL ALIVE, IT WAS NEVER A WASTE OF TIME.

I wake up at 3 AM like a corpse reanimating,
heart doing running start round-offs,
lungs filled with something thick, something that lingers.

Some nights, I think I wake up screaming,
I check my phone like a widow at the shoreline,
I check my texts but no one has asked if I’m okay.

You said: I think you like that I hurt you.
And I should have laughed,
should have told you—
I don’t like the pain, I just like the proof that you were here.
You saw forever and let it rot in your hands.

But all I did was blink,
felt my pulse stutter like a dying lightbulb.
I didn’t want to give you another thing to run from.

Now, I pace the house like a ghost with unfinished business,
whispering things I should have said into the silence.
I still talk to you like you’re in the room,
like you’re just beyond the veil,
like maybe if I say your name right,
you’ll knock once for yes.

If I say I’m over it, will the algorithm believe me?
If I change your name to "him," will it still cut?
If I don’t tell them it’s real,
will they call it a masterpiece?

The government declared me a national treasure,
which makes sense, considering how often I’ve been looted.

They only protect what they’ve already taken.
They don’t call it a treasure until it’s out of reach.

Still, I’ll accept the honor,
stand solemnly in the museum of myself,
polished plaque, velvet ropes,
tour guides whispering about the brilliance,
the tragedy,
the fact that I never returned
my library books on time.

Let them gawk.
Let them write essays on my impact.
Let them carve my likeness in stone
and forget to dust it.

I can see the exhibits already—

Here lies her bad decisions.
Here’s the time she thought forever meant forever.
Behind the glass, her old texts on display.
A plaque reading: God, look at the way she begged.

The government has declared me a national treasure.

They say I belong to the people now,
but the people didn’t see me at 3 AM,
barefoot in the kitchen,
chewing on the past like gristle.

I imagine my face on a postage stamp,
licked and sent to places I’ll never go.

I imagine my face carved into a coin,
slipped into vending machines, spat back out.

Or etched into history books next to the words—
Fell but never quite landed.
Loved, but only in hindsight.

Do I get a holiday? A moment of silence?

Or a biopic where they cast someone prettier,
softer, easier to root for?

Or will you just name your daughter after me
and pretend it’s a coincidence?

Rise when I enter the room.
You owe me that much.

I step out of cabs like a kept woman,
like someone who has never once
had to chase anything down.

My skin glows like old money,
like generational wealth,
like I was never stupid enough
to beg in the first place.

I walk past mirrors like they owe me something,
like they should be grateful
to hold my reflection
for even a second.

Gold hoops, collarbones like carved marble,
lipstick the color of a closed door.
I lean into the frame just to see it—
how time has made me rarer,
like something kept behind glass,
like something men whisper prices for.

My laugh costs more than your rent,
my absence is designer,
tailored to fit only me.

I wear silk for no reason.
I order the cocktail with the longest name,
just because I can.
I walk into rooms like I invented them.

God, I look so expensive now.
You can't even afford to miss me properly.

I’ll send you a postcard when I get over you.
I just hope you know it won’t be soon.

It’ll say something vague, something nonchalant—
The weather’s nice, the men are kind,
none of them look like you.
Paris is overrated.
Hope you’re well. Hope I mean that someday.
Wish you weren’t here.

It’ll be from somewhere ridiculous—
the French Riviera, a ghost town in Nevada,
a cruise ship I’m not on,
a gas station in Ohio at 3 AM,
where even the clerk looks tired of my ghosts.

I will sign it with my full name,
so you remember how it used to sound in your mouth,
but I won’t send it to your real address.
I’ll send it to a random house in a town
I’ve never been to.

Let some stranger in Arkansas
trace my handwriting and wonder
who I loved enough
to haunt like this.

You will not find me staring wistfully into the distance,
a shadowed enigma,
a woman of few words.

No.

You will find me leaning forward in conversation,
hands flailing,
explaining in vivid detail
why the texture of grapes
is both deeply upsetting
and a miracle of modern biology.

You will find me launching into a 15-minute tangent
about why ceiling fans make rooms feel colder
but don’t actually change the temperature,
and how this is a metaphor for human relationships
if you think about it hard enough.

I tried to be unknowable.
I tried to be quiet.

But the world is so stupid,
and I have things to say.

The first inhale said, You should be wearing sunglasses at night.
The second said, You are not in love, but someone is in love with you.
The third said, You are dangerous in all the right ways.

I exhaled and saw my future
in the glow of the streetlights.
It was dark.
It was mysterious.
It was doomed.

I smoked the whole thing.
I am now in a different emotional tax bracket.

And suddenly,
I understood
why the femme fatale
never makes it out alive.

(Because you never did know how to say goodbye right.)

I set a place for you anyway.
A ghost seat at my table,
a shadow in the doorway,
a wine glass smudged
with the shape of an absence.

You were always late
to your own consequences,
drifting in just in time
to miss me leaving,
staring at my taillights
like you thought
they were stars to wish on.

I should have stopped
writing you into the story,
should have let you fade
to a footnote,
a forgotten guest
on a list I never mailed—

but instead,
I keep setting the table
like love is a dinner party
and you just got lost
on the way.

I say please.
I say thank you.
I shrink when I should expand.

I smile when I do not mean it.
I soften my tone,
I round my edges,
I play nice
so that people will like me.

And what did it get me?

A seat at the table
where I apologize
for taking up a chair,

where I am too afraid
to ask for a bigger plate,
so I tell myself my hunger
is all in my head.

I tell myself
I should believe it by now.

Some days,
I almost do.

i love you.
you don’t know me,
but i love you.

not in a way
that asks for anything.
not in a way
that needs to be defined.

just in a way
that says,
"i am here. you are here. let’s be here together for a while."

You do not belong to this soil,
not the way they did—
feet sinking into peat,
lungs lined with salt and prayer,
bodies turning to moss before memory.

But still, you stand here,
four generations late,
hands in your Primark pockets,
mouthing names you were never meant to carry,
even as they sit inside you,
your first name stamped with their last,
a borrowed relic you never earned.

Your brother gripped the wheel like a lifeline,
right-side driving out of Dublin,
left shoulder braced against muscle memory,
like he expected the road to turn on him.
Mom rode shotgun,
printed-out censuses fanned across her lap,
highlighted, annotated, dog-eared—
a roadmap made of the dead.

You sat in the backseat,
cheek against the window,
watching Ireland unfold in slow exhales—
stone walls dividing nothing from nothing,
a horizon stitched with ruins,
the color of a postcard left too long in the sun.

Mom recited their names like prayer beads,
rolling them through her fingers,
waiting for recognition
that did not come.

And then you were there—
the grass, damp and grasping,
twined around your ankles,
softened under your weight,
pulling you down like something remembered.

The graveyard was older than the road that brought you there.
Headstones leaned like tired men,
softened by wind, by rain,
by the weight of a hundred years unspoken.
Their names smoothed into murmurs,
the dates washed into dashes.

And at every grave,
a small stone sign,
half-buried in moss,
letters chipped but certain:
KNEEL AND PRAY.
Not a suggestion. A sentence.

You did not kneel.
You touched the name instead,
ran your fingers over the grooves,
over the letters that built you
without ever knowing you would come.

A crow clicked its beak from the low wall,
watching the three of you like it had seen this before,
like it knew how this ended.

You whispered something you could not name.
The wind took it from your mouth,
tucked it into the tall grass,
laid it at their feet.

And then you left,
but the wet earth held its claim,
clinging to your soles,
like it knew you’d be back.

You are not the first to stand here,
shifting your weight from heel to toe,
listening for something that won’t answer.

This was someone’s altar once—
iron-veined and humming,
burning red under the weight of hands
that bent it to their will,
knuckles split and salted,
prayers exhaled through gritted teeth.

They worked like men who had no choice,
backs arched into the shape of tomorrow,
sleeves rolled past their elbows,
skin browned with the kind of sweat
that never washes off,
that seeps into the ground
like blood, like proof.

You were born too late to know them,
but their bones remember you.

You carry their names in pieces:
a slanted initial in your passport,
a jawline that sharpens the same way,
a craving for salt, for silence,
for anything that lingers—
but never long enough.

Time has worn them down
to a Sunday ghost,
a muttered grace before supper,
a name no one says right,
a thing you promise to remember
but never write down.

The rails are rusting,
but still they hold.
The ties are rotting,
but still they grip the earth.
The past is splintering,
but still it snags your skin.

You wonder if their hands ever ached
the way yours do,
or if the ache was different—
deeper, heavier,
rooted in something you can’t name.

You wonder if they knew
they were building a road
no one would walk back down.

And you wonder if they’d still have done it,
knowing they would fade into dust
long before you came looking,

long before you ever thought to ask,
before the rust reached the marrow,
before their prayers turned to silence,
before you let their stories slip
like sand through your teeth.

February bites down—
wind with a switchblade edge,
sky like the underbelly of something dead,
clawing at a season that turns its back,
half-winter, half-wishbone,
stuck in the throat of the year.

Sidewalks crack like dry lips.
Trees wear loneliness like a borrowed skin—
bare, brittle, bracing for something
that never arrives.

The sky stays gray,
an unanswered text.
Days sink like forgotten receipts in my tote,
asking things I can’t answer,
whispering, Didn’t you think you’d feel different by now?
Didn’t I?

The cold is a debt I keep paying in shivers,
in chapped hands, in mornings that taste like spoiled perfume
and dreams of other cities, where I wake up panting,
where I breathe out his name like an epiphany,
and let my eyes sigh closed like a prayer.

I walk through the days like a half-lit hallway,
never sure what I’m looking for,
never sure I’ll find it.

I forget what my hands were made for.
I press my palm against the frost-bitten glass,
just to prove I’m still warm-blooded.

February unspools, soft and slow,
a ribbon of time that never quite ties into a bow,
a breath held too long in a house too small.

And I—
I stand at the edge of the month like a skipped stone,
almost ready to sink, almost ready to fly,
caught in the soft ache of almost,
in the half-light of wanting.

March will come like an answer
to a question I don’t remember,
but tonight, February lingers—
a ghost-limbed thing,
a name I still chase in the dark,
leaving me unfinished,
half-written,
half-here.

(verse1)
You always had a talent for leaving the room,
Broad-backed, sharp-dressed, all charming and doomed.
Your entrances grand, you’d win over the crowd,
Drop stunning subtleties ‘til the lights dimmed down.
"See me," a soft plea, your eyes on the floor,
Like I should memorize your tragedy but never ask for more.

(pre-chorus1)
I ignored the fine print;
"Lead actor has a habit of vanishing mid-play."
I killed my role as the girl who believes,
but belief alone won’t make a bolter stay.

(chorus1)
Exit, stage left, door swinging wide,
You ran like you rehearsed it a thousand times.
You said, “See me,” but meant, “Don’t look too close,”
You wanted a witness, not someone who knows.
Left me with questions folded like paper planes,
Tossed into the air, but never explained.

(verse2)
Playing the beats, thought we were learning this dance,
But you let go mid-spin, never gave it a chance.
Said, “I don’t think you love me,” like a closing remark,
Like you needed an ending that cast you as smart.
And God, you delivered that line with ease,
Like a man who never had to beg on his knees.

(pre-chorus2)
I should’ve caught the way you blinked too slow,
Like you were already erasing our bloodstained tableaux.
Should’ve noticed how your hands stayed cold,
Like they knew how to pinch but not how to hold.

(chorus2)
Exit, stage left, no roses, no rain,
Just the weight of your quiet, hollow and plain.
Left me with questions I can’t even write,
Like a coward who mistakes falling for flight.
You said, “See me,” but meant, “This isn’t quite real.”
Like we were just a scene to perform, not something to feel.

(bridge)
Do you ever slip, do you ever miss,
The way I knew you before all of this?
Do you search for my outline in backlit frames,
Or in the curve of girls with softer names?

Do you fold your love letters before they’re sent,
Start a confession, then drop the pen?
You speak our language when no one’s around,
I know you flinch at the ******* sound.

Tell me, when you walk past mirrors at night,
Do you see a man, or just another boy in flight?
Do you ever wonder if you could’ve stayed,
Or do you still mistake running for being brave?

(chorus3)
Exit, stage left, no sound, no applause,
Just a door swinging shut, the quiet that claws.
Left me with echoes that won’t let me rest,
Like names on a headstone you never addressed.
You said, “See me,” but meant, “Don’t get confused,”
A love built on punchlines, but never for two.

(outro)
No curtain, no bow, just the echo remains.
No curtain, no bow, just the echo remains.
No curtain, no bow—just you crossing out my name.

At dinner, you carved our initials
in the table like we were kids
who couldn’t handle paper.
And when you kissed my forehead in that bar,
it felt like the closest thing to a war.

Who else deciphers you?
Who else lets you be this cruel?
You laughed like nothing ever stays,
while the room held its breath—
thousands of ways to break,
none of them mine.

You lit a cigarette, exhaled
my name, said love is just another
bruise to frame. Played Elliott Smith
until the vinyl screamed. The room went hollow.
I stayed, half-dreamed.

I’ve memorized the script you bleed,
still call it poetry, sharp and obscene.
Each line I write pulls teeth,
but silence is a grave too deep,
and I’m not ready to be buried.

The skyline’s fading into bruised blue,
and I keep writing about you.
If I ever make it big,
I’ll tell them the truth:
I sold my soul to the ghost of you.

Your eyes were glass;
your hands, stone.
You look like someone
who dies alone.

Who else watches you rot so sweet?
Who else begs to sit at your feet?
You kissed like a guillotine—
cold and clean—
said nothing’s sacred,
not even dreams.

You pressed your hands to my ribs,
sighed like a wave that knew it would drown,
said, “I wonder what breaks first—
the cage or the tide?
Does the cage crack open,
or does the tide betray?
Which one admits they wanted it that way?”

You laughed like the question wasn’t insane,
and I felt both collapse
in the back of my brain.

The tide swallowed the cage;
the cage choked the tide,
and I stood in the wreckage
of what neither survived.

As they broke, I saw it clear:
neither could win—
only disappear.

And I keep writing you,
line after line,
a hymn to the hurt
I still call mine.
If I ever make it big,
they’ll read every verse
and know I traded my best
for your worst.

Here’s to the ruins
we called our own—
the table we carved,
the war we’ve known.
Your eyes were glass;
your hands, stone.
You look like someone
who’s already gone.

Part I


It’s admirable, really,
how you’ve turned heartbreak
into performance art.

Did I just say that?
Oops—slip of the tongue,

like when you called me a mistake
and dressed it up as self-awareness.

“I’m walking away
because it’s the right thing,”
you said,
as if morality were fear
in a designer suit,
polished for the press.

No, really, I envy you.
It must take a kind of brilliance
to gaslight yourself so thoroughly,
your airtight lies
barely letting air in.

I’d ask if you believe your own stories,
but I’m scared of the answer—
being that committed to the act.

Oops, there I go again.
Was that too much?

It’s just—
you make it so easy to write about you,
like I’m bleeding out for you,
staining the sheets,
while you dream of clean hands.

You’re a character that refuses to develop.
All first act, no resolution,
the kind of person who leaves a wound
and then calls it poetry.

You’re inspiring, honestly.
So inspiring I can’t stop writing you down,
line after line after line.
You’ll live forever in these verses,
like overripe fruit
festering in a golden bowl.

Oops—
did I just compare you to a metaphor
you’ll never understand?
My bad.

I guess I’m still trying to
turn the volume down
on how you left.


Part II


It’s impressive, really,
how you can ghost yourself in real time,
leaving echoes where you should stand,
how you speak in circles so tight
you vanish into them and bow.

But don’t worry,
I’m not mad.
I just hope, someday,
someone whispers “forever”
warm enough that you finally hear
what you threw away.

You’d rather wade in puddles
and call them oceans.
It’s cute, really,
how you mistook self-sabotage for bravery.

My bad—was that mean?
I didn’t mean it.

I just think it’s sweet,
the way you told me I deserved better,
like it wasn’t your job
to be that for me.

I’m not bitter, though.
(That’s what people say, right?
When they’re lying?)

I just wonder if you ever think
about the space you left behind—
a perfectly carved absence,
still shaped like you.

You’d probably call that poetic.
You’d find a way to make my grief
a compliment to your charm.
You always did like a good metaphor,
even if it wasn’t yours to claim.

And me?
I’ll keep apologizing for what you did.
My bad-
for trying too hard to make you stay.
My bad-
for thinking love was a language
you could learn to speak.
I should’ve known
you only ever mouthed the words.

But no hard feelings.
I hope you find someone
who doesn’t mind
standing in your shadow.

I hear the view from there
is stunning—

just like watching someone leave,
and realizing you built the door
and I locked it behind you,
my bad- I guess.

I’ve learned to throw the light
where you need it most—
over sticky counters,
scuffed linoleum,
the jukebox that’s just for show.

You sip your drink and call me dazzling,
as if you don’t know
what it costs to glow like this.

There was a time I stood still,
just glass with sharp edges,
but you didn’t notice me then.
So I started spinning,
catching your attention in fragments,
hoping you’d call it grace.

Now, I tilt just right—
a thousand little versions of me
shattered across the room,
each one saying, “Look. See me. Stay.”

And you do. For a while.
But staying was never your strong suit,
was it?

You tell me I light up the room,
but you’ve never asked
what it feels like to hang here,
twisting myself into every shape
that might make you smile.

Some nights, I wonder if you notice
the sharp edges hidden in the shimmer—
how every reflection is a wound
I’ve stopped tending.

You don’t see
how the light cuts me, too,
how every spin takes more
than it gives.

No one ever asks
what it feels like
to hold everyone else’s light
and burn out in the process.

The shine is a trick,
but it works, doesn’t it?
It keeps you here
just long enough to forget
the dark corners.

The music starts again,
and I turn—
not because I want to,
but because I don’t know how to stop.

I’m fine.
I don’t think about you.
I’m over it.
Say them three times fast,
watch them turn to ash in your mouth.

I’m fine.
That’s the easiest one—
it babbles from the curve of your lips,
but drowns you just the same.

‘Fine’ is what you say
when you’re still holding the knife
and pretending the blood isn’t yours.

I don’t think about you.
Not at 2am,
cross-legged on my bedroom floor,
a Sharpie in one hand,
a grudge in the other,
crossing out filler words,
preparing for the silence that comes
when the ghosts get louder.

Not when I drop a joke in a stranger’s lap,
and it lands like a stone,
and I remember how you laughed—
not just at the joke,
but like you believed in the person who told it.

Or when headlights slice through my blinds,
speeding down my street,
and I know the driver is singing
louder than you ever did.

I’m over it. It’s over.
Over it—
as if heartbreak has an expiration date,
as if time knows how to cauterize.

I’m fine.
I don’t think about you.
I’m over it.

The holy trinity of lies,
lit like candles on an altar
I built from all the wreckage you left.
But don’t worry—
it’s just for show.

I’m fine.
I don’t think about you.
I’m over it.

And I wonder—
what will I do
when the wax runs out,
and the shadows disappear,
leaving me alone with the wreckage,
no place left to hide?

It’s impressive, really,
how you can ghost yourself in real time,
leaving echoes where you should stand,
how you speak in circles so tight
you vanish into them and bow.

But don’t worry,
I’m not mad.
I just hope, someday,
someone whispers “forever”
warm enough that you finally hear
what you threw away.

You’d rather wade in puddles
and call them oceans.
It’s cute, really,
how you mistook self-sabotage for bravery.

My bad—was that mean?
I didn’t mean it.

I just think it’s sweet,
the way you told me I deserved better,
like it wasn’t your job
to be that for me.

I’m not bitter, though.
(That’s what people say, right?
When they’re lying?)

I just wonder if you ever think
about the space you left behind—
a perfectly carved absence,
still shaped like you.

You’d probably call that poetic.
You’d find a way to make my grief
a compliment to your charm.
You always did like a good metaphor,
even if it wasn’t yours to claim.

And me?
I’ll keep apologizing for what you did.
My bad-
for trying too hard to make you stay.
My bad-
for thinking love was a language
you could learn to speak.
I should’ve known
you only ever mouthed the words.

But no hard feelings.
I hope you find someone
who doesn’t mind
standing in your shadow.

I hear the view from there
is stunning—
just like watching someone leave,
and realizing you built the door.

It’s admirable, really,
how you’ve turned heartbreak
into performance art.

Did I just say that?
Oops—slip of the tongue,

like when you called me a mistake
and dressed it up as self-awareness.

“I’m walking away
because it’s the right thing,”
you said,
as if morality were fear
in a designer suit,
polished for the press.

No, really, I envy you.
It must take a kind of brilliance
to gaslight yourself so thoroughly,
your airtight lies
barely letting air in.

I’d ask if you believe your own stories,
but I’m scared of the answer—
being that committed to the act.

Oops, there I go again.
Was that too much?

It’s just—
you make it so easy to write about you,
like I’m bleeding out for you,
staining the sheets,
while you dream of clean hands.

You’re a character that refuses to develop.
All first act, no resolution,
the kind of person who leaves a wound
and then calls it poetry.

You’re inspiring, honestly.
So inspiring I can’t stop writing you down,
line after line after line.
You’ll live forever in these verses,
like overripe fruit
festering in a golden bowl.

Oops—
did I just compare you to a metaphor
you’ll never understand?
My bad.

I guess I’m still trying to
turn the volume down
on how you left.

I’d spell out the way
you let people love you halfway,
then blamed the empty rooms
on their leaving.

You build doors without hinges,
frames for windows
opening only to emptiness.

You call it safety,
but it feels like a monument to loneliness—
just another way
to keep your hands clean.

You ran
because you were terrified
of what it might mean
to finally be seen—

to stand still long enough
for someone to trace your outline
and call it human.

You thought moving fast enough
might blur the edges,
stretch you thin enough
to disappear—

a shadow so fragile
it couldn’t hold its shape.

It didn’t need to cut deep;
it pressed slow on your softest spot,
and laughed.

And maybe you laughed, too,
because isn’t that easier
than letting someone stay?

Isn’t it safer
to leave the door cracked,
watch them slip away,

than risk them staying long enough
to watch the walls crack,
the beams snap under the weight
of all you’ve hidden?

I poured champagne on the garden,
just to see what wouldn’t grow.
A rebellion disguised as art,
too small to leave a bruise.

The idea felt poetic—
a confession spilled like incense,
settling heavy in the soil,
thicker than regret.

By dusk, the dirt turned sticky,
a graveyard for good intentions,
gold on a barren altar,
pearls drowning in sweetness turned sour.

A bee circled the spill,
its wings trembling,
caught between greed and retreat.

I wanted to tell it, Save yourself.
But even the flowers had given up,
their petals folded like apologies
too late to matter.

I stood barefoot in the dirt,
watching bubbles rise slick
against the roots of something already dying.

At least the garden refused me honestly—
its silence more forgiving
than any answer you gave me.

I laughed at how pathetic it felt—
a toast to nothing,
a promise unraveling,
luxury offered to the lifeless.

I’ll wake up tomorrow
and call it nothing,
but the smell of champagne
will linger on my palms.

And you’ll linger, too,
where regret always does—
settled deep in the soil,
refusing to grow.

We were a storm wrapped in silk,
a wildfire in a library,
a circus of one juggling two.

Whispering
with hollow eyes,
screaming
with sticky mouths,
teeth bared like warnings.

We didn’t love quietly.
We made noise;
we made chaos,

burning so bright
we went blind
and called it fate.

We dipped toes in flames,
called each other liars,
made a scene,
and painted it as art.

We yelled like
the walls had ears,
and maybe they did—

neighbors leaning into the heat
of us, drawn to the firelight
they didn’t know they missed.

Their quiet love folded its hands
on the porch, waiting
for something
loud enough
to break them open.

Maybe they envied
the way we burned,
but I wonder if they stayed
on their porch
because they knew fire
always turns to ash.

Your voice struck the match,
mine poured the gasoline.
We burned to see
who’d scream first.

I yelled because
quiet
would have killed me.

You kissed me like a dare
wrapped in an apology
you’d never say.
I kissed back like I chose
the wrong truth.

You moved like you
were trying
to drown out the sound
of breaking glass,

and I shrieked back
because silence
was a language I refused
to learn.

We roared
like the neighbors would call the cops,
but they never did—
perched on their mezzanine,
our 11 o’clock number
bringing down
the house,
while bringing out our worst.

You tasted like unfinished business,
something sharp enough
to draw blood.
My laugh—
a broken bottle,
teetering on the edge.
And you kept pushing—

a kiss like a scream,
caught in the throat,
a yell that landed soft,
like love was always
meant to bruise.

Isn’t that the way of us?

If I could go back,
I’d kiss you softer, yell louder—

maybe then we’d learn
that loving is different than
screaming,
that flirting with death
isn’t the same as living,
and silk wasn’t meant
to hold storms.

I do miss the noise—
the way it filled the cracks
in the silence,
the mess that made our love
feel alive in all
the wrong ways.

I miss the heat of you
in the middle of it all,
kissing me
hard enough
to steal the breath
I was about to waste
on saying your name.

The stars blinked out one by one,
and for a second, I thought I had won.
You always said I needed too much,
that the world owed me nothing.

But I wanted the debt anyway—
wanted it piled high enough
to scrape the edge of the moon.
I wanted the universe to notice
how I stayed up nights,
bartering my breath for forgiveness
and my spine for love.

I thought the quiet was mine to keep.
I thought I had tamed it—
a wild joy, caged
in the ruins of what we built.

I bartered with silence,
traded my dreams for detours,
hoping to bend the night into something
I could swallow whole—
but it swallowed me first.

The dark wasn’t empty.
It was you—sharp as every breath
I tried to hold, under a sky
too proud to care if I fell beneath it.

And the stars?
They just didn’t want to watch anymore.

This bone-tired body is a battlefield
where I keep returning
to bury the same soldier,
over and over.

His face shifts like seasons—
familiar and foreign,
the line between my lines,
fading into fable,
floating into folklore.

He’s died here a hundred times,
and I survived every one.
But I keep coming back,
thinking I might unearth
something softer.

My hands tremble from holding too much—
soliloquies, symptoms, scapegoats,
saltshakers, semicolons, starry-eyed sighs.
My knees buckle under the weight
of a history I can’t rewrite.

No matter how many poems erupt
from my shell-shock,
how many mornings I crawl from trenches,
listening to the sound of birdsong—
I always return, ***** in hand.

He stares up from the dirt,
his mouth unmoving but full of accusations.
"You never let me go,"
he whispers without sound,
"and I’ll keep rising until you do.
Don’t you get it?
You buried yourself here too."

How many deaths does it take
to make a ghost let go?
I’m running out of shovels,
but never out of wishes.

Some wounds are wars,
and some wars never surrender.
If I stop digging, will the war finally end—
or will it bloom
in the silence I leave behind?

We tangled in tropes,
two archetypes in love with the idea of change,
but never the act itself.

You thought I was the manic pixie dream girl,
a glittering deus ex machina sent to save you
with whimsy and wild eyes,
but I was just tired—
carrying too many rewrites in my pockets,
each one heavier than the last,
all of them missing their endings.

I thought you were the brooding antihero,
mystery wrapped in shadow,
a walking epilogue with smoldering regret,
but you were just scared—
your silence a monologue
no audience could bear to sit through,
your pauses dragging like curtain calls
for plays that never finished.

We wrote each other into scenes
with props we didn’t know how to use,
a wine glass left unbroken,
a door no one ever slammed.
The spotlight flickered between us,
a dim bulb refusing to hold
all the things we wouldn’t say.

When the script fell apart,
we blamed the writer,
the lighting, the set—
anything but the truth:
we were always the ones
tearing pages from the book,
ripping them before the ink had time to dry,
our story left trailing ellipses,
a script still curled on the floor,
waiting for hands that never returned.

I’ve seen your kind of mercy,
and it’s got teeth.
You said you’ve broken stronger women than me.
What a line to throw at someone still standing-
someone still holding your words like a knife
they haven’t decided to drop.

What a way to remind me
that you’ve already decided how this ends—
with me on my knees,
and you walking away,
your hands clean but your mouth ******
from everything you’ve said,
apologized for,
then said again.

I hate that you asked me to tell you
two opposing views I hold.
Did you realize you are one of them?

We laugh like it’s nothing,
like we haven’t spent years
cutting each other open
and calling it something softer.

You still picture it—
me, maybe, or just us in the abstract—
and I still think about how it feels
to be reduced to skin and nothing more.
Like flesh is the only thing between us,
like there isn’t a whole world
I’m dragging behind me
every time I open my mouth
and you close yours.

You ask questions like a knife,
not to open me up
but to see if I’ll flinch.
You talk like the past
is some far-off country
you never visited,
like the scars on me
are postcards from someone else’s story.

But I still feel the weight of it—
your mercy,
your silence,
the words you said twice
just to be sure they cut.

Do you?

For when I’m pretending to be widow at the opera.
For when I’m following a pigeon down the street like it owes me money.
For when I spray perfume on my wrists before bed, like the dreams deserve better versions of me.

For when I go through Korean Customs just to eat Lotteria on the Incheon sidewalk, then redo check-in and security for my connecting flight.
For when I receive a message I’ll overanalyze for the rest of my life.
For when I write a text, delete it seven times, then send “lol” as if I didn’t bleed for it.

For when I apologize to a vending machine for using a credit card.
For when I press my ear to a seashell and hear an argument I lost ten years ago.
For when the chandelier is on fire, and I jump up to light a cigarette.

For when I catch a fly in my hand and let it go, like I’m proving something to God.
For when I lose an earring in the street and think, “This is how pieces of me disappear.”
For when I find a hairpin on the sidewalk and carry it like a talisman.

For when the theater goes dark, and I sit there wondering if the show is about me.
For when I open a fortune cookie and write a rebuttal in the margin of the slip.
For when I break my own heart at 2 a.m. on purpose.

For when I sit at a piano I don’t know how to play, pressing keys like I’m calling out names.
For when I’m smiling at a stranger, just to prove I’m still kind.
For when I feel like a disco ball in a dive bar where nobody dances.

For when I dress up for an event I don’t want to go to prove I’m still trying.
For when I page through books I carried around in high school, hoping they’ll whisper a version of me I’ve forgotten.
For when I fold a map along the wrong lines and feel like I’ve ruined the entire world.

For when I bite a grape off the vine and pretend it’s the first fruit I’ve ever tasted.
For when I wake up with dirt under my fingernails and no memory of where I’ve been.
For when I dream of him and wake up keening.

For when I gasp and say, “This is just like Wuthering Heights!” in the dumbest moments.
For when we build a pillow fort, declare it a sovereign nation, ban all taxes, and call it “Pillowvania.”
For when we develop a shorthand where “Let me know when you’re done being weird” means “I miss you,” and “I miss you” means “I’m sorry.”

For when I flip a coin, and it lands on its edge, daring me to choose.
For when I don't.

The platform smells like skunked beer and rain,
a combination that feels almost romantic
if you tilt your head the right way.

I’m here because I missed the earlier one,
but maybe that’s the point.
Maybe everything worth waiting for
comes late, sticky, and half-empty.

I lean against the pillar,
fingers tracing someone’s graffiti confession—
MARIA, COME BACK.

I wonder if Maria stood here once,
tracing her own name in the dark,
wondering if it was enough to stay.

I hope she didn’t.
I hope Maria found something better
than this station,
this boy with a Sharpie
and a bad sense of timing.

I decide Maria is smarter than me,
that she’s already figured out
how to leave for good.

The train squeals like someone giving up
mid-argument, its voice cracking
just before the silence. I step inside
like a swallowed comeback.

The train jerks forward, pulling me with it,
an accomplice to leaving,
taut between the tension of wanting to stay
and disappearing into every local stop we make.

I press my forehead to the window
and watch the city unravel backwards—
neon signs blinking like eyelids,
lights flickering like answers
to questions I’ve stopped asking.

For a moment, I’m so full of joy
it feels reckless—
like daring a wave to pull me under,
knowing it probably will,
like I’ve stolen something precious
and can’t bear to give it back.

For a moment, I’m so full of hope
it feels wild—
like I’ve caught a glimpse of something
I’ve spent my whole life trying not to lose,
like maybe this train is taking me somewhere
I’ve been running from my whole life.

And then the lights flicker,
and I laugh—
because of course they do.
Because nothing this weird and beautiful
could ever come without a catch.

The train jerks,
a man drops a tallboy,
its amber spray spreading like a secret—
a casualty of motion,
spraying my boots,
reaching me before I can move,
because some things always do.

The rain streaks the windows,
the world pressing its palms
against the glass,
trying to remind me it’s still there.

And me? I’m here—
alive, for better or worse,
in this strange, messy moment,
with a Sharpie in my bag
and an urge to go back and write my name
like a flare next to Maria’s,
just in case she’s still out there
and she’d like to know I’m out here too.

This is what we do:
leave traces in places
we’ve long since abandoned,
hoping someone sees them
before they’re painted over.

This poem eats its own tail,
a serpent made of sentences,
its scales glinting like verbs
you haven’t conjugated yet.

It starts where it ends,
or it never starts at all—
just hovers,
a balloon tied to the wrist
of a stranger you dreamt.

Its metaphors bloom like sideways petals,
teeth glinting beneath their velvet edges,
biting the air until it tastes electric.

It clings to ozone,
that split-second before lightning remembers
it’s a blade meant to cut.

Each metaphor is a double-jointed bone,
bending past reason, snapping backward
into a shape that means nothing—
or everything, I mean everything.

It keeps its secrets folded
into origami shapes that collapse
when you try to unfold them.
A crane? A dagger? A heart?
All of them, none of them—
it depends on the angle of your longing.

This poem is yours only in the pause
between breaths,
mine only in the breath itself.
It ends when you stop reading.
It resurrects the moment I exhale my last.

Each line is a trapdoor,
a loaded chamber spinning,
blanks carved from silence.
You keep reading like the next word
might hold the trigger—
it’s always the one after.

It scratches itself raw
just to prove it can bleed,
then paints over the scars
in words you’ve heard before,
but never in this order.

This poem wants nothing from you,
except everything—
your eyes, your breath,
the parts of you
you didn’t know could rot so stunningly.

It will devour itself,
edges sharp with longing.
While you starve,
your breath will catch—
a witness to the teeth
that hollowed you.

Start with something casual:
“I miss you” is a good opener,
but don’t forget the twist—
throw in a parenthetical like
“(but not enough to beg)”
just to keep him guessing.

Follow up with a double text,
something vaguely existential.
Maybe:
“Do you ever think about
the weight of your own cowardice?”
And when he doesn’t respond,
add:
“Haha jk, how’s your sciatica?”

Text three should be a song lyric—
not one he knows,
but something obscure and devastating,
like:
“And the skeletons in both our closets
plotted hard to **** this up.”
Don’t explain it.
Let him Google it at 2 a.m.
and spiral in silence.

For text four,
go for the jugular:
“Do you think you’ll ever stop
mistaking fear for wisdom?”
Pause.
Then send:
“Nvm, that was mean.
What’s your comfort show again?
Mine’s Parks and Rec.”

By text five, he’ll start to crack.
He might reply with something cautious,
like:
“Are you okay?”
This is your chance.
Answer with:
“Define okay.”
Then immediately change the subject—
“Wait, what’s your zodiac rising?”

Text six is where you plant the seed of doubt:
“Sometimes I think we’d have worked out
if I didn’t know you so well.”
Wait exactly four minutes,
then follow up with:
“Or maybe if you knew yourself better.”

For text seven, go full cryptic:
“You remind me of that one painting—
you know, the one they had to repaint
because it was falling apart.”
Let him sit with that one.

By text eight,
he’ll either call or give up.
If he calls, ignore it.
If he doesn’t,
send:
“Anyway, good talk.
Hope life’s treating you
as kindly as you deserve.
Interpret that how you will.”

Text nine is optional,
but it’s my favorite:
“Do you even notice the silence
when it’s not yours?”

Text ten is the finale.
Simple, clean, devastating:
“I hope you finally stop running,
and when you do,
I hope it’s too late
for anyone to catch you.”

The train didn’t leave the station—
it just waited for me to give up chasing it,
its engine a wolf panting in the dark,
smoke curling into the air
like the echo of a laugh,
a smirk I couldn’t outrun.

I ran because stopping felt like failure.
I ran like if I reached it, I’d finally be enough.
I ran until my lungs screamed,
until the soles of my shoes
wore whispers into the gravel.
I swore I heard it call my name,
but maybe it was just the wind,
mocking the way I mistook movement
for meaning.

For a moment, it slowed—
just enough to make me believe
I could catch it,
just enough to make me think
it wanted me there.

The train didn’t leave.
It sat there,
watching me unspool myself,
mile by mile,
breaking like an old clock
that refused to tick.

I thought if I ran fast enough,
I could earn its departure—
prove I was worthy of being left behind.
But it was never about speed.
It was about surrender,
about learning that some things
stay still just to watch you fall apart.

The train never moved.
It stayed quiet,
its shadow stretching long,
swallowing me whole,
burying me in forgetting.

I stopped running.
And that’s when I realized—
the train was never waiting for me.
It was waiting to remind me
that some things linger like shadows,
stretching long enough
to teach you how to let go.

I renamed him "Were You Sent by Someone Who Wanted Me Dead?"
because the damage didn’t feel accidental.
Now his name sits like a warning—
a lighthouse in reverse,
pulling me toward the rocks instead of away.

The boy who made me feel alive but ruined me
is "Can’t Go Back, I’m Haunted,"
because that’s what he was—
a shadow teaching me how to crave the dark.
Even now, I catch myself looking for him
in rooms I swear I’ve locked.

The one who left quietly got
"Stood on the Cliffside Screaming ‘Give Me a Reason,’"
because that’s what I told myself:
he wasn’t cruel, just lost,
just a plane circling the runway,
never meant to land.
I scroll past his name
and wonder if he’s still searching.

The fling that burned too fast
became "She’s Gone Too Far This Time,"
because I warned him—
I’m no one’s redemption arc.
He wanted fire to keep him warm,
but I only know how to burn.

The boy who was almost enough is
"I’ll Tell You the Truth but Never Goodbye."
His kindness felt like sunlight on bare skin,
but I couldn’t stop chasing shadows.
His name glows softly—
a reminder of the light I couldn’t hold.

Another became "Back When We Were Still Changing for the Better,"
because that’s all we were—potential,
the kind of almost that stays caught in your throat,
a song you never finish writing.
I left him there in my phone,
a name too soft for the edges we’ve grown into,
but sharp enough to remind me
how hope always dies in the details.

There’s comfort in cataloging heartbreaks this way—
turning them into lyrics instead of people,
letting songs hold what I can’t.
I swipe past "Forever is the Sweetest Con,"
"If a Man Talks ****, Then I Owe Him Nothing,"
and "Old Habits Die Screaming."
I laugh at my own theatrics
and wonder if they deserve immortality.

If one of them calls,
I’ll watch the name flicker on the screen,
smile at the poetry of it all,
and let it go unanswered.

Because some names
only deserve to live
in someone else’s song.