if this is love then it is both selfish and selfless.
i am selfish because thinking of you spending and enjoying time with other people can't help but stake me.
i am selfish for wanting you all to myself.
i am selfish for getting suicidally jealous.
but i am selfless for wanting to give every part of me to share with you,
like a jigsaw puzzle waiting desperately to be complete.
is love a synonym for pain?
why is it often associated with happiness when it is mostly the opposite?
why must love come with a risk of broken hearts and no cure,
with dangers and stepping stones made of land mines,
days filled with misery unpredictable?
love may be breathtaking, in both meanings:
it enchants you and it eventually kills you.
it drains you and it pains you.
it brings out the fool and whining and the mess,
and why must i get myself into this?
because love pulled me towards you.
a waste of time this may be but ignore the warnings i do,
for you make it worthwhile, the bitterness and jealousy,
an experience i'd rather not miss out on,
even if it ***** me dry from missing you all the time.
and am i filled with regret?
i think not.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Today I am Taking You to an Amusement Park.
You Know It? It’s right between Bastardville and LonelyTown.


My favorite ride is depression, it goes so far down!
Abuse is like a Kiddie Ride.
The Bully Stand has the best Food imaginable.


Oooooooo, or have you been to The Freak Show?
It’s by the Broken Home Balloon Stand.
Ooooo, The tension on insecurity, and G-Force on Divorce will drive you WILD.


I love the Rejection food stand, they have some delicacies like the slit wrist salad bar, or even the starvation sandwich.


Shall I Go On?
The final ride is called SUICIDE, often times it breaks down, but when you ride it you won’t want to leave....

I have given fragments of myself to people
who have only broken them into smaller pieces;
at this point my skeleton is made more of paper
thin apologies and not actual bones so when
I become an avalanche of emotions I've convinced
myself I don't feel and anxiety, when even the
shadows that still manage to scare me have managed
to fall asleep but I still haven't, there is nothing left
to turn to but this poem. and I don't know what this is.
I could call it an ode to all the people that have decided
I am just a damaged garden and there is nothing poetic
about planting flowers where the sun does not exist but
even then that would insist there were people willing to
plant weeds in abandoned graveyards
in the first place.
maybe I am selfish.
maybe it is wrong to want people to stay;
how could I have ever expected you
to love me when I never loved myself?
all I have are memories.
people I can only write stanzas about.
letters I can only read over and over again trying to
convince myself that I must've mattered.
I have given fragments of myself to people who have only
broken them into smaller pieces. this poem is probably
just an ode to my imagination for actually believing my
relationships with them were ever anything more
than just that, fragments

(h.l.)