People always say that it hurts at night and apparently screaming into your pillow at 3am is the romantic equivalent of being heartbroken. But sometimes it’s 9am on a Tuesday morning and you’re standing at the kitchen bench waiting for the toast to pop up. And the smell of dusty sunlight and earl gray tea makes you miss him so much you don’t know what to do with your hands.

You are always second guessing
yourself, you are full of things that
are unfinished and unsent and I
wonder how many times love has
only seen the world from behind
your teeth because you never
found courage to say it. I want to
know the secrets your backspace
holds because sometimes I think
the reason you’re misunderstood
is just because the things you feel
so clearly only make it to the tip
of your tongue before you swallow
them back down
.

I would be happy to hold the words for you
if they're too heavy
or sharp
I would be happy to carry the world for you
if ever you drown
or can't find the beauty
in oblivion
or in yourself

don't forget I will always

i spent all night
trying to scrape you off
my skin

my thoughts cannot move an inch
without bumping into
some piece of you

i spent all night
looking over my body
washing off your hands
and eyes

i cannot stop myself
from constantly
falling into you
over and over again

would music make sense
and words taste less bitter
when we place them on our lips
and spit them to the ground
because we want others to trip over them

would we all take smaller steps
and trace the edges of our limits
before we jumped into uncertainty
like we always do
because time doesn't pass fast enough
for anyone

would we never be afraid
of darkness
if we would live in it entirely
and help each other
touch each other
find each other
behind our blindfolds
because we are lonelier when
we only see our insides

would we reach for a smiling mouth
just to feel it
would we listen for teardrops
just to crawl our way to catch them
because we want others to
save us from oblivion

if the world was blind
would you be cared for
loved
admired
?

if the world was blind
*who would you impress?

I was fifteen, thinking about unzipping my veins.

My best friend has superpowers. She’ll go outside and strip off her clothes and show herself to every person passing by. She screams too loud and loves too hard and feels everything. She’ll hold you and lift you up and make sure you feel everything too. You’d want to wear her words on your feet everyday because they make you feel taller. They never go out of style and they never bore you. The things she says are the things you couldn’t.

There are so many types of beautiful and my best friend's the best one. She’s the kind of person you can’t control. The more you try to settle her flames, the bigger her fire grows. She is a bursting flame.
Sometimes my best friend is a candle. She feels too bright and burns herself up to give others light. I feel she should dance in her own spotlight. I feel others should warm their hands by her bonfire, but they should not steal her light. I wish I could let those who do burn.

My best friend is the kind of person that doesn’t catch herself when she falls. She falls and relishes in it. She lives for the fall, loves the thrill of it.

My best friend unzips every part of you. She opens you up and holds your insides and keeps them warm. You wish she wouldn’t zip you back up. You wish she’d take you with her and tell you stories about the stars in her mother’s eyes and the way her boyfriend always gives her what she wants. She always gets what she wants.

My best friend is the best storyteller. Her stories make your eyes flutter. You can’t help but smile because her vocabulary is too large for this world and I drown in it. She is never a ******* step to climb. She is your knight in shining armor, the apple of your eye. Your first choice. She gets you places.

My best friend is free. She has too much soul to be hung up on a person or a thing. She loves herself too much. She can’t possibly love anything or anyone else more.

My best friend taught me not to make homes out of people. “Doing so will leave you homesick and sad”, she said. I didn’t listen to her and found she was right. Missing arms that cannot hold roofs, hearts with shaky foundations.
She taught me people like us weren’t made to be pretty. “You were meant to burn down the earth and graffiti the sky.” We are the sun, she and I.

My best friend is the crazy kind of crazy. The kind of crazy people laugh about. The kind of crazy people try not to fall in love with. It takes some time, but falling in love with my best friend is inevitable. I’m glad her kind of crazy exists.  

I can’t help but feel that I don’t have this kind of crazy. I feel like everyone’s a little insane and we all walk around with this armor of sanity, and she’s just able to cast it off completely. I’d almost like to join her and run around the city and scream as loud as my ears can hear. I’d like to let everyone know how much I love and appreciate myself, even if it comes out as braggy. I would love to be able to bear myself completely naked without hesitation and without second thoughts. I wish I were as terrifying and strange and beautiful.

My best friend’s heart bleeds sometimes. Sometimes, she breaks her fingers because she doesn’t like the way she touches life. She was born with glass bones and paper skin. Whenever the sun doesn’t rise for her, she crashes and she questions her magic. She tells me it’s an illusion.
My best friend is never an illusion.

I believe that when my best friend is gone, she will leave everything behind. I don’t believe that she will ever need someone to teach her to set her heart free. I hope she will find enough fire in her soul to do that all by herself.

My best friend will never be alone, though.

Everyone is your friend unless proven otherwise

2. If he doesn’t answer, don’t keep sending texts. If he cared to talk to you, he would’ve responded.

3. Getting no message is also a message.

4. Don’t mistake knives with flowers when handed to you.

5. Sit on the floor of your shower until you can breathe again. Water will always love to love your skin.

6. Start writing with the intention of filling up one page. Write until your pen stops working and your hearts stops bleeding.

7. You are never anyone’s anything. You are not made to be owned.

8. Don’t make compromises you can’t live with. Compromise is a different version of what you want, not a whole other universe.

9. “No.” is a full sentence. Learn to use it.

10. Learn new vocabulary – because why the **** not? Write down your new words that you learn while reading, use them in conversations; expand your vocab, because when you are sitting there on the bus ride to real life, you’ll be glad you have.

11. Don’t expect people to walk through fire for you.

12. Don’t always be so **** prepared to walk through fire for others. Love doesn’t mean sacrifice. Love shouldn’t mean sacrifice.

13. Learn to let people pass through your life; like a summer breeze, not a storm that’s just been unleashed.

14. Sleeping is not possible when you’re angry or sad.

15. Love yourself the way you loved yourself at ten, before the world had a chance to fill your head with ugliness.

16. You don’t drown by falling in the water. You drown by staying there.

17. Plan things. Have something to look forward to.

18. Music isn’t about a social projection of your personality. Love what you love and don’t ever be sorry for it.

19. Forgive, but never forget.

20. Train your mind to see the good in everything.

21. Do not spend your life searching for a place to call home. Make the bones in your skeleton the only structure you need.

22. Patience is amazing. Waiting is hard, but worth it.

23. People will make time for you when they care about you. If they say they’re too busy or constantly if they constantly cancel their plans, they don’t care. People fight for you when they care.

24. Care. Not many people give a crap anymore.

25. Don’t try to be pretty. You were meant to burn down the earth and graffiti the sky. Don’t let anyone ever simplify you to just “pretty”.

26. Love burns out.

27. We are not responsible for what we have come to be, but if who you are doesn’t make you happy, then take a different path.

28. It’s nobody’s job to fix you. He just has to be there to hold you’re hand while you try to fix yourself.

29. If we could decide who we loved it would be a lot simpler, but much less magical.

30. Do not set yourself on fire to keep others warm.

31. Find your people. I don’t mean someone who also likes the same tv shows as your or someone who shares your love for cereal. Your people will bring out the best in you. Your people that you can talk to until 3 in the morning and feel like your heart has grown.

32. Take a bath. Sleep in. Eat fruits and vegetables. Drink lots of water. Go for long walks. Treat yourself. Love your body. Exhale.

33. Create a plan that will be enjoyable for exercise and just do it. –no ******* around this year.

34. Take the bricks they used to throw at you and build a ******* castle.

35. Always bring a sweater. Even if you think it won’t be cold.

36. Pay attention to what people say when they’re angry. When you make up and they tell you they didn’t mean any of it, know that they did. Also know that they wish they didn’t. But they did.

37. You’re not over it if it still makes you angry.

38. Read more. Read classics, read newspapers, read magazines, read fictional books, read joke books,
read poems. Just read.

39. Do not let what he wants eclipse what you need.

40. Bleed for better reasons this year.

I walked around the streets, an inch away from weeping, ashamed of sentimentality and possible love.

Someone told you once
a soul mate is not the person
who makes you the happiest,
but the one
who makes you feel the most.
Who conducts your heart
to bang the loudest,
who can drag you giggling
with forgiveness from the cellar they locked you in.

It has always been him.