What came first? The flies or the act of flying? This is going nowhere.

You had teased me about eventually writing about this moment. This moment and every other moment. Cigarette in hand, pink blushing my cheeks “yeah right”. I could never grow tired of this. Feeling so incredibly close to somebody that you know there will never be room for regret. We are not two, we are one and I’m pretty certain I’ve loved you since you were born. Probably longer than that. The sun looked over her shoulder to say hello to us that day. Watched you run around the cement staircase and discuss your orbit around me.

What came first? Forgiveness or sin? This is going nowhere.

I think of you farthest from the boundaries of this existence. Like maybe you’ve always been a day dream. A lost thought. An open-ended question. You in your crinkled smiles and loud poetry hiding behind punk rock. You in your black coffee and sarcastic comments about my own soft words. You in your never-ending paradox. I don’t think we’ve ever apologized to each other. What is there to apologize for? I’m sorry for finally finding you? I’m sorry for becoming the person you would eventually love more than life itself?

What came first? The lovers or the love?

It's okay if this is going nowhere, so long as i end up there with you.

when i say i don’t care, i’m lying. congratulations. you broke my heart. i want to feel my pulse again. i want to bite down on her shoulder like warm skin is the last thing i will ever taste. learn to read between the lines. i’m in love with a girl i could never have. we are both too flirtatious with death. when you read my writing, can you see me? i suppose i’m afraid of dying with the faces of people i’ve hurt plastered against every lamppost on my street. missing. if i wasn’t me, i think i would avoid myself at all costs. don’t fall in love with me if you don’t desire immortality. love either does or doesn’t last forever. i’m not sure which hurts more. i’m so full of ****. these metaphors will be the death of me because sometimes i write and it feels like i’m drowning. i’m a shipwreck. if my heart beats any louder you won’t be able to focus on everything i’m trying to say. wrap your knuckles in-between each one of my vertebrae. please break me. i need to feel something again. the ballad of a tortured artist. nothing we haven’t seen before. why should it matter? do i? have i already lost? have you ever looked forward to waking up in the morning just to hear that song again? that’s what being in love with her feels like. i am learning to love my hands most when they’re empty. appreciate my flowers more when they wilt. treat yourself gently. it gets better with time even when you cant wake up in the morning without hitting snooze. like the night he rolled his eyes and told me to go home. i was with him, wasn’t i? will anybody read this? will anybody care? do i even care? i hope nobody tries to follow me because if i had any idea where i was going i like to believe that i’d have been there by now. did you hear me? don’t follow. every 18 months i give birth to new silences with names like paul and ethan and kayla and I Still Haven’t Found You Yet. i can’t keep pretending that i’m not tired of these teeth sitting in my lungs. some things are just impossible to say. how will i survive? the holes in my sheets are all named olivia. i want everything served to me violently, every day lived as a car crash. a punch in the chest. a blatant lie. i’ll swatch your blood on my hand first to see if it complements my skin tone. i haven’t let a man touch me since. i just wanted to help you love your darker parts, i never meant to become one. i am a fossil of a life once lived but not anymore. words don’t cut anymore they just ricochet and i am still so scared by loud noises. i am out of my depth here. if you love me, please tell me.

i want somebody to look close enough to see everything i’ve been hiding. how will i know? when i fall in love again, how will i know that it wont be like last time? i’m afraid i might be destined to die alone. being shy in 2018 is like being a woman in the 60’s. i can’t stop picking at scabs i’ve created myself. i’m not sure how much of a metaphor that really is. there’s a difference between heartbreak and abuse although people write about them as if they are the same. rejection is not the same as destruction. i hate how violently my hands shake. i am 17 kinds of amnesia. i am the answer to ambiguous security questions. i could die today and wait for you to forget about mourning the loss. getting better is not synonymous with going away. i am choking on my own fist in most instances. darling, live. i love you. please read this. please stay. my emotions feel like deleted voicemails. lost blood bags. is this what you wanted? i can’t rhyme or write or lie the same. mommy, is this who you thought i’d become? don’t answer that. i am still trying to find names for the emotions that have lied behind my eyes for decades. sometimes it is taken and never given back. i think that’s just life. most nights i still miss him. missing. miss-ing. that doesn’t mean i want it back. i want you to bite my lips until they bleed. i should know how to ease what has already happened, but i don’t. i wish i was in love right now. i wish i was sure that was the truth. i am too distracted by the tragedies of every blue within green. i still cant sleep on his side of the bed. i want her to be able to hold me without flinching. do you remember the night you fell asleep in my passenger seat and i fell in love with your skin bathed in brake lights? me neither. my best friend called me selfish. i’m beginning to believe her. does my crumbling fascinate you? the world is too loud. i don’t belong here. i am alone. i am dying. crash the car. do not resuscitate. please help me.

i am becoming whole with a cause and he made me believe that there was a reason for everything. i met him in this life, two weeks after i couldn’t fasten the rope in my basement, two desks to the left, one back. quiet boy with soft smile, head down, leg tapping. picture me one desk up, two desks to the right unknowingly sitting metres away from the truest human being i would experience thus far. the human being who would introduce me to new genres of music, run through sprinklers with me, sit talking for hours smoking full packs of cigarettes, walk through forests, introduce me to genuinely hilarious people and help me experience the true beauty of not being okay. the human being jealous of music and the broken people that made it. the boy like his father; or so he tells me every time he’s drunk. stop looking in the mirror, trying to find darkness where there is none. light another cigarette, we’re all going to die someday. drown in your own self hatred, the water’s warmer in the deep end and i’ll help you keep your head above the water if you promise to float beside me when the sun rises again. once he said he’d **** himself in every universe he experiences without me and yes maybe so but even with me in his universe i wonder if he means it when he agrees that we should stay. i hope he stays. sweaty-palmed handshakes, aching and aching he is as soft as the skin beside his eyes when he smiles. why try to act so sharp edged when your heart is made from all things gentle? passionately broken record boy, repeating the same things over and over again under the influence with undertones of love for others. the love he’s unable to show towards himself. i see the way his shoulders curve downwards on the worst days, trying to make himself smaller to fit inside some new definition of “lovable”. the only person to ever tell me i was easy to love and prove it. i don’t know if i’ve ever thanked him for that. passionately broken record boy, appreciating my art and leaving me to wonder if the words we’ve shared after midnight had the same effect on his heartbeats as they have had on mine. sometimes he looks at me innocently but not so innocently because i’m sure he’s held my gaze long enough to see everything i’ve been hiding. i’m never really sure if he’s joking or not. about life and love and wanting to die. i want to tell him i love him in the way i love every person i’ve ever lost, like i sleep with my shoes on in case there comes a night i have to chase after him. he is the sum of everyone he has ever loved minus the drug addictions and prostitutes and stab wounds. it scares me that despite cold skin his presence keeps me warm and i am warm, i am warm, i am warm. i have never felt so warm and secure and void of anxiety within a friendship before and maybe him entering my life as carelessly and beautifully as he did was one of the reasons for everything. i genuinely believe it was.

passionately broken record boy. i didn’t meet him in the past life, two weeks after i fastened the rope in my basement, two desks to the left, one back. quiet boy with soft smile, head down, leg tapping. picture an empty chair. one desk up, two desks to the right, never having the chance to know the truest human being i would’ve experienced thus far. an empty space of a person he knew of but never knew.

but in this life i did have the chance. i got to know HIM, not just a tragic biography. not just a tragic suicide told enthusiastically by those who ached to follow. i knew him. i know him. five months after i couldn’t fasten the rope in my basement we were staring into the stars in comfortable silence and i finally believed that there was a reason for everything. i am becoming whole with a cause and the cause is him.

the sun is shining and i think its time to let go.

the sun still shone when they told me that I was the most miserable person they’ve ever met. held how i thought about death at least 17 times a day against me, told me again and again about how many people I’ve ruined when most days I’m so anxious i can’t get out of bed… have you ever thought to wonder why some people preach so avidly about appreciating happiness as it comes? i suppose i cry better at bus stops than in front of my friends because i want people to think I’m doing well. i want to give people happiness and hope and one less thing to worry about because nobody deserves to feel the way i feel. nobody deserves to look in the mirror and feel disappointment towards the face staring back at them. i don’t want anybody to live like that with this perpetual lump in their throats this perpetual anxiety while bleaching blood stains from bathroom floors and pouring a shot for themselves afterwards. i just want to be something good.

the sun still shone while I’ve lived my whole life with my hands pressed underneath my legs to stop them from shaking, googling the price of child-sized coffins because when i die i want to commemorate the last time my mother said she was proud of me. i will never be good at writing I will just be good at injecting honesty into trivial metaphors. safety pinning my heart to my sleeve has only ever resulted in bloodshed. so here i am, bleeding again for the sake of poetry, putting laughter in place of commas and postponing the emptying of my belly until after I’ve left the stage. trust me i’m trying to be good.

the sun still shone but i think my least favourite version of myself has been the one that bathed my skin in artificial light to convince those around me that i had finally become radiant. fluorescent bulbs have only ever made my acne worse and triggered the overwhelming ache to burn off the skin I’ve been trying to crawl out of for years because i used to hurt people for no ******* reason. i would hurt them then play the victim because i knew there was a difference between drowning and allowing yourself to sink. I’ve only ever known inhalation when submerged in the ocean. i still just want to be something good.

the sun still shone when i skipped class for 4 weeks and came back on the 5th because its never too late. i want to become something good i know someday i will be, but first i need to be me. my palms are beginning to heal from everything ive held on to for too long. i am beginning to heal. and this time when i drop the mask, it won’t end in a relapse. i think it’s time to let go. its time to let go of the past and fluorescent lights and yellow sweaters, it’s warmer now anyways and i am me.

i am me in all of my sadness and illness and rage. i am me through every attempt I’ve taken at opening my veins to the sky, through every absolution I’ve granted unto people that called me a monster. i am me in my ugliness and unevenness and headassery i am me in all of my beauty and resilience and survival, kissing my past good bye with red lipstick because despite everything the sun has always shone and will always shine. in becoming myself, i am becoming something good.

i’m done hiding my face behind ripped notebook pages and the sun still shines. the sun is shining now and for the first time in 17 years i am beginning to feel it.