grief was sharp when i lost her,
a knife that cut clean.
it hurt, but at least i knew why.
now the sadness has no name,
just a weight i can’t put down,
a dull ache that never leaves,
a quiet kind of drowning.
i don’t know what’s worse,
the pain that made me cry
or the emptiness that won’t let me feel.

i used to need you like air,
sneaking away just to see your name light up my screen.
now i sit in the same room, same noise, same routine,
but without you, there’s nothing to run to.
instead, the cuts burn beneath my sweats,
a different kind of craving,
a different kind of absence.
i don’t reach for my phone anymore,
just press my hands to my legs and wait for it to pass.

my heart hurts
i can feel it in my chest

i build walls,
thick and tall,
afraid of what might slip through,
afraid of what i might feel.

he touches the bricks,
his fingers gentle,
but i flinch,
afraid of the weight of love,
the pressure of it all.

i want to let him in,
but fear wraps its arms around me,
its grip so tight i can’t breathe.
how can i ask for something
i don’t know how to give?

still, i whisper the truth,
just a crack in the wall,
hoping he’ll hear me,
hoping he’ll understand
that i’m trying,
even when i can’t be all of me.

somehow i knew
i was going to fall in love with you
even years before i did

everything between us
has always felt different
like every smile you give to me is sacred

i first felt it when i saw
the way your eyes shined in the sun
bright and full of promise

i knew it before i could admit it
before love had a name
and it was yours

valentine’s day came and went,
but i barely noticed—
too busy drowning in a loneliness
i can’t even name.

i sit in classrooms where futures are mapped
like road trips with no tolls, no dead ends,
just open highways and endless signs
pointing to anywhere but here.
but my world is smaller,
a pin on the map i cannot pull up,
a radius i cannot expand.
they speak of choices like air,
like water, like something everyone drinks,
but i sip scarcity,
i taste limits on my tongue.
my acceptance letter won’t be a ticket,
no plane, no train, no fresh start—
just a short drive down roads i’ve always known,
to a school that chose me
simply because i had no choice at all.

i am trying to be okay.
i am trying to be anything but this.
but my hands shake, my mind spins,
and i wonder if i was ever whole to begin with.

i wonder if he knows that im at the lowest ive ever been






i wish he still cared

i carve myself down to the bone…

i can’t stop it…

help…

i want someone to see through my mask,
to catch the lie when i say it,
to notice the way my hands shake
when i say i’m fine.

i want someone to look past the smile,
past the jokes, past the easy nods,
to press just hard enough
that i have no choice but to break.

because i think i need to.
because i think i want to.
because i don’t know how to ask.

i cut up my leg today
thinking no one would see
thinking swim was over
thinking i was safe
but tomorrow
i’ll stand by the pool
water reflecting back at me
and i’ll wonder if they’ll notice
the way regret looks like red lines
against my skin

im here now
im not in the past
im here now
im not in the past
im here now
im not in the past
im here now
im not in the past
im here now
im not in the past
im here now
im not in the past
im here now
im not in the past
im here now
im not in the past
im here now
im not in the past
im here now
im not in the past
im here now
im not in the past
im here now
im not in the past
im here now
im not in the past
im here now
im not in the past
im here now
im not in the past
im here now
im not in the past
im here now
im not in the past
im here now
im not in the past
im here now
im not in the past
im here now
im not in the past
im here now
im not in the past
im here now
im not in the past
im here now
im not in the past
im here now
im not in the past
im here now
im not in the past
im here now
im not in the past
im here now
im not in the past
im here now
im not in the past
im here now
im not in the past
im here now
im not in the past
im here now
im not in the past
im here now
im not in the past

answer me this:
am i doing a good job
pretending i’m not
hopelessly in love with you?

do i smile at the right moments,
laugh at the right jokes,
look away just enough
to seem indifferent?

do i say his name
like it means something,
like it isn’t just
a placeholder for yours?

i don’t mean for it to happen,
but every poem i write is yours.
whether you read them or not,
whether you care or not,
whether you even think of me.

he is just him—
a mention, a fact, a presence.
but you—
you are in every line,
every unfinished thought,
every word i never meant to say
but somehow always do.

i don’t love him, not really.
but i like him a lot.

i don’t like you, not at all.
sometimes, i think i hate you.

but somehow
i still love you.

it’s weird

i’m trying so hard to be okay

it’s killing me to know
we will never have what we used to.
nothing will ever be the same again.
no more late-night conversations,
no endless support,
no hopeless love—
at least, not with you.

maybe it’s for the best.
there was pain tangled in you,
and i didn’t care then.
i guess i should now.

but still, the need lingers—
to tell you this,
to share, to overshare,
the way we used to.
but things are different now.
would it be wrong to say it?
would it even matter?

it feels pathetic,
writing this like i lost you,
like you were ever mine to lose.
but it still feels like heartbreak,
even though your heart
was never in it like mine was.

i think i was your priority once.
oh, how times have changed.
and sometimes, i wish i could go back—
i was sad, lonely, drowning,
but i had you.
it might have been enough for me,
but it was never enough for you.

now i try to replicate what we had,
but nothing ever fits.
it still stings when you joke
about how your friends think we’re dating,
because maybe we could have been.
but we weren’t.

i don’t love you.
but i used to.
and i don’t love you anymore—
but i wish i did.

if you ask me how i am,
i will repeat, reuse, recycle
the same phrase over and over,
slipping from my tongue
like it was the truth.

“i’m good.”
on occasion, “i’m tired.”
sometimes, “i’m happy.”
but never, “i’m sad.”

the lie is engraved, imprinted, etched,
so when someone asks,
“i’m good” comes easy—
because why would i be sad
if my life is perfect,
ideal, flawless?

but then i remember—
when you’re drowning,
it doesn’t matter if it’s ten feet or twenty.
the bottom line is,
you’re still drowning.

so maybe next time,
instead of “i’m good,”
i’ll tell the truth.
because when you’re drowning,
someone might save you.

the next secret i don’t dare say out loud:
sometimes i see a woman
and wonder if i’ve been wrong all along.

i love him, i do,
but then why does she make me question everything?

maybe it’s nothing.
maybe it’s everything.
i don’t know.
i don’t know.

a secret im too scared to share with anyone
except random strangers on the internet:
i wish i had an eating disorder.
i would be sad
but at least i’d be skinny.

im sorry.
i really am.

i don’t know what i’m supposed to do
with a body that doesn’t feel like mine,
always too much, always too little,
but never just right.

i cut away pieces of myself
yet i’m still too much.
it feels wrong, always wrong.
i look and see nothing but flaws
clinging to my skin like it’s suffocating,
i hate it for just existing.

i look at my reflection and feel disgusting,
a canvas of mistakes
that i can’t seem to wipe away,
no matter how hard i try.

i don’t write about it.
the music, the endless rehearsals,
the way the saxophone feels in my hands
like it’s breathing with me.
i don’t write about the late nights,
the competitions, the friendships forged
in the chaos of scales and solos.
instead, i let it live in the spaces
between my words,
where the sound lingers,
but i never let it spill onto the page.

maybe it’s because i’m scared.
scared i’ll sound like a nerd,
or that you will underestimate my potential,
or maybe that the music i love
will turn into something
i have to explain.
so i leave it unspoken,
a quiet symphony only i hear,
never written,
never shared.

i think i’m over it now.
not because i’ve stopped missing you,
but because i’ve learned how to carry it,
how to let the weight settle without sinking.

you are still there, in my dark, lonely moments,
in the way i am forever changed,
in the way i almost reach for my phone
before remembering there’s nothing left to say.

maybe i’ll always miss you,
but i think i can live with that.

this is really hard to talk about.

i think there’s something
wrong
with me.

i’m afraid to be intimate with him.

the smell of his cologne
makes me
nauseous
because it reminds me
of things i’m ashamed of.  

most of my
innocence
is still intact.

but that doesn’t mean
that one day i won’t be
strong
enough to say
no.

but i love him.

no
i do not
forgive you.

but please reach out.

i always know it’s getting bad
when i start chewing on the tie of my sweatshirt.
i think it’s called an
aglet,
but all i know is,
it’s fraying like
me.

what it was like to be loved by you
was like knowing the sun would set,
but still staying out longer than i should,
basking in the warmth while i had it.
i treasured every moment,
even when the end was always there,
just beyond the horizon.
i knew it would fade,
but that didn’t stop me from wishing,
hoping it would never end.

in those quiet moments,
when it was just us,
i felt seen, truly seen,
like all the parts of me that were hidden
could finally breathe.
but in that light, i began to believe
i had to be something more,
to become someone else.
and so i did,
in ways that hurt,
really hurt,
just to feel like i deserved you.

there’s something almost bittersweet
about knowing that this love will fade,
but holding onto it even more,
praying it wouldn’t end,
never end.

seventeen feels like a standing in a doorway,
too old to go, too young to stay.
it’s realizing you’re easier to reach than you thought,
but still, no one does.

seventeen feels like the silence that comes after sending a text,
but never getting a response.
like looking across the room,
only to meet his disgusted gaze.

seventeen feels like things are getting serious now
but you’re not ready to accept that.
it’s the ache of knowing you’ve outgrown this place
but you’re simply not ready to let it go.

seventeen feels like boys that love me
but they wouldn’t if they knew me at all.
loving one that’s only falling apart,
who took a piece of me with him when he left.

seventeen feels like knowing you’ll miss this,
but not being quite sure why you would.

is this what growing up is like?
losing a piece of myself,
over and over?
because if so,
i don’t want to anymore.

i wish i could feel it
the ache of not being enough
the way it once cracked me open

but now
there’s only silence
an emptiness where sorrow should live

nothing breaking

nothing healing

just

n u m b n e s s

still

today i realized
how easily i can be manipulated
and still
i let it happen

how could anyone love an eliza
when it stumbles off my tongue
like it doesn’t belong to me?

i’m easy to hold,
but impossible to reach

i can’t believe how easy you made it to forget me

shoveling the snow at 10 tonight,
because your parents aren’t home,
and i guess that’s what you do
when you’re 17.

you turn your back,
feel the sharp betrayal
of a snowball,
barreling from your sister’s hands.

grabbing the sleds,
saying just once.
is that what you do when you’re 17?
or am i still a child?

you walk the neighborhood.
the cold bites, exhilarating.
but the snow feels heavier somehow,
emphasizing the absence
of something you can’t name.

i remember the sweet honeysuckle days
when they would ask me
what i wanted to be when i grew up,
and i would say,
with the confidence only innocence provides,
“an author.”

i can’t say that i haven’t held on
to that youthful desire—
no, it lingers in the back of my mind,
a dream that glows dimmer with every year.

but as i’ve grown older,
as life has gotten less colorful
and my words feel like shadows
of what they used to be,
i’ve realized that some dreams
are better left as dreams.

perhaps it isn’t meant to be—
perhaps i was only ever meant to write
for myself,
to weave a world where no one else
has to live but me.

am i a poet?
because lately, i don’t think so.
no longer do i have the strength
to write more than a couple lines.
all i feel is despair,
and the desperate need to be alive again.
am i even a poet?
maybe i’m not.
maybe i’m just someone
who writes down their pain
and calls it art.

i could fill a library full of novels about you

all this anger and all this sorrow
used to be love

it used to be laughter
and late-night texts
the kind of thing
we swore will never fade

but now, it’s a weight
i carry alone
all the silence
every moment i wish i could take back

what do you do
when something so beautiful
turns into this?

tonight is my last night being 16,
and the air feels heavy,
like it knows what i’m leaving behind.
i would pay everything i have,
every dollar, every secret,
every scar,
just to go back.
back to scraped knees instead of broken hearts,
to believing every birthday was magic,
to running without wondering
where i was going.
but time is cruel,
and childhood is a price you can’t refund.

you said you didn’t understand me
because you can’t think of a reason i should be sad for.
how do i explain depression
to someone who only knows sunlight,
whose heart has never grown heavy with rain,
who has never felt the weight of nothing at all?

you can’t understand,
because you’ve never fought your own mind,
never tried to build joy
from the rubble of yourself.
how do i explain?
i don’t.

i am breaking down,
a flood behind my eyes,
a weight i cannot carry,
a silence i can’t disguise.

the walls feel too close,
my thoughts too loud—
a scream that no one hears
in a room without a crowd.

this is the end.
this is all there is.