memory is not a photograph,
not a keepsake tucked in the back of a drawer.
it is water against stone,
wearing away, reshaping,
turning sharp edges into something smooth,
something unrecognizable.
i do not trust it.
it lies in soft whispers,
changing names, shifting colors,
blurring what was sharp, sharpening what was dull,
twisting the past into something that never was.
but forgetting is no mercy either.
i try to let go,
but memory is a house i still live in,
one with doors that do not lock,
windows that do not shut,
ghosts that refuse to move on.
every corner of this house is haunted,
rewritten and forever rearranged,
like when you called me beautiful,
and i had tears in my eyes,
you kept saying it and i didn’t believe it,
or did that even happen at all?
so i stay,
trapped between remembering and forgetting,
watching the walls crumble
as the echoes rewrite themselves.

i used to be a whole person,
but now fragments of me
are in living within
people i don’t call.

neat red lines
stacked in a column
on my upper thigh.
i remember how you
flinched
when you saw them.
it’s disgusting
but it’s me.

i slide the blade
s l o w l y
across my pale, soft skin.
it burns,
i don’t smile.
but it’s satisfying to watch
the blood pool in beads.
it hurts.
but it doesn’t hurt as much
as the pain i caused you today.
so i do it again.

summer with you
will be
forbidden meetings
and “tell me about your day.”
laughing in whispers,
loving in glances,
missing each other
endlessly and unforgivingly.

it will be
the ache of wanting more
and the sweetness of having enough.
murmurs of nothing across screens,
and talking in code,
listening to songs that only we understand.

it will be
the quiet promise
that we’ll stick together
in every way we know how.
new, different,
a little secret,
but still,
undeniably us.

julie is soft strength,
a quiet kind of knowing,
she says “i love you” like breathing,
and means it every time.

manda is a wildfire,
messy and loud and full of heart,
she will fight the world for you,
and never ask for thanks.

livie is my reflection,
stormy one second, laughing the next,
she understands me in a way
that doesn’t need explanation.

they hold pieces of me
i forgot i gave away,
tiny, stubborn fragments
i’d never find alone.

they are not the same.
they are not always gentle.
but they are mine.

and they are everything.

this has been the longest 47 hours of my life

summer took you away from me three years ago and i’m still trying to figure out how to fill my empty heart

why do some people feel so sad?
why am i one of those people?

i tried to make myself perfect for you
but love never bled the way i did