december 26 is the saddest day of the year.
the wrapping paper is gone, the songs have faded.
yesterday, the house was full of light,
but now it feels hollow,
like joy was something borrowed
and the owner came to collect.

it’s the inevitable comedown of christmas.
a year stretches out before you,
but you know it won’t be the same.
the world moves on,
the magic grows thinner,
and you’re left holding memories
that feel heavier than the wait.

she saved me once,
when the world was too heavy,
when the summer stretched too long,
and i was ready to end it all.
she pulled me back,
her hand steady, her words soft,
and i clung to her like a lifeline.

but lifelines fray,
and so did she.
with every lie,
every whispered knife in my back,
she unraveled what we had.
i forgave her—again and again—
because i thought love was stronger than pain.

yet now i see,
she has woven herself into my heart,
into the things that make me whole,
and cutting her free
feels like tearing pieces of myself away.

how do you save yourself
from someone who once saved you?
how do you walk away
from the place where love and hurt
are tangled so tightly
you can’t tell them apart?

still, i know:
this isn’t living.
and if i stay,
i may not live at all.

he tilts his head back when he laughs,
like joy is something he trusts will catch him.
he moves like music.
fluid, unbothered,
as if the world bends a little to let him through.

he talks with his hands,
but listens with his whole heart.
he remembers small things
like my favorite songs,
what makes me happy,
what time i usually start to spiral.

he’s the kind of boy who says “i miss you”
in between ordinary moments,
not afraid to feel with his whole heart,
and doesn’t shy away from mine either.

he works harder than anyone i’ve ever known.
he dresses his achievements
up as failures,
but he knows i see through it.

he’s gentle with people,
even when they’re not gentle with him.
he thinks too much,
but it’s only because he cares too much.

he believes he’s a mess.
i believe he’s a miracle.

and when he tells me he loves me,
it sounds like a promise
he made to himself
long before he met me.

something about me—
i am full of love,
though it spills unevenly,
pooling in places
that were never meant to hold it.

i am not an optimist,
but i will always cradle someone’s pain,
even when my arms shake,
even when my chest cracks open
to make room for the weight of it.

i forgive easily,
though my memory is stubborn,
carving scars where kindness once rested.
it gets hard—
so hard—
when my love is unreturned,
when it is a whisper in a storm,
or a hand reaching for nothing.

but i will always stay,
always say,
“be who you are,
even if it costs me
a piece of myself.”

i feel things deeply—
every joy, every wound—
and i carry them,
because being human
is not just surviving the hurt
but finding the strength
to keep loving anyway.

we didn’t start as friends—
you were too much like me,
a mirror i didn’t want to face.
but somewhere between second grade
and the secret worlds we built,
you became the only person
i never had to explain myself to.

years passed like waves;
distance came with the tide.
i found new circles,
but no one else could hold
the weight of my childhood
the way you do.

you’re my always.
the friend who never leaves,
even when we don’t speak for weeks.
our unspeakable vow,
etched in the laughter of simpler days.
and when the world feels too much,
it’s you i find waiting,
like a light i’ll never lose.

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.

it’s harder to exist when you feel like you’re just floating.
i tell myself i’m fine, but i’m not.
i’m tired of pretending i’m whole
when i’ve left pieces of myself
scattered in the people i loved
and now i can’t find them anymore.

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.

she said we need to “promote awareness”
like that’s a magic spell
like i haven’t been painfully aware
of every breath, every failure,
every thought that eats me alive
before breakfast.

i sat there,
stiff on a couch
that wasn’t soft enough
to pretend it cared.
i smiled politely,
like i didn’t already know
what was broken.

i used to feel happy most of the time,
with sadness just passing through,
but now it feels like sadness stays,
happiness, a rare guest.

in daylight, i can manage,
i push through, i wear a smile,
but when night comes, it gets harder,
and i feel alone with this weight.

i don’t know how to tell them,
this shift, this sadness i carry,
i wish i didn’t feel this way,
but i do, and i don’t know how to share it.

i told her,
“it’s not an eating disorder,
it’s just how i feel.”

but how do i explain
the emptiness that fills me
when i skip a meal,
or the way my stomach twists
like it knows i haven’t earned the right
to be full?

i told her,
“it’s just how i feel,”
but deep down,
i wonder if feelings
can ruin you too.

i wish i would just die already

this boy gave me tic tacs in fourth grade,
his kindness was small and orange,
wrapped in a plastic rattle
i thought might mean something more.
he was every girl’s daydream,
but i didn’t mind sharing back then.

this boy was eighth grade’s laugh track,
a joke always waiting in the wings.
i thought i could keep him smiling forever,
even as i knew his heart wasn’t looking for mine.
still, i wanted to try.

this boy was tenth grade’s lesson in heartbreak.
he saw my body before he saw me,
his words cutting deeper than i knew words could.
i thought love meant shrinking
until there was less of me to hurt.

this boy was the maybe that never was.
he was so funny, so magnetic—
so not mine.
i watched him from the sidelines,
a story unwritten because
it already had a leading lady.

this boy was the almost that still stings.
we talked until my heart felt full,
until i thought i’d finally found the one
who might see all of me.
but some stories unravel
before you can tie them together.

this boy is now,
and now feels good.
it feels like laughter and warmth,
like someone who chooses me
without hesitation,
without conditions.
i don’t know how this story ends,
but for the first time,
i’m not afraid to turn the page.

you say you’re too much,
like love is a burden i wasn’t ready to carry.
but i knew what i was doing
when i reached out both those times.

you might unravel some days,
and i won’t flinch.
i won’t fold.
i will gather the thread,
and hold it gently against my heart,
until you can breathe again.

you worry you’re broken,
but i’ve never asked for perfection.
i never needed easy.
i only wanted real.
and you,
in all your aching,
your effort,
your heart that still tries,
you are the most real thing i’ve ever had.

i don’t want someone simpler.
i don’t want someone “less.”
i just want you.

every tangled thought.
every quiet panic.
every soft smile that fights its way through the dark.

i didn’t stumble into this,
i chose you.
on purpose.
and i will choose you again
every time the world asks me to prove it.

it must be nice to be a tree,
roots grounded, branches free.
no storms to fear, no choice to sway,
standing tall, come what may.

or maybe like the river’s flow,
carving paths where it will go,
unchallenged in its steady course,
untouched by unfamiliar force.

to walk through life with quiet ease,
a steady wind, an endless breeze.
it must be nice, i sometimes think,
to hold the earth and never sink.

i write, because i’m not sure who else to be.
i’m 16, but the weight of this world—
it feels heavier than it should be,
like a heart that’s growing old
before it even learns how to beat right.

i don’t feel enough.
not good enough, not strong enough,
not worthy of love, or kindness,
or the friendships i hold so tight
because i’m terrified to let go
even though the grip hurts.

it’s harder to exist when you feel like you’re just floating.
i tell myself i’m fine, but i’m not.
i’m tired of pretending i’m whole
when i’ve left pieces of myself
scattered in the people i loved
and now i can’t find them anymore.

i know, i should be better at letting go.
but how do you stop holding on
to the one person who once made you feel alive
when they’re the same one who now brings you to your knees?

they say time heals everything,
but i think time just buries things deeper.
i bury my emotions in my poetry,
where no one can see the cracks,
where i can pretend
i’m not drowning in my own words.

i’m learning to forgive,
but i still don’t know how to forget.
i give so much,
but it feels like no one gives enough back,
and i wonder if they can ever love me
the way i love them.

i’ve pushed people away
because i’m scared of them leaving first.
i’ve hurt others
because i didn’t know how to handle the mess inside me.
i’ve told lies to protect my heart
and made promises i can’t keep.
but i keep trying to make them feel heard
even when i’m screaming for someone to hear me.

i’m not perfect,
and i don’t expect anyone else to be either.
but how do i find peace in a world
where i’m always trying to make sense of things
that don’t make sense?

i want to be seen,
but not for who i think i am,
but for who i could be.
if i could be free,
if i could just be me,
i’d show you all the pieces i’ve been hiding,
the ones i thought were too broken to share.

but for now, i’ll write
and hope you hear me through these words.
i’ll hold on to the ones who love me
the way i want to be loved
and keep searching for the strength
to let go of the ones who won’t.

maybe one day i’ll find my place.
but until then, i’ll keep writing,
because it’s the only thing
that makes me feel whole.

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.

i used to love this,
the way it made my heart hum,
the way it pulled the light from shadows
and turned the world gold.

but now, it feels like a weight,
not because it changed,
but because they did.
their words are needles,
their glances, razors.
i’m unraveling, thread by thread.

i cry in corners no one sees,
choking on the bitterness of it all.
they took something pure,
something mine,
and turned it into a battlefield
i’m too tired to fight in.

i want to walk away,
but my feet are rooted in the soil of before,
when it still felt like home,
when it was still love.
am i strong enough to let go?
or will i let them steal it all?

i wish someone would say
“lizie, don’t cut yourself anymore,”
and they’d want to say
“don’t hurt yourself,”
but what they should actually say is
“every time you carve your skin
you hurt everyone you love.
your family,
friends,
mom, dad, sisters.”
except actually,
my family cares,
but my friends haven’t reached out
since i told them i was sick.
but i think this would help.
this is what i wish.

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 still remember the first time.
i was fourteen.
things were starting to break.
friends turning distant,
the girls who used to carry me
now looking the other way.

i grabbed a pair of kids’ scissors.
they were blue.
my cheeks were soaked with tears.
i had never done this before,
but i had heard about it.

i put the blade to my wrist.
it hurt.
a lot.
but i did it again.
and again.

we made up the next day.
everything seemed okay again.
but i didn’t stop.
i liked the sting,
going to school with it still burning.

blue scissors turned into
pocket knives,
kitchen knives,
blades from pencil sharpeners.
i cried when nothing came out.

and later,
when my whole arm went numb,
i didn’t stop.
i think i liked that, too.
i don’t know why.

i still have the blue scissors.

i hold my tongue, i bite my words
afraid they’ll echo, loud and absurd
opening up feels selfish, unkind
like stealing space in someone’s mind

yet you wait there, patient and still
no judgment cast, no force of will
you make it easy to let it pour
to speak the truths i lock in war

i don’t deserve the ease you bring
to air my pain, my guilt, my sting
but here i am, unguarded and free
a fragile soul you choose to see

i don’t blame you
for not reading the things i write.
you’ve made a boundary,
clear, kind,
and i’ll tried my best to honor it.

but still,
sometimes i wish
you could see how often
your name falls between the lines
when i don’t mean for it to.

not out of obsession,
not because i’m holding on,
but because love like that
doesn’t vanish,
it lingers in the ink.

and if you ever do read them,
if the words ever find their way to you,
i hope they don’t feel like a betrayal.
i hope they just feel like
truth.

there’s not much longer, i hope,
before the sky stops feeling too big,
before vacation doesn’t sound so far,
before missing you stops echoing.

there’s not much longer, i hope,
before the waiting softens a little,
before i stop checking my phone
just to see if you thought of me.

there’s not much longer, i hope,
until we go back to our little world,
the stolen minutes, the quiet updates,
the kind of love that hides in plain sight.

there’s not much longer, i hope,
and even if there is,
i’ll still be here, counting minutes,
and loving you through the distance.

im fighting a battle im destined to lose
this fight was never mine to win
next **** up, and im dead
but it’ll be by my own hands