as our late night phone talks come to a pause
i study your heart beat
right up against your wall.
you said i made beautiful things with my lips
and i wondered how much more beautiful i could make you
but the answer to that was impossible.
i smiled my dim smile and went on with the conversation
as if we were two strangers
who just met up at the wrong place
at the right time.
we talked about our urges to leave this small town,
and you called me beautiful.
i didn't want to fall for you
but you had a different hues of blue in your eyes,
and i wanted to stay on the phone forever.

i remember the first time i saw you,
standing there like a lost soul waiting
to be found
or saved.
i remember watching you behind the walls i built up.
one day we starred at each other, for what seemed like hours but was only seconds, i could tell you were hurting in the same ways as me.
and that’s when i wanted to fix you more than i’ve ever wanted to fix anything.

they say you must feel what you write,
but i can't feel anything anymore.
and all i can hear is your laugh and your abscence replaying in my head,
the closest i will ever be to you is the time you got the flu and both of us
were crying in the closet because the world wasn't what we wanted it to be.
oh how i miss you and your smile.
because you never had to teach me how to survive i learned to cut
open my palms and hold you in my wounds just to keep you warm.
i never got the chance to say "i love you" back because i slammed the door so hard.
my knees fell to the ground because i knew what i did.
you left the closet and took all of the air with you.
i am in here suffocating
wondering where it all went wrong.

this boy is so hard to write about, he’s so different from the others;
he is boring
natural
typical
he isn’t you.
i want him to be you. i want him to be you so bad.
i miss us, i miss you, i miss your face, i miss your voice, i miss your warmth.
i cannot take my words and throw them to the ****** but i can sing them to the heavens,
i know God hears my one wish, that you will be mine again.
i am on my knees bleeding from my mouth, spitting up apologies and half-hearted hallelujahs, cracking my skull in half trying to be what you need.
love me, want me, choose me.
i am for you and you are for me.
why must this hurt so much? loving you shouldn’t cut me so deep, loving you shouldn’t keep me under the current, loving you should feel like fire in my veins and flowers in my ribcage
i crave a love so deep you could go for a swim in it, and maybe that’s my problem cause i only ever learned how to doggy paddle.
i’m screaming your name only you don’t hear me,
by the time the damage is done,
he is here taking care of me under his arms.
i imagine they are yours.

it's not that i don't love you. it's the sound i heard when i was 9 and my moms boyfriend slammed the front door so hard behind him i swear to god it made the whole house shake. for the next 2 years i watched my mother break her teeth on ***** bottles. i think she stopped breathing when he left. i think a part of her died. i think he took her heart with him when he walked out. her chest is empty, just a shattered mess of cracked ribs and depression pills.
it's not that i don't love you. it's all the blood in the sink. it's the night i spent 12 hours in the emergency room waiting to see if my sister was going to be okay, after a boy she loved , told her he didn't loved her anymore.  is the crying, and the fluorescent lights, and the white sneakers and pale faces and shaky breaths and blood.
so much blood.
it's not that i don't love you it's the time that i had to stay up for two days straight with my best friend while she cried and shrieked and threw up on my bedroom floor because her ex boyfriend ****** his ex.
i swear to god she still has tear streaks stained to her cheeks. i think when you love someone, it never really goes away. it's not that i don't love you. it's the six weeks we had a substitute in english because our teacher was getting divorced and couldn't handle getting out of bed. when she came back she was smiling. but her hands shook when so hard when she held her coffee, you could see that something was broken inside. and sometimes when things break you can't fix them. nothing ever goes back to how it was. i got an A in english that year. i think her head was always spinning too hard to read any essays. it's not that i don't love you. it's that i do.

we were drinking wine out of mason jars
and spinning records on the floor.

getting kicked out of our basement bedrooms for burning memories and starting fires.

we were young and leave each other every other week. you and i, we pass each other on the street.

you're in the car that almost hits me and honks instead of apologizing, but you get out and kiss
me after.

we stop traffic you know.
 as time progresses for everyone else but loops around and pauses for the two of us.

if the stars were to say we're a fatal combination
i'd say, **** the stars,

nobody speaks for the dead except the people speaking for God and what right did they have?

what cult do i have to join to get to heaven?

where do i sign my body away?

when i signed the papers to become an ***** donor my mother asked me if i was okay with somebody taking my eyes,

nobody sees with their eyes it is beneath them, they can take them.

you, you take what you need.

you put your hand in the cookie jar expecting to bite so you never know sugar but honey.

i am here.

in your waiting room

in your bookshelf

in your breath.

you’re dreaming of a better place.

i'm never leaving before you wake up.