under the pink lemonade sky i left you.
not really, because you left me first,
but i left your memory there.
in the summer twilight i left you.
i left you for vast skies and glorious people
and pink lemonade sunsets.
under the pink lemonade skies i left you,
and under the pink lemonade skies i ran head-on into myself.

listen.
i haven't fallen out of love with you yet,
and i miss you all the time
and i want you so much i can't even make myself breathe.
but i am exhausted.
i am exhausted with not having you.
i am exhausted with the back-and-forth i've been having with my heart.
i am exhausted and i am done.
twenty four hours ago i was planning out something to say to you.
i thought i was going to sit down with you and tell you.
i was going to tell you,
"i want you to know
that wherever you are
and whoever you're with
there is someone
here
who loves you
and who thinks you are special beyond belief,
and who believes in everything that you are."
i was going to tell you,
"think about it."
i was going to tell you,
"i hope that you'll love me back, someday,"
i was going to tell you,
"i don't expect it to be
soon.
but it's important that you know."
that was how i felt twenty four hours ago.
now, though,
i feel angry and disenchanted
and i feel exhausted.
i realize, now
that if you and i were to be you and i again
i need to be stronger
and you need to be the person you're going to be,
because i love you limitlessly,
in ways that, even if i fall in love with someone else, will not go away,
but the person that you are now?
i cannot stand.
the part of your life where you can't love me,
it isn't over yet,
and i'm not willing to feel small
and insecure
and second-best
again.
when we're the people we're going to be,
that's when i'll love you.
that's when i'll try.
i'm not willing to deal with who you are right now.
right now you are a boy
who thinks he is larger than life,
who thinks that his cheap beer and his horrible friends make him alive,
who thinks he is above accountability,
above vulnerability,
above love.
right now you are in a post-high school haze,
and right now you are on top of the world.
and because i'm me and i can't help it i'll love you
and i'll think the things you do are forgivable
and i'll think the friends you keep are forgivable, too.
but because i'm me and i can help it i'll love other people, too
and i'll allow myself to be as free and as beautiful and as strong as i can be.
i'll allow myself to forget you a little bit and it will hurt, yes,
and i will fail, sometimes, yes,
but it will make me who i am going to be.
it will make me someone who is readier to love you
than the me who already has.
i will take a year.
i will leave the country,
i will live and drink and love,
i will smoke and laugh and embrace all of life that i can hold.
i will think i'm invincible,
i will write fearless stories and sing fearless songs,
i will write fierce poetry and make beautiful art.
and at the end of it all when i am where you are now,
when my life is ahead of me and i have learned more of myself,
when you have grown and lived
and when you have gotten college out of your system,
then i'll see.
i'll look at myself and i'll see if i do love you after all.
i'll look at myself and i'll know
that all the things i did didn't matter because they weren't with you,
or i'll know that i don't need you to live after all.
i will love you or i won't and i'll tell you either way.
corey, listen.
you changed my life,
and i've come to realize that i have a difficult time living without you.
but you made me small,
you made me afraid,
you made me weak.
i let you have all the power i had to give,
and you didn't mean to abuse it, i know.
you probably didn't even know
you had it.
i wasn't oblivious to loving you more,
to needing you more,
to expecting more of you.
i wasn't oblivious to your growing indifference,
but i think the ways we ended were wrong.
i think we have the potential to be more.
i think, sometimes, that our hearts are too much the same for us to be apart.
but i cannot want you anymore.
i want to learn, again,
to be confident, loud, fearless, and brave.
when i have relearned myself,
when you have changed,
when we are slightly different -
more mature,
more selfless,
more wise -
we will know.
when i have learned to love you without fear,
to open myself without expectation,
to trust things better,
we will know.
but i'm not going to try until then.
what i'm telling you is that even though you may not have known
that i was even holding on,
i'm letting you go now.
i'm releasing myself from you.
because i love you, ******* it,
i love you like you wouldn't believe.
but there are things about you that i cannot stand right now,
and i'm not willing to try.
you're an *******, corey,
and you're stubborn and self-centered and stupid,
and those are all things we have in common.
you're just a tool, i don't know how else to say it.
it's the least poetic thing i've ever put in a poem.
and your friends ****,
and frankly you ****,
and the things that have happened in the last twenty-four hours
make me disappointed and disgusted with you,
because i would like to think,
and i do think,
that you are so much more than any of that,
any of them,
and you are.
but you're not someone who acts like it, right now,
and that's okay,
but it keeps me from wanting to try.
not that you care,
not that you want me to try anyway,
not that you would probably even love me back, if you knew that i loved you.
listen.
i mean every single thing i've said here.
i've said it all,
i've let it out.
i'm taking a year for me,
for flings, for ****-ups, for whatever.
i want you to know that.
i want you to know that i still believe,
maybe naively,
that you and me could be more than what we were.
i want you to think about all of this sometimes.
i want you to keep reading my poems
and to read that letter i wrote you,
and to remember that you are missed, loved, and wanted,
but also to know that i am freeing myself.

we can't speak now without arguing
because we are both too stubborn,
too self-righteous,
and too smart to back down from each other.
together we are a trainwreck.
we don't work,
we are polar and dangerous.
we **** each other off
and it isn't even malicious.
it's just our wiring, our too-similar similarities
and our too-wide differences.
it hurts
and it's certainly worse than the alternative.

not very long ago i thought i was going to say to you,
"i love you."
i thought i would say,
"i want you,
and i hope you want me too,"
and i thought that maybe it was what i wanted.
but where has the innocence gone,
and where is the love?
and when did i stop needing you,
and more importantly when did i start again?
and then not very long ago
i was filled with the kind of anger and disgust
i'd forgotten i could feel for you.
it took the words and the breath right out of me.
i'd forgotten that part of loving you,
and all at once i remembered again.
it took the want and the respect right out of me
and it filled me with the deepest sadness.
a moment of short-sighted drunkenness,
it's not what i should remember about you.
it shouldn't consume the thousands of goodnesses i see in you
but it does.
a few hours ago i was in a place we shared once
and i ached for you so badly
and now, again, i am hollow.
you fill me up and you hollow me out
and i forgot that wanting you is exhausting,
but i remember now
and now, again, i am lost.
and i hope you ******* read this and i hope it ****** you off
and i hope it makes you think i'm immature or reactionary or naive
and i hope it makes you indignant or dismissive
and i hope you don't give a ****.
jesus, i hope it makes you think all sorts of terrible things about me,
i really do.
i hope it makes you think i'm pathetic,
i hope you think it's unfair
because you're **** right, i hold you accountable,
because you're better than all of them put together
and you act like it one and a half times out of ten.
you disappoint me as often as not, now.
isn't that terrible?
i used to think the sun rose on you,
i used to think it set on you,
i used to think you were everything in between.
not very long ago i was going to tell you.
i was going to sit you down and say it all to you
i was going to speak until i'd done everything i could do,
but now
i'd really rather not even look at you.
maybe i'll love you again
and i will again allow myself to be filled by you,
to feel all the things in the world for you,
to burst with love and with pain,
but tonight you hollowed me.
you left me shocked and sick and numb tonight,
angry and disgusted.
tonight you exhausted all the light i put to you,
you burned all the love,
burned it and scattered the ashes,
and you saved me from putting it back together again.
it's over now.