Tell me I light the candle in your room that scares away the ghosts
and tell me my promises mean as much to you as the word of your father has.
Just tell me I am enough to keep you present
despite all that we're being forced to overcome.

I woke up this morning with a reminder
that the broken is hard to fix.
Tiny pearls spread across my sheets,
broken away from their unifying whole.
I held them and I cried.
They were not significant before,
they mattered less than most things.
But in that moment,
they were you and me
and nothing is more important than that.

We are not defined by skype or video calls
or text messages or distance
and I won't let those things change us
or the lack of those things.
I miss you like hell
and I love you like heaven
but that doesn't change the fact that
this gets ******* difficult
or the fact that I get mad over nothing.
I know we are different and I know
this is worth it.
I know we seem crazy, insane, even unrealistic.
But I don't care.
I love you I love you I love you.
It's worth it because I know that someday
you will find the birthmarks that cover my torso and the scars
that cover my hips
and I will find out the way your spine curves and how your
voice sounds when you get out of the shower
and the way your lips part.
These frantic wishes fill me up
and swallow me whole.
My love for you saves me and sinks me
but when I'm down at the bottom, I find you
have not left me.
Despite the number of texts we send in a day or the
number of times I hear your voice
I will love you.
I will love you more than I hate the miles.

And maybe we are all a little broken but that's okay because I know some people throw out their old broken things but others notice that they are broken and love them even more because they see the imperfections as beautiful. And there are others who look down at tiny little shattered pieces and get the glue and magnifying glass and get a table out they haven't seen in years and put all the pieces on it. And they sit down for hours and days putting it back together knowing that it will never be what everyone else sees as perfect again but it will be together and damaged but it will be loved. Because the first time it was created it was instantly whole and someone else thought it was good enough. But a lot of things are just good enough. Every single Hershey's kiss looks the same except for the ones labeled as mistakes. Those are less likely to occur. But if they turned out this way normally than we would consider our current norm abnormal. So then the normal would be abnormal and the abnormal would be normal. It's all perspective. So the guy who spent all that time fixing you thinks you're absurdly and absolutely perfect. Because he saw the broken bits that were your original as even better than the whole you started as. Some people just get a few cracks in shipping and some people want the discounted price. But you gotta find the ones who see scars as beauty marks. That's what it's all about. Perspective. We are like this because we aren't like everybody else. We have the abnormal make. We are the 3 am word fighters and the night riders. We are all the bad and the good and we speak in bittersweet tongues. Nobody can fix us because we aren't broken. We are disassembled and can build ourselves. We don't need anyone else's tool chest because we have one right below our rib cage. Our lungs are practically indestructible because they know just how sacred air can be. We are the strong because we've cried ourselves to sleep and thought that was normal. We are the ones who were told they were doing it wrong the first time they cut but were strong enough to realize that they were wrong and there is no right way to destroy yourself. We are the future. We are the pain. We are the daydreamers who know how brilliant the sky looks at 4:27 am east coast time in Atlanta. And just because we've thrown up in too many bathrooms and told too many family members we ate before we got there, that sure as hell doesn't mean we aren't craving life and have had too many heartaches for breakfast. We are the ones who rolled over in bed and realized that the boy was gone and that we would have to hug ourselves. My shoulders are strong from carrying the weight of the world. Our eyes think that floods are normal because that's all they have seen. I have lived my life walking along the train tracks trying to find a way to get home. All I have gotten is calluses on my feet and strangers dreams in my heart. We keep them there. We carry the letters of the broken hearted and deliver them to the lost. As we saved others we lost ourselves. And then we look up and see the stars and realize that there's this whole galaxy that we are. We are everyone's broken promises and expired wishes. We carry the spirits of the deceased and the never born. We hold on to the spirits of the people who changed. I've cried myself to sleep too many **** nights for one person so I know I am the embodied spirit of everyone who's never had a voice and everyone who has needed one. We are the ones who were pushed against a wall and didn't say no because we thought that was the only love we may ever get and didn't realize just how twisted it was to trust a boy who treated you like trash and to think his kisses were your anti depressants when they were your poison.  But then we wake up and push him off and say, "Boy, I don't need you. You were nothing but heartache and pain. You see these scars? Don't tell me to stop until you are there to take away the ******* blade. Do not tell me suicide is a joke because every single part of me has thought it was a blessing at one time or another. Do not ever touch me until the day you will not be repulsed by the blood or *****. Do not tell me you are not in to scars because that is all you have left on both my body and my heart."And we are the sad nights where the boy you just fell in love with leaves on a plane to go home to California. We are the tropical islands where we met the loves of our lives. I am the tears I shed on the balcony in the Bahamas the night I got so scared I may never see you again. I am the song I sang out to the tropical storm winds that night where I repeated, "love is not a victory march, it's a cold and it's a broken hallelujah." I am the same girl who pushed the tears off her cheeks after letting their significance sink in and put on her makeup to go out and fake a few smiles. We are the ones who take care of the drunk girl we just met even though the boy we love just left. We are the ones who love our fathers even though they’ve broken more than a few bones in their lifetime. We are the ones who have treasure chest souls where children hide their keepsakes so that in twenty five years they can tell the story of their discovery to a 6 year old little girl with huge green eyes. We are the freckles on the lonely girls shoulder that made a beautiful boy fall in love with her; yet she wishes she could erase them. And we are the long distance phone calls between broken lovers that last 1 hour and 6 minutes and deliver lost hopes and shattered promises. We are the weddings that unite two people who thought about stepping in front of buses just 8 years before. We are the ones who cried on bathroom floors thinking it was our fault but stopped when we thought someone would hear. We are those who never want to be seen as weak because we don't want anyone to figure out that we can't always hold it all together. We are the ones who are bones and flesh and have died because their souls and bodies were robbed of nutrients. We are the ones who bled out on the carpet and weren't found for days. We are the student deaths that never made the announcement and never got a commemorative tree. There is nothing beautiful about sadness. But there is something beautiful about watching destruction save itself. There's something beautiful about terrible moments that turn gorgeous. We are the thorns that were trimmed back too soon because no one ever realized we were a rose. And we were never broken. We just needed to be too many heroes at once. So sometimes we get stretched too thin because our souls are too wide. Because there are a lot of broken promises and heart breaks and love affairs and sad minds and beautiful days and long nights that we must embody. We are the ones who would never change being all those things because we like having an ever changing soul. We are the ones who must fight to live even though we have patchwork hearts and memories that are in love with romanticizing the past. We must fight because when we die, others die with us. All the things we have carried and delivered turn to ash and lay beside us in a velvet and oak box for the rest of eternity on the day we are lowered in to the ground. But in reality we know that things will get better because the grandmothers dreams of an education located in our left knee cap on the right hand side tell us to never give up. So that's what we do. We listen to the demons in our souls and the angels that also pay rent. But we carry all our memories even when they jab us in the ribs and make us believe that we will never breathe again. But we are breathing. We are living and the daughter we are yet to have needs us to tell her about the world. Because I pray she has a soul like mine so that I may show her that the world is both bitter and sweet but that every single thing looks better after thinking you'd seen the most beautiful thing in the world. So we keep these bodies and live our lives so that we may realize that there are many more parts of us that magnifying glasses don't show and pounds can't measure.  And we hold on for everyone but must learn to hold the firmest grip for ourselves. Because I will always love that boy who left the island with the crystal clear water and I will never forget the girl who told me I didn't destroy myself in the right way. And I am okay with that. I am okay with carrying these things. I am used to the weight of noth the beautiful and the terrible. And although it makes me feel empty at times, I realize that it is only because my ever hungry soul is still craving even more life.

A long time ago I learned how
he loves me, he loves me not
could be cheated and ever since
I've tried to divide and subtract
the miles from my bed to yours.
No success has ever been mine
for you are still too ******* far
away and I am still drowning
in the town I grew up in where
nothing seems beautiful except
for the roads I know could get
me to where you are.
I have tried to find the loop hole
and have only gained a mind
hooked on you and a heart
that only falls for the sound
of your voice, even though
you're many miles away.
Because time is defined and
there is no form of transportation
that guarantees a life time with you,
I am lost in my mind.

If I were to disappear or die
I wonder how many would morn
and how many would cheer.
My presence is often unwanted
and my soul is imperfect as well as my wrists.
I am the opposite of the norm and I wish so desperately
to go unrecognized so that I could disappear and no one at all
would miss me.

I will lace up my shoes
and fight these long
without you days
until I can
lace my fingers
in between yours.

Your eyes
reflect the
light that
has become
my sunshine

You were oblivion.
He was the ocean.
In you, I was forgotten.
In him, I was infinite.

Maybe this is my life.
Maybe all this pain
and heartache
and depression
is a part of who I am.
Maybe I am the dark clouds
that still allow the light to show through them.
I am alive so that I may
show others that there is a shed of
light even in the darkest rooms.
My heart is filled with holes
and my mind and body are
a canvas of scars.
But maybe that's who I am destined to be;
a lesson in survival.
I am proof that the injured are brave
and that the broken can seem whole.
I am 2 am and the fear
you have of loving.
But I am also the sweet
and the beautiful;
I am the delicately broken
and the permanently fragile.
So when I extend my arms
or form words with my mouth,
they are not for the demons.
They are for the losing team,
the insomniacs,
the heartbroken,
the lonely,
the scared,
the ones who wish they could forget.
I am your Aesop's fable telling you
that survival is real
and that it is worth it.
Take it from a butterfly heart
that never stopped beating,
even after its wings were clipped.

And I'm getting scared again
because nothing seems beautiful
except for you and the
other things in life I cannot have.
And I wish I could see pretty things once more
because all I've seen for weeks
is life through my tear filled eyes.
And I hate myself again
because the way I see others
is not the way I see myself.
Because I am the flood
that destroys the flowers.
I am forever this horrible emptiness
that misses everything.
My thighs will always be too wide
and my thoughts and weight will always be too heavy.
When they told me in third grade that I needed
my vision checked, I wish they
had told me about this too.
For my vision is not just blurry, it is fogged
and broken and unclear.
I am broken and blurry with a foggy mind
with a heart full of love for everyone I see
but a mind full of disgust for the person viewing them pass.

You see me breaking and hold my face,
begging me to let my eyes shine like the Christmas lights
that border my room.
You try to fill back up my lungs despite the fact that they
can no longer hold air.
You breathe your warmth in and out of my mouth
to keep me alive.
I am reliant on you for my each and every breath
and without you my lungs would fall down inside of me like party streamers
after prom night.
Breathe your love into me forever because it is all I have.

So maybe I am crazy.
But the only things I'm crazy about
is loving you and wanting to be with you.
And ****, maybe I do want to escape
and get lost in a state that might as well
have been named for me.
I just want to find the beaches that
are covered in sea glass and see
the sunsets cities are named for.
I want to get lost in you to the
point where I never have to come
home for holidays.
I just know that this isn't
some **** fantasy.
This is college across the country
and this is you and me.
I need to be able to wake up
on the time zone clock I'm
already sleeping on and
find the one person
who I want to see every
day for the rest of my life
right there beside me
when they've been
so far away for too
**** long.

Honey,
no matter how many indie songs I listen to
or how many times I think about
telling you I'm angry,
I still love you.
No matter how many times I get mad
and sit being my passive aggressive self
I love you.
Despite the fact that I connect with pictures about loss
and still use depressed in my description of who I am or
how I feel in counseling sessions or
that I make statuses about **** stigmas
I love you
and you have changed me.
So don't leave just because I tell you I feel lonely
or scared or sad.
Because baby, you cannot move away the mountains between us
or change the way Pangaea separated.
I'm here and you're there
and I have not yet found
a song about how passive aggressively angry
that makes me.

You could take it all away right now.
With one singular buzz of my phone you could stop my anger from boiling over
and my thoughts from imagining you with her.
I'm waiting restlessly and angrily at 2:59 a.m. wondering where the ******* are
and hating your lack of vacancy and loving every single part of you.
You are so beautiful to me and I need to know
I have to know that when I get like this, punching walls at 3:00 a.m. that you'll come out of the shadows and stop me.
I need you to grab me and hold me until I'm okay again.
You can stop me, but you are the only one at 3:02 a.m.

And honey
I want to kiss you
so that you might take away the pain
for just a minute,
you could make me forget.

You and I form every constellation
when I look at the sky.
You are my north star and
I just want to come home.

I wish I could
engrave every broken promise
in to my skin
and fashion a tic mark
for every time I
thought it would be
easier for everyone
if I were to disappear.
Then my body
would showcase my mind
and no one would say,
"It isn't that bad."
My body would become
the most melancholy work
of art and there would
be more important questions
than what Mona Lisa's smile hid.
I would become my mind;
a compilation of heartache and pain.
I am a body that once believed that
life was 3 parts sweet
1 part bitter,
but that soon realized all I
could taste was the mistakes I'd
made and the disappointments
I've created for so many.

So if you've lost all hope,
call me.
If you don't believe you're loved,
tell me.
Because we all have the finite infinity
of our lives
and I'd hate to see yours end
any sooner than it had to.
I've been there when darkness
is no longer just the absence of light
and has instead become the only thing
you are sure of.
Let me assure you that one day
your lungs will stop being filled with the
tears that are drowning you and
that one day someone will no longer look
for the scars to kiss and will instead
find your lips.
You are more than the emptiness.
You are stronger than the demons
demanding an r.s.v.p. to your funeral.
You are beautiful and you are loved
and one day you will not be someone's
"tragically beautiful" you will be just as you are
now to me and so many others.
You will realize you are simply beautiful
and all this tragedy is not why you are so.
Through your ocean eyes, you will realize
that after all this time your demons turned to angels
and that saving is something you can do for yourself.
I know how bad it seems, but there's still dreams
left for you to sleep through.
Please do not make your story end now
because I need an epilogue.

I woke up this morning
and remembered
how I waited up
for your birthday.
And I thought
I would be spending
every single one
of those anniversaries
by your side
for the rest of
our lives.
But here we are,
apart.

I often think about the day when my
beautiful 5 year old daughter begins to trace
the strange lines that are on her
mama's wrists and the day
she notices the white lines
on her mama's legs.
So the day she finally asks
what happened
the way children do,
I will tell her this;
Baby girl, sometimes life gets too hard
and you feel like you cant breathe anymore.
Sometimes you think that your tummy shouldn't rise up
and down anymore and that you don't
deserve to eat as much ice cream as you want on hot days
or that a boy doesn't love you so you
need something else to fill the emptiness.
Sometimes you give in to the mean voices in
your head and don't know where to go.
But baby girl,
when that day comes I will hold you
and protect you the way mothers should
and I will fight off all those demons
and make sure you know just how beautiful
you are.
I promise you, I will not leave
you alone in the dark and that I will take you
driving if you need that or bring you
places that make you feel whole.
And baby girl, if the day ever comes where
you think you can never win again,
I will drive us to the ocean that very day
so you can stand by me
and dip your toes
in to the biggest infinity
the globe has to offer.
We will collect shells and see broken
beautiful things
and the sand that is better with
other things
and on that day,
I promise you I will not leave.
And sweet daughter of mine,
I promise I will love you
no matter how bad things are
or how terrible you feel.
Because I never want you
to feel how I have.
I want to protect you,
I never want you to have to tell your
little girl stories like this.
But if you do,
I will love you.
There is nothing
in this universe you could do
that could make me stop
loving you
my beautiful daughter.

I could write novels on the way you make me feel,
filling infinite pages with your essence would be a simple task.
I'd struggle only with the way to word perfection and the way your eyes gleam
as well as describing the ways your smile makes me weak.
You are so **** far away and I miss the sound of your voice
with the frequency of the tides hitting the shore.
But despite the tilt of the earth, time zones, interstates, and state borders
that keep me away from my home, I still feel close to you.
I could reach my arm across the bed and almost feel like you are here.
I wake up in the middle of the night,
expecting the body I have never even slept with to be here protecting me.
I know you are, just not physically.
You cannot be in my region of time and space
and I cannot be in yours.
None of these boundaries can keep me from you,
we both refuse to let them.
But every single moment I do something new or see something beautiful
or blink
or breathe
I miss you.
My fingers curl against my palm and my hands ache,
I reach out for you.
I wake up once more and experience the biggest disappointment I could imagine.
You still cannot be here and I still cannot be there.
So for now, I'll hold you in my heart that keeps my blood circulating
and where you have purchased your retirement home.
I will let you reside in my heart and soul because you cared enough to tear
down the wall, brick by brick.
When we come together,
I will not waste another moment.
I will hold you tight and tell you I love you.
Even after I have found out the definition to your perfection,
I will sty and I will love you for a lifetime.
I know you will keep redefining it as you have redefined my life, soul, and heart.
I'll hold you soon enough.
But for now, know I love you
and that I will not return the keys to the space I occupy in your heart.

If I said I wish I had never met you
I would be lying.
Everything hurts and feeling your memories is the sharpest blade I’ve ever endured.
I wish you had stayed and I wish you had the capability to love me.
Maybe we’re all just broken machines who lack the parts that make them whole.
All I know is that for a little while, you made me feel whole.

I wonder what your voice sounds like at 4 a.m.
and how you look when you're angry.
I want to know if you keep an umbrella around in the rain
or if you do without.
I wonder how you fold yourself up in the sheets when you're sad or cold.
I want to know what you listen to when you're driving
and when you change the station.

I wonder how often you think of me
and if you see things and wish I was there to see them too.
I want to know what made you fall for me and if you could ever stop.
I wonder what made you believe I was worth it,
when nobody else has ever thought I was.

There's nothing beautiful about
scraped knees and damaged things.
However, there is something very
beautiful about being able to get
back up again when you never
thought you would.

Come back so I can prove
that I have and always will be
the best thing that has ever happened
to you and that I am in fact
the only one who has never even
considered leaving your side.
I am here and I am ready
to give you every single
ounce of love in this world
and I need you to open
your ******* beautiful
eyes and see that I will never
ever hurt you and I will never
leave you at any time.
I will hand you the world
as long as you promise to
remain in mine.
Because baby, I cannot lose you
again because losing you is the
worst thing I've ever known.
I know it's crazy and I know it's hard
but I love you like crazy and that's
all we need to make this work.
We need this love and you and me and us
until we can no longer see how bad
things have gotten in the world.
Because when you talk to me,
I don't think about wars or shootings;
I think about how if nothing else in this world
is right, at least we are.
I love you and that will never change
so please don't make me live a life where
we are not us and I have to find a way to
make it through days by avoiding songs
and checking out film titles to make
sure they will not remind me of
our last goodbye or the first time
you ever told me you loved me.
Believe in us, believe in me.
I believe in you and everything I
know you can and will be.
Even if I have to write you forever
until I can see you once more,
I will not give up.
You are beautiful. You are perfect.
I cannot lose you again.
I will not lose you again.

I would plant kisses on your body
so that every spring you would bloom
and maybe then you would realize
just how beautiful you are.

I remember the way you got lost in my words
and the way you would muffle your tears
or fight them back.
I remember the call that day by the pool
and diving in after we had ended it.
Just a few weeks later you were calling again
and you were needing me again because you had never stopped.
Maybe I should be content with the second chance we got
but I never will be.
I will keep biting my lip every time I'm about to cry
and I will keep hating that night you walked away slowly and
we were forced to say our goodbyes.
I still remember how that air smelled and how in love with your laugh
I already was.
I'm sorry we're here now and I wish I didn't still love the way you flirt with me
because it's left me empty and nauseous,
reeling for everything we were meant to be.

And we're all just hiding underneath the wreckage of the last thing that broke our hearts
and we are all just trying to turn the trauma into a triumph
even when we know body bags and tombstones await us,
we fight for some unspoken promise a lover once told our hearts.

The demons got too loud
and then became too quiet.
It’s hard to fight an attacker from behind.
It’s hard to get rid of all the monsters that stay on my mind.

When we were in second grade,
I remember you looking at your broad thighs and calling them chubby.
I looked at my narrow thighs and said the same.
My mother told us to stop and that we were both
beautiful.
But we both s-k-i-p-p-e-d lunch that day.

In fifth grade you told me about your newest diet but still didn't run your laps.
I looked at my thighs that didn't t/o/u/c/h and the "excess" skin gathered between my arm and body.
I ran harder and longer and ate less.
But, you still didn't approve of my body.

In sixth grade, you continued your verbal blows to me and kept making me view myself
as worthless, and fat, and ugly.
I was worthless and fat and desperate and ugly.
You turned my eyes against me so that I became your words of hatred.
Only one person still thought I was good enough after you had destroyed me.
Soon the insults became threats and I would hide behind the one boy who still thought I was beautiful
to protect me from the words that had in fact broken my bones and the fists that planned on doing the same.

In a moment of courage, I told you I was done.
I could not take it anymore.
I was suffocated by self hate.
I wrote you a note with far kinder words than you deserved.
I was sorry I said, sorry I wasn't good enough to deal with it anymore.
You decided you too were done and slit your wrist.
Your mom took you to the hospital and you still didn't miss the chance to leave me with your burdens.
5 words, I can't take it anymore.
And you're still alive and I'm still apologizing
for not being strong enough to pick up your burden
and being too weak to take the blows you redirected towards me.

I will repeat
"I am beautiful,
I am beautiful,
I am beautiful."
Maybe then I will
no longer look in the
mirror and be persuaded
to destroy myself.

So I cried
and I cry
and I cannot stop
because she wants
the exact same
things I want from
you.
Except, she gets
them and all I get
is empty promises
and some more
pain and sleepless
nights that you will never
comfort me through.
Being in love with
you is the most
tragic and beautiful
thing that has ever
happened to me.
You are my
Hotel California and
now I can never
leave.

I may never forget that white shirt
or those late nights we spent together
I know I can never erase the phone calls and the promises
I cannot delete the number 2330 from my brain
and I cannot act like I never loved you.
Even when you spoke of leaving I wanted you to stay
and I may of been foolish and blind
but I loved you more than anyone has loved someone
since the beginning of time.
I hope you're happy and I wish you were here
because then things
could have
would have
and should have
turned out differently for us.
Every night I want to call you and make sure you're still breathing
after all this.
I know you said you loved me that very last day
and I've found all the undertones in those messages I've saved
because you were the most beautiful person to me
and sometimes you still are.
So I'll still love you more than I hate the miles and I'll still worry about
how fast you drive
but I will love you differently, otherwise I won't survive.

The thought of you
makes me sick now.
You are no longer
a bittersweet memory.
Those things changed,
the love changed,
when you reminded
me just how worthless
I was.
Your name makes me cringe.
I think about kissing you again sometimes
but then I remember your poison lips
and your searching hands
that reminded me I was just a body.
Nothing you will ever say
can change the way I remember you.
Stop trying to fix it.
Stop trying to fix me and make
me feel as if I'm crazy and still need you.
You cannot tell someone they are worthless
because of their scars
and then try to kiss the scars you left away.
And I wished you'd never touched me.
Because every place you've touched is scarred
by the memories and thought of you.
I hate myself for loving you
and I wish I hadn't
so that I may think of my neck
without imagining you being the noose
that was hanging me
in my own shame and self hate.

You'll still drive to the ocean
and I'll still drive to the mountains
but the boundaries between us
won't fold up like origami anymore.
Whether we were wrong in leaving or not,
I still imagine what our kitchen would be like
and how it would feel to sleep with you holding me.
We've become broken promises that numb me.
I will not call for you in the middle of the night anymore,
for I know if I were to hear your voice or taste your words
I would be swallowed up by you once more.
And no matter how many times you become my ocean,
I won't let myself drown in your love when I know the moon will
steal you away as it pulls you back after crashing in to me.

I want you.
I don't want perfection.
You are the bliss
in my worst nightmares.
I don't care if you poison
my gut and think you aren't
good enough.
I still love you like crazy
but when it comes to soulmates
I think you're mine and you
think she is yours
so I am left here alone,
loving someone who loves another,
wondering if my life will become
a series of almost having
the best things in life.
I know you say I deserve
the world but no one
wants to give it to me.
I do love you,
and I can't believe
you are gone
but still here;
you will always be present in my soul.

I
never
learned
how
to
address
letters
to
someone
who
was
six
feet
under.

Baby, please don't do this.
Please don't disappear.
I need your words to keep me breathing and I need you to hold my heart
so that mine can keep beating.
I'm terrified of losing you and letting this depression **** me.
You revive me when I'm 30 feet under,
just say the words I need to hear so I can
breathe again.

You are the most precious thing I have ever found.
Your choice of words and the thoughts you conjure up
make my fingers tingle
and my soul desire to inscribe your mind
on to my own.

I cannot remember
a day in my life
where I did not
feel as if I was
supposed to have
someone next to me.
I have always yearned
for a soul to share
the most intimate,
painful, and beautiful
moments of my life with.
But now it is no longer
a soul I desire.
It is a person.
It is you I want by my
side as I look out at
a view of infinity
or hear the music
my heart craves.
You are the soul
I've always searched for;
then, now, and always.

Tonight, I cannot sleep.
I lay awake in a hotel bed
overlooking an airport,
Wishing I could board one
of the planes that is lucky
enough to get closer to you.
All the racing thoughts in
my mind are about ticket prices,
savings, the future, our future,
and when I can get to you.
But baby, I wouldn't stay up
in to the morning
trying to comprehend how to
fill in the miles between us.
If I did not believe that you
are in fact the best thing,
the single greatest person,
to ever enter my life.
No airline ticket or
number of miles can change that.
However, I still need to get to you
so that one night I may not
think about numbers and miles and tickets and how much I love you
and instead think about how much I love you and how comforting it is to be able to sleep in the arms
of the only man I can ever imagine loving.

Depression ate me alive
while I starved myself
and the demons bled me out
and the words bruised my skin.

Anxiety pushed me to panic
while I clung to the bed posts
and screamed and cried
and wished it would stop.

Death tempted me
like the taste of sadness on my lips
but life coaxed me in to tasting the sun.

I believe I'd rather encounter
a ghost rather than any human
spirit.
For I have grown more afraid
of these humans inhumane ways
and the demons that are human words
that rest between my joints.
No spectacle can scare me
like the things I know can.

I found home
between the
syllables of
your name.

We became the silhouettes of the dreams
we woke up in the middle of.

As I sit down to learn the rules of the road and when to turn and yield,
you send me on a crash course.
My face goes from normal to flushed in less than a second and you sit
as if nothing had ever happened between us,
as if you hadn't hit the breaks every time our moment began.
You treat me like a turn you cannot make and I wait to catch you staring
like you always have.
Truthfully, I won't let you come back in.
You have gotten too good at sneaking up on me from my blind spot
and I will not let you **** me again.

We come to crossroads
where we are left with
weights that cannot be lifted.
That is when we look
around to all those
who have carried us
and who we have carried
and find the strength
we seemingly lost underneath
all the weight of the world.

And today is the day
I began to truly believe
There was no God.
I prayed to Him
Last night and begged that
I may hold your love
For eternity.
But here I am
Broken and without
Once again considering
dragging a blade across my
skin and realizing
You will never know the
Birthmark on my side
As you know the way
Her hair looks at 2 am.
And today,
I believe there is no God
Because I have never been
This broken and hopeless,
Wishing so strongly for a brokenness to be fixed.

And I don't like
how I feel whole
again just because we had
another conversation that
lasted in to 5 a.m.
Because quite frankly,
I was horrified that may
never happen again.
It scares me how
much I needed that
and never even knew.