I do not know
how I am supposed to feel close to you
when you are thousands of miles away
and you don't even cast out your words
to draw me near.

There's nothing in the world I would not say
or do
or anywhere I would not go
if I believed it could save us,
Even if it wouldn't,
I'd string my words up like Christmas lights an give them to you,
to help brighten your world.
But I cannot give you anything
or be near you
or grab you and shake you or scream
or cry in to your chest.
I am at the mercy of you.
You have the power to leave
in seconds and minutes.
But I would do anything in this world to stop it.
Why? What's the point?
Because you are the first person I've ever really loved
and the first one who made me believe I was special
and the only one who's ever believed in me
and the last one I ever want to love.

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.

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.

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.

Your eyes
reflect the
light that
has become
my sunshine

You are gone,
yet you remain.

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 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.

I refuse to medicate myself in to oblivion
to fight the demons that are in my head.
No chemicals are going to save me,
I will save myself.

I will not become a member of the Prozac nation
or use pills to fix my broken soul.
With God as my witness, I kneel down and swear
on my life that was almost taken by those evil pills,
that I am stronger
I am better
and I will fight alone.

I get mad that you're there
and I'm here
and that you're not here
and I'm not there.
I tell you I miss you and I miss the ocean
and how much I love you;
that is all true.
However...I do not tell you
how scared I am that your presence will leave me
and I will be left with nothing but memories
and the fact that I have loved far too much once again.

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

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.

They ******.
They went home and ****** because that's what society said was love.
Although she wanted him to love her,
he didn't think she felt that way.
And even though he loved her,
she thought he just wanted her body.
But in reality, they wanted to make love
and thought that ******* was creating it.

Maybe I can
stop loving you;
yet I have no desire to do so.
And I know that even with all
the strength in this world trying to resist,
I would still love you.
You are my weakness.

I hate the fact
that I understand
why you love her
eyes so much
and I hate that I
understand why
someone would choose
anyone over me.
She is beautiful
and the only thing
slightly remarkable
about myself
is that I am in fact
a storm;
everyone is interested at first,
but they quickly flee
after realizing that I
carry too many heavy things.

I fell in love with you
when I saw the way
you were listening
to the music and
the way you didn't
care if it wasn't your
favorite. You kept
the rhythm with
the movement of your body
and made me realize
I was not the only
one swaying through
melodies and life.
You made me realize
that I was not odd for
standing in a corner
trying to figure out
whether or not to run
or to dance.
But as you listened and
noticed, you taught me
to do what I feared so
terribly. You showed me
how to be fearless and how
to dance.

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.

Hearing your voice for the first time
in 10 months killed me.
It did not help
that the subject matter
was you leaving me
and loving her,
but still loving me.
So I guess that's how
I learned that I love
you more than I ever realized
because I want you to be happy
even if it doesn't come from me.
And I guess we all live our lives
loving people
who may or may not
love us in return
the same way we love them.

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.

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.

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.

We miss self destruction
at the times where hot water
is not hot enough to make us
forget everything we wish we could
and we miss feeling like we had control
because suddenly, we have to let go
of something that gave us more power over
ourselves but also destroyed who we
were trying to save.

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.

I'm so in love
with every version
of your soul.
I am fascinated
by the catacombs
in your broken and restless
heart.
There is nothing
I adore more
than you.
I love every single
version of you.
And all I can
hope is that maybe
you love one version
of me.

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.

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.

In winter, more than just the cold swoops in.
The hard times,
the long nights,
the burning wood is something you must accept.
Although you sit in a tight ball,
wondering why you feel like this every year,
it doesn't change that this season reappears.
Christmas and New Years aren't times of celebration anymore.
They're simply mile markers of how far away the sunshine is.
but, the sunshine isn't spring anymore.
It's the joy that's seeped out of my very existence.
I hope one cold wintery day I awake and can find beauty in these simple things.
Yet, it's not that simple.
I've grown too fond of summer rain.

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.

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.

I think to myself,
"If you were here tonight I'd be okay. Everything would be okay."
But there wouldn't be a problem in the first place if you weren't there and I wasn't here.
I would burn bridges, construct temples, rob a bank, or jump off a bridge if I knew it would get me to you.
There's very few things that could stop my desire to want you.
to need you.
I don't know what made me willing to go to such extremes for you,
but I remember when.
I realized rain would taste better with someone holding you and that movies aren't supposed to be watched alone
and that books should be read with you and hikes should be hiked with you and food should be eaten with you
and nights should be slept with you and poems should be heard with you and car rides should be driven by you
and that life, my life, should be lived
with you.

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.