I wanted to write about walking away
the two of us, fading away from each others view
I'd decorate it in poetry as if it were anything more than another premature ending
but all I'm left with is shrines in the form of mixtapes
and days spent wondering what it would feel like if I was still in the backseat of your car
instead of sitting upright in the passenger side of his
he says he likes the song I'm playing
but I think he'd hate it if he knew it's just another epitaph for the nights I spent with you

I never understood the reason I cry before things end
is because the man that was supposed to wake up every morning and tell me I was worthy,
only ever texted me on my birthday to tell me he was proud.
As if he ever played any part in raising the person I am today.
How dare he show his face every other holiday and act as if the good in me came from him.
I've spent the last twenty years using boys to fill his void.
I've spent the last twenty years begging those to stay that were never meant to.
Because the only way I knew to recognize a man's love was in his inconsistency.
You tell me you want me but the daylight fades over and over and I haven't heard from you in two weeks.
I learned when I was 5 years old that a man's words mean nothing when his actions don't align.
I am done giving you the benefit of the doubt.

I swallowed your poison for the sake of passion
so you’d see the way I’d do anything to hold your gaze
eyes locked in mine for all the wrong reasons
you’d call me crazy but at least you’re saying something
tell everyone how I’m insane cause you love messing with my head
I lost my mind to all your games but God I loved to play

when my infatuation dims
midnight conversations
fade into radio silence
I'm sorry for making you my muse
you look at me in ways I always wanted someone to
and in another life I'd love you the way I should
my weakness is I've only ever held on to unrequited love
and I'm not sure I know how to let someone stay
consistency intimidates me
maybe heartache is more of a friend than I'd like to admit

he asked to undress my mind before my body
to know my 4 am thoughts before his fingers traced my hidden skin
he touches me across oceans; drowns himself in all of my layers
whispers that he wants to visit all of the worlds inside of me
slowly, for he knows the wounds are still healing
but he kisses all of your scars
and I hardly think of you at all

I am forgiving myself
and aware enough to know there are pieces of me still in need of healing
and for a while I would've hesitated to let you in for the fear that I'm not good enough yet
isn't that life, though?
aren't we all just trying to find ways around our brokenness?
to wake up with love for all the fragments we haven't quite learned how to fit together?
I may not be a masterpiece yet but that doesn't make me any less of a work of art
this is your open invitation to all of the messes of me

I look at my mother, beautiful and alive
I look at her with wrinkles too evident for a woman of her age
telling the stories of all her misery
and I know- she only ever wanted to love and be loved
she only ever wanted to get it right
I see my grandmother, frail and full of wisdom
but tragically alone
no one to grow old with but herself and all of the stories of the men that walked away
I look around at the seventh house I've lived in
but I feel a feeling all too familiar because the same stories repeat in each one
marriages ripped to shreds and I wonder what consistency feels like
and I pray through tear-choked words that I will find a way to break this generational curse
but the truth is I'm terrified
I'm terrified of love because I've only ever lived to watch it fall apart
and I don't blame my mother for the life I've lived because I know she tried her best to make it work
to give us a stable home even if it meant sacrificing her own well-being
I'm terrified of love because I've only ever seen it end in sadness
and I don't know a man who's ever stayed

so if I was just another body to touch to make you feel less alone
another heart to distract you from your ruins
If I was just another nonchalant goodbye
& girl who loved you more
I can be on my way knowing we were never what I thought
but if your face grew warm when I walked into a room
if I made you want to play with fire
if my kiss burnt your skin and you are still cleaning the wounds
I'll understand why I keep letting strangers feel my lips-
closing my eyes and pretending they are you
I'll know why I still have bruises the shape of your mouth
in places no one sees
even though you haven't touched me in five months
when you swore you'd never meet a girl like me again
I hope you knew you were right

I can't stop shaking and I don't think it's the cold
I feel you resting on my skin and it's the same skin you used to trace and I keep burning my body in the shower thinking it will rid the residue of you
we said all of the right words at the wrong time
and I'll walk through a crowded room with a glass in my hand
and I'll try not to notice your voice in the noise of everyone else but I swear it's still the only sound I hear
I'll convince myself I used you the same way you used me and I'll swallow it down with a sip of *****
then swear this is the last night I'm drinking to forget you
I'm training my tongue to stop telling stories of us everytime someone says your name
and when 3 a.m. comes around and I'm tempted to text you my epiphanies on why we went wrong
hoping one might resonate with you and we can try again
I'll remember all the time I spent rearranging the pieces of me that got tangled with yours and hope I never have to love that much again

you probably think you drained me that afternoon
stole the last bit of hope I had that love is more than bare bodies pressed against each other in the dark
but I still have the same fire in me I’ve had since I was six years old
hearing my father slur his words at 2 am while I pretended to sleep, trembling hands and sweaty palms until we make it home
and I swore I’d never choose a bottle and a hollow heart over someone I was meant to love
but if I didn’t need a man then to show me I was worth more than empty promises and inconsistent affection
what makes you think I’d need one now?

tell me you've been thinking of me
how you always preferred roses but you saw sunflowers in my room
and love never seemed less about romance
tell me how your mind aches for me as much as your body
but your knuckles grew white at the thought of his fingers on my skin
tell me what it's like to miss me in the chaos and not just at midnight
all of the words you don't know how to say and maybe that's why you fell in love with mine

when you find yourself entangled in your own empty bed sheets
9 pm on a Tuesday and thinking of my velvet skin
when you begin to miss me and my wild thoughts and the way I never knew better than to speak them
keep it to yourself
don't you dare tell me about the way you turn over at 4 am and forget I'm not there to pull closer
don't call and say you wish you would've done things differently because God knows I gave you that chance
don't be selfish anymore
just let me be and let me believe you didn't care the way I always thought you did

I feel most myself when I am loving you
strawberry seeds on the top of your tongue and I’ve never tasted anyone so sweet
we are made of the same skin
and I don’t worry that in another life I may not have found you, for our hiding places are the same

to be the person of your dreams
to be less a body and more an idea
to be an unlit cigarette kissing your lips
the lavender in your coffee and the aftertaste in your mouth
your Malibu sunsets in a 70’s Mercedes
what if love is trying to break apart the barrier between what you see and what you feel
what if you close your eyes and you find yourself reaching out for me
I dream of what you’d see in me if you couldn’t see me at all

maybe it's easier to fall in love with strangers because they'll never watch while they rip you apart
they won't shy away at your tendency to say more than necessary or the thoughts you shouldn't speak but always do
they don't ask for quiet corners or hidden love or pieces of your heart without knowing the whole
if you were never mine or I yours there's no worry in my memory holding onto you
no 4 am whispers or hands feeling empty when you're gone
and he'll love me unconditionally because he'll never know enough to stop

my pillowcase knows the secrest of us
I remember waiting for you and I thought I needed you more than the steady air in my lungs
like losing you would result in my own self-destruction
two days of silence and tears fell in my sleep
because you were the one and then you were a stranger
and just as briskly as I loved you I lost you
and I felt everything and then nothing at all
and I held you for a makeshift eternity
and you were something divine before I remembered a boy is just a boy

I could spend the rest of my nights searching for another you
trying on lovers like new pairs of shoes
knowing the sun will rise along with the memories
but I'd rather spend my morning hours with thoughts of you
than have to pretend his hands will ever compare to the way your words made me feel

I was listening to sad songs on the way to work and crying in the grocery store before it was over
as if my heart knew before my head that you were too good to last
& it's not about how little or long I knew you or the way your lips felt against mine
time was never a deciding factor and I didn't lose sleep wishing I were kissing you
maybe it was me and my tendency to make things so much more than they are
but I always felt like I lost you before you really left

I've been scolded for using the word 'love' too often
throwing it away, as if it had to be secured for romantic encounters or within a length of time
like it might become tired or meaningless
but what if I am so full of love I can't help but overflow with it?
what if I've known platonic love, tender love, fervent love?

so I'll say 'I love you', only when I mean it
and I hope my abundance of it never runs dry
I hope it flows out of me effortlessly, because there will never be such thing as loving too much

my body is my home
I have let many people come and go for the hope that they would find it comfortable enough to stay
the truth is each time I thought they would
but I'm beginning to think I am better off being admired from afar
spend a little time in me
you'll find the girl I wish I wasn't behind closed doors
my windows are all broken
and there's dirt on all my floors

I'll spend the rest of my days kissing your smile
and thinking of you while I'm folding my clothes
love is practice, a verb
love is the patience you've given without expectation
and when I questioned you, when I wondered if the stars really aligned for us
you showed me that love is a choice
it is not begging someone to stay, but knowing they will everyday
it's never an "you owe me" or being held against the weight of my wrong-doings
it's you and me, in all of my realizations and things I've yet to figure out
it's figuring them out together

they say that love either means everything or nothing at all
and I was never one for in-betweens
but when I wished to stop needing you so badly my bones cracked when I felt you pulling away
I never meant to stop feeling altogether

and it's always about the timing or the circumstances
it's always an "I'm busy" text message that fades into days of silence
it's when you notice how he used to compliment your mind
and now he only ever calls you beautiful when you're bare inbetween his sheets
and you tell yourself he's just a boy
this is what boy's do
it will get better
but "you're my girl" turns into "I don't think this is working"
and you're crying again
and you wonder why you keep having the same ending with different people

and you're wide awake in the middle of the night wishing he'd call
and then he'll miss you enough to want you but never enough to stay
and you worry you are so good at finding the wrong love you won't know how to recognize the right

how many foreigners do you have to let travel across your body
to feel the way you did before he broke you
darling they don't fit inside the holes he left
you know better than to believe this is how you forget
burn the bed sheets he laid on, the only place he ever wanted you
shred apart all of the memories until the pieces are too minuscule for your mind to replay
learn to breathe without his hand in yours
and he will feel it, when your heart stops wanting him
silently remind him you are the best thing he ever lost

please don't use my lips to forget about hers
if my hips are thicker and legs smoother  I hope you don't find yourself craving faded memories
I won't let her scars scare me away if you promise to stay when my tears fall needlessly
and God I'd love to say we found each other easily & unscathed
but my bruises are still purple and sometimes I wonder how he is
please believe me when I say he never made me laugh the way you do and I know you only want me on your passenger side
we have loved before but never like this

love me no matter where I am
love me when I don't have it figured out, when you aren't ready
love me when I'm anxious, when I'm mean
love me because love is not timing and it is not circumstantial
I love you because it doesn't hurt
I love you because nothing scares you
I love you because you dug up the pieces of me I wanted to bury
I love you because I'll never have to ask you to love me too

you’ve always been in the back of my mind
lingering
as if somehow, someday we would find our way back to one another
I’d tell you how the years all ran together until you held me again
and timing wouldn’t decide our fate
and distance wouldn’t make much of a difference
right now you’re where you are and I’m not really sure where I am
but without it meaning too much you should know
I am never not thinking of you

two years since you and I am still in the habit of falling in love with the idea of people
still in the habit of giving too much and thinking too little about the consequences
I wonder if I am tragically sentenced to unrequited love
and terrible timing
and wanting to fix people who never admit to being broken
I don't miss you anymore
or him
or anyone else I used to think I couldn't breathe without
I've just only ever known to associate love with suffering
and I'm afraid of feeling the same pain with different people for the rest of my life

Love is not giving yourself away piece by shattered piece
to convince him to feel about you what you feel for him
it is not a million misused chances for the stubborn hope that the pretty words you write will make him want to stay
it is not allowing him to treat your body like a hotel, to come and go in his own pleasure
because he knows better than to think there will come a day where you may have changed the locks
love is not an inexhaustible cycle of sleepless nights
spent wondering what variant of himself he may show you tomorrow
if he shows you one at all
love is not stripping yourself of all the armor you put on to shield away all of his demons
his lips may taste like honey but baby they burnt your skin
and he is already painting her the pictures you thought were only meant for you

I wore your shirt home on Tuesday
1 am and the way the street lights danced across your skin
I'm not sure if I knew you then
I'm not sure if I could picture more than present tense between us
but the present felt so nice and I liked the way your hand fit in mine
maybe I knew the entire time I was never meant for someone like you
Sunday still took me by surprise
I think you taught me you can lose someone without feeling like you've lost yourself
I think you taught me I can care for a person without it being the end of me

I used to trace words against your skin
invisible ink pouring from my fingertips
drunk on the idea of you
as if you were ever more than a troubled boy
making messes of all your past lovers
I’m five months sober and your eyes aren’t my weakness anymore

every morning like paradise
and heaven doesn't seem so far away with you
euphoria is your tan skin against mine
& there are one million thoughts in my mind
all connecting back to how to hold onto this moment
I know tomorrow we'll be strangers once again
please just hold me for today

you were too much like the bottom of a bottle
4 am; an hour for the lonely and the searching
my head spinning and body drowning
yet somehow alive enough to dial your number
every ring another bullet in a wound
and your prerecorded voice I knew better than my own
every bit as empty as before
yet somehow I thought you’d make me whole

I like to dance in the light of all the fires I started
just so the flames can wince at the sound of my laughter
just so what once burned me can see me now

If I could, I would count all the ways my troubled disposition
led to the breaking of my own heart
or maybe how your fugitive tendencies always caught up to you
the faintest sign of affection
and you disappeared before I could muster the words that might’ve changed your mind
it’s inescapable, the moon will ceaselessly pull souls like ours together
our hearts are magnetic but you lost your innocence too young
and I was always searching to fill the emptiness I didn't know was there
again and again, the demons within us will be too heavy to push away
so they will overtake us
consume us until we become a slave to all of our wrongdoings
and I’m sorry I kept asking you to fight away what we both knew would only break us apart
you can write poetry in our shadows but they will always follow behind

give me Tuesday morning's and bed sheets
skin kissed by shadows and tangled feet
give me a love that chooses me
sober confessions and forehead kisses
and maybe we were never innocent but this is romance in it's purest form
and know that you are more than everything that I settled for
love me and all of the ways I've mistaken them for you
and I will choose you every midnight and Monday and all of the inbetweens

every time somone has left
I've gotten a bit better at loving myself
there are lessons in the losses
and I've found solace in the vacancy beside me
I don't mean to refute my feelings
I still pray for someone to stay
but I won't let anyone feel as though they complete me
no one can disturb the peace I created in solitude

I learned to stop dancing with the memory of you
to stop hoping someone else might fit in the depression your body left on my mattress
you were not my saving grace
I wake up in the morning and my sheets kiss my bare skin
the sun running across my shoulders, warmer than your hands ever felt
I am whole without you, I am whole by myself

you were knitted together before the world first heard your cries
and you were born whole
you were made to break barriers
never to hide behind the shadow of a man
it is time you stop trying to shrink yourself to conform to the world's ideals
you are a walking contradiction
both peaceful and wild
delicate and resilient
remind yourself you do not need his arms when you were given two of your own
do not let them burn out the flames within your soul
you belong only to yourself

I seem to bruise every thing I touch
I act on my feelings as if everyone knows what it's like to feel so much you can't think straight
please excuse the messes I make
pure intentions mixed with bad habits
I care about everything and I care about you
I just never learned how to show it without creating chaos

I don't think I'll ever love you but if you want the rain I'll be a thunderstorm
& if you prefer the warmer weather I'll burn so you can see the light of day
I'm not saying you'll ever be the one but I'm so used to all of these thoughts making me crazy
and with you I swear I never think at all
maybe I stopped believing in soulmates a while ago
but if there's such thing as bodies meant to dance and lips meant to touch
I think that's you and I

the skies are blue here
laces of red & I'm reminded of you
whoever, wherever you are
I hope you are okay
I hope you are thinking of me
& I hope the skies are blue where you are, too

I lost myself somewhere in-between our ending and all of the might've been's
I wanted it to be you
the kind of love that was always more forest fire than fairytale
and all I know is you left me someplace in the middle of "I miss you" and "I need space"
I fell into your hesitation because it was all I had left

isn't it wonderful to think that the light that I am seeking is also seeking me
healing may come in waves and so does missing you
but I'm giving myself a few more days and days may turn into months and that's okay
because I might not be where I'd like
but I am surely on my way

unspoken words never suited me well
I’ll whisper the reasons I’d like to see you in the morning,
mostly for the way the sunlight and shadows dance across your skin
If your fingertips promise to adore more than my body in the dark
I’ll always wish to be more subtle and you’ll wonder how a broken heart could remain so open
the wounds he left when I was six never healed but I’ll let you nestle in-between them
just please don’t make me feel weak for shouting how I feel from rooftops
I’ve never known how to love with anything but all of me

I would've given anything to watch every sunset with you
and I don't know why two people in love can't do anything but destroy each other
I don't know why every time you're around poison seeps into my bloodstream
just know that in another universe, I am laying next to you
I know what it's like to adore what breaks you
I've always confused my destruction with divine intervention

I know you lay awake wondering when your time will come
you have dug your way out of the ground
everything that tried to bury you has failed
you were created to to put the night sky to shame and you were born with fire in your blood
you are the exception
the difference
using your energy to try to align your life with theirs is only pulling you away from everything you're meant for
you were never meant to look like them
there will come a time where you will be so glad you never settled for the ordinary

I am not for everyone and that is okay
but how dare you see a fraction of me and mistake it for the whole
I am not a few raindrops I am a hurricane
a meteorite blinding your eyes- illuminating through the empty night
I am volcanoes aching to erupt & a mystery you could spend the rest of your hours wanting to unravel
black coffee at 5 am, a bittneress you'll get addicted to
I belong to myself- no one's baby and my own hand to hold
the storm inside me will always drown out your whispers
and you will keep searching for the reason why I'm unscathed
your judgement is clouded and I was never one for explanations

and if there comes a day where the whole world seems to crumble
if meteorites begin to shake the earth as we know it
and the galaxies beyond us start to swallow our home
if the stars that died one million years ago disappear with the rest of us
tell me you'll still trace poetry on the crevices of my skin even if it's covered in dirt
tell me we'll build a shelter from this planet while it falls apart
nothing can shake this love
asteroids can't destroy us
black holes will never swallow us whole
and know that if the ground we walk ever collapses beneath us
I will find you in another universe- one far away from here
and I'll love you just the same

we used the right words at the wrong time
we were kids, tired of our hometown
cranking the heater and writing poetry with our hands in the humidity on your sunroof
you'd kiss my fingers and talk about us
another us, far from here
where we had already spent mornings in bed that faded into quiet afternoons
I told you I'd miss you and we left the spaces between us as some kind of divine obliteration
I'm forgetting the taste of october
and you are learning how to brave the chill of december without the warmth of me