In between drags from a cigarette I can barely taste around the metallic punch of anger, I glare at you.
This fight, that fight, words we don't really mean thrown into the pile with other words like "blame," and "fault" and "whatever." Repetitive jabs meant to engulf and inflame sore scorch marks from past spats.
Between me and you is this smoke, fanned across my line of sight in a way that almost blurs you. Sometimes I wish I could blur you, sand down your harsh edges and pull you back into this calm reality in which I live.
But drag after drag, night after night, the same old fights and the same old cigarettes,
I guess it's the only reality I've ever known.

It has long been time to say goodnight,
The hands of the clock caressing my face, lulling me into secluded silence.
But I can still smell your skin on me, feel the bite of the binds.
And so the cigarette still burns. On. And on. And on. And the tears still fall. On. And on. And on.
Agony is telling the same story over and over until you believe it. "I'm fine, I don't think about it anymore. I'm over it."
And then you see something. Or hear something. Or read the ******* newspaper. And your name is never under arrest.
Maybe you never hurt anyone again. Maybe you only took my voice.
Maybe the cigarette still burns so close to my fingers that I have scars. Maybe I still wait for sleep. Maybe you'll catch fire to that bed dropping a cigarette. Maybe the flames will take you.
Maybe I can wait for the next time the pain will hit. Maybe I can smoke another cigarette.

I inhale poison on a daily basis
The taste never quite dissipates, always reaching for more even when I've had my fill
Expenses are no worry for me, I can make do on little, make do with less
Do more for me
I am needy, I need you
****, do I need you
Now more than ever, inhale, exhale
It's as natural as breathing
This intoxicating *******
What is love but another addiction
Another high amongst the lows

I wonder what is truly worse for me
Cigarettes, or you

Where did I lose myself?
Between lines of paper I stopped filling with my daily musings,
around corners of the walls that hold my family now,
or in my brain, where the illness has swallowed me whole and spit me back out more times than it has not?
I have become an even more fragile soul than before, now relied upon to keep an entire new person whole. It's a curious task when I'm falling apart at the seams.
Where did I go? Hidden amidst old thoughts and harrowed poems, new smells and insomnia,
I have to know the answer to this.
Did I allow my soul to escape between breaths, allow the words that twisted their way through each crevice of my soul to escape me when I decided I had to be more? Did I heal myself just enough that my sicknesses are actually all in my head?

Walk all over people and one day someone will fight back

                           Teeth bared

And all you'll have is scars on your heels.

We went our separate ways half a year ago now, and it's funny that today my brain stopped on you.
I'm wondering how your mom is, how your brother is. I'm wondering if the alcohol has finally swept away the last good bits of you with its bitter bite and all of the things I saw in you have drowned in the wretched agony of the depression you refused help for.
I would say that I have prayed for you, but I think God even knows that's wasted on both of us. That's a lie anyway. I didn't pray. I stopped and thought of you twice until today.
I just wish I could have had the apathy you desired, that maybe you could have basked in it for long enough to feel better. I wish that I hadn't started needing you like I did, that your voice didn't bring justification to my long, lonely days.
I wish that the insane amount of love that I had for you could have glued the parts of you that were worth fixing back together, could have dug the alcoholic a new grave and brought back who you were before the bottled ***** betrayed you.
Betrayal is what you're into, I guess. I see it now a little more clearly than I did then.
Just know, I don't wish you poorly when I say I  wish you the best.

Scars
     Reminders not of my suffering
     But of my survival

I wonder if you remember, sitting on your porch smoking a cigarette while I sat on mine

I looked at my wrists today and where my veins used to be were dotted lines
"Cut here" they said.
And I tasted salt on my lips
For a second I thought it was French fries that I consumed earlier
But I realized it was tears
And as I fall to a sack of blood and puddle of tears on the floor
All I can think is another year
Another year without you and I will go crazy
And I will not have you
Because there are girls prettier than me
Because there are girls that are worth more
That think better of themselves
That aren't sick in the ******* head
There are girls out there who you deserve
And not just the one you got stuck with.

There is no way to get rid of your demons besides exorcism.
Mine must be as buff as Marines the way I talk about them,
Exercising, jumping jacks, squats.
Those ******* have been around as long as my gap tooth has been closed.
I have given them pet names. One is "What If," the other "Past." They like to dance merrily on my tongue as I talk to myself wandering around my house.
They like to be written about, self absorbed and aware as they are that they exist.
What If is the one that yells "hey, hey, look over here!" Past is an introvert, hiding shyly among my innermost workings.
Occasionally, like most super buff dudes do, they get drunk and want to play. That's when the danger starts.
What If is a flirter. He really likes to hit it and quit it with my emotions. Past is that sappy guy that sits at the end of the bar and doesn't say a whole lot, but you can tell he just broke up with his girlfriend by the way he sighs into his drink.
These drunk ******* really need to knock their **** off, if only to let me sleep soundly for a single night.

I have loved you through every broken promise.
Through every fight, through every cold night alone
Through every minute, hour, day, month
Through every year.
I have loved you through every tear.

I have loved you when all I had of you was your sweatshirt to hold at night.
When all I had were ghosts of memories.
When all I had was myself
When all I had was gone.
I have loved you on and on.

I have loved you for all you are
For all you are not.
For all you stood for.
For every laugh, and for every cry.
For every kiss and every smile
I have loved you for every mile.

I will love you through every fight
Through every sleepless, lonely night

I will love you when I can't,
And even when I go on rants

I will love you in every way
For the rest of every day.

His voice is where I find solace. With no arms to hold me I find peace in words. In "you make me happy." In "I'll be home soon."

And he will be home soon. And I am scared that the damaged parts of me will be too damaged.

I find comfort in knowing that a face I've needed to see will be within kissing distance. But will he want to kiss me? Up close and personal for the first time in months, both with fresh scars from fresh heartbreak.

He wears his scars behind a uniform, and mine are as clear as day on my face.
My heart is his if he wants it, and I am afraid that he won't. But I'm easily in love, easily ready to admit it to myself, but I won't admit it to him. There's too much damage there, too fresh of wounds to break open.

But hey, I love him. I love him. I'm not hiding behind it anymore. I'll admit it right now.

I have been broken before. Bent past recognition.
       Who is this apparition in the mirror?
I am working so hard to be whole again, not just a shadow of who I used to be.
But putting myself back together with duct taped words is not the glue I need.
I want nothing more than to watch you glue me back together, to stitch my wounds with careful kisses.
I want nothing more than to come alive in your arms, to resurrect the human I once was in your love.
        Who is this apparition in the mirror?
My wounds are too deep to heal on their own, too long drawn out to stop bleeding. I need you to set my heart on fire, cauterize the holes that were left

I married the knight
instead of my Prince Charming.
My heart is empty.

Your love is my drug, my vice, my obsession
And I am in prison for possession
But from behind these bars, the chains of restriction
Your eyes still look like the ocean

Classic me, hiding along the edges for just enough time to give you the space you need before popping back in.

Classic you, using song lyrics and sweet words to make it feel like no time has passed at all.

One line means that your life will not change. That everything will continue to exist as it was before. That you'll be the same person that you were ten minutes ago. That everything is, and will continue to be, yours.
Two lines means absolute change. Means giving yourself completely up as a person. Means that you'll be new, different. Two lines means that nothing exists as it was before. That nothing belongs to just you anymore. That your life will be shared.

It was the only test I ever passed that I kind of wanted to fail.

You, my muse, my love
My beating heart won't still now
Give me one last chance

Is "I love you"
      Not enough
          To make you stay?

My heart is breaking.


               I pretend that I don't care.

I am honestly terrified to start over with someone new

I am spending far too much time thinking of her body on yours.
Thinking of the way she'll say your name when she's half asleep.
Thinking of how you'll grab her hips and how she'll bite your lips and...
I'm spending too much time thinking about all that I wasn't prepared to lose.
Thinking of the gamble I didn't take.
Thinking of how I'm a mess and she's undressed and you're...
I am spending far too much time thinking.

Can I just
                 S
                    t
                      u
                 ­       m
                           b
                             l
                               e
                   into your arms again and again?

Time is the thing that ruins us all, I think.

We hold too much faith on a timeline. "You can't text a boy until after 3 days," "don't have *** with someone you just met," "you barely know each other, don't get too close."

But time has never stopped to look around and cease what its doing so I could collect my ****, why should I wait for time to collect his?

We all live until we die, but with a false timeline narrative in place, keeping up with Mr. Jones and his wife, watching my friends have more babies around me, are we really living if we're in a constant battle that resets every 24 hours?

525,600 minutes and I want to spend them all crushing and rushing and running towards my goals, towards my dreams, towards my love.

"You don't love him, you barely know him, you haven't spent enough time together."

Time is just an illusion of your making, a figment of our shared consciousness. And I have always been a little off beat, a little out of sync.

Move in. Share the bed. The smell of coffee in the morning to wake. The sound of footsteps to the shower.

I'm not giving away any of my minutes with you.

I knew this would come

The crack in my heart

The nostalgia as I stare at what could have been so hard that I know it’s ignoring me now.

The awkwardness exists in a bubble, one that hasn’t quite popped yet, but I know will.

And I only just wish that you’d seen me before it was too late.

I am not asking you to heal me, darling
I need to do that myself

But if you'll wait patiently while I do, I'll help heal you too

I am tornado
Hurricane
Cyclone
Spiraling out of control

I never stopped to consider the collateral damage.

It took me this long to sit back and think about who you used to be.
It's been hard to pick through all of the ****, rotting away the parts of my brain
that have forgotten who we used to be.

It wasn't always this vat of putrid waste, of tossed away hopes, of the essence of failure, of distrust and hatred.

Once before, a fire burning warm, hands held tight, drowning beers and speaking over the dead.

Now the castaways of a shadow's burden, haunting the spirits of the back of our minds.

I'd forgotten what you were like before this, but I can remember now.

The way my name wraps around his mouth
is the same way I've wrapped my mouth
around him, 100 times, probably more, I stopped keeping track.

What do I have to change?
                             everything
          nothing

And we have been down this road, with its curves and twists, at least 100 times, maybe less, I stopped keeping track.

And I fail to squash it every ******* day, but I will never not miss him. Never not hear his laugh in my dreams.

What do I need to work on?
                             everything
            nothing

Happily ever after seems far away.

Laid up on the couch with one leg casually tossed over yours,
the room still vaguely spinning with one eye open.
Maybe downing 4 beers in an hour wasn't such a good idea, but my anxiety got the better of me, and I didn't know what else to do while everyone else stared at their phones and I stared at you, memorizing the planes of your face so I won't forget them again.
My head is pounding and I doze, YouTube in the background. It has to be late, or early.
The fan blows against my skin and I peek to see if you are still there. Yup. Okay. Breathe, Mel, breathe.
The nauseating feeling of being left again roils my stomach. Or maybe that's the beer again.
It has to be early, or late. But this moment will burn in my memory for days as I psychoanalyze everything I've done wrong that could make you want to run.
Is it early or late?
I wake up and you're not there, but when I stumble to the bathroom you're laying in your bed and I would join you but the room is still spinning and I need to just lay back down.

The fulfilment of my teenage dreams, I couldn't have imagined a better lover
Until it was over

A scorching mark that leaves me breathless even still, love, or maybe just lust, burning brilliantly, blue instead of red

It was just too hot too touch
I'll always be too much

Fingertip trails glisten across every inch of my skin,
I couldn't have displaced myself any better,
Until I could

This will surely leave a mark, even still, or maybe just an impression, forever a memory, paint never dry

It's just too wet to touch
I'll always be too much

If there is one thing that I know,
it's that the throbbing ache that's in
the cavern beneath my sternum

Feels a lot like my heart is held
Captive, prisoner, rattling
Against the rib-bone bars of jail

I'm not sure if this is an existential crisis, or just my reality

To be lost without a clue, deeply alone, mood changing every minute because reality sinks in

And I'm just not the main character. I never will be. I'm some forgettable auxillary background character

And that's true for everyone, but is the deep seated dread that you truly don't matter also ever present?

Does everyone's heart feel like a shell of fear, worried that you're just here, existing instead of living?

The funniest thing is

You'd probably know that all these poems
Are about you

And you have the key to open them.

You would know me inside out
If you'd ever turn the key

Hear me out,
5 years will pass quickly and slowly.
A jumble of seconds, slow and steady to create another 525,600 minutes to close out this last chapter.

Growth comes and goes in waves, realization its steady companion. We are still so ******* young.

Perhaps Peter Pan had it right. I do not want to be grown yet, stuck between birth and death; I watch time tumble treacherously through my fingers like quicksand, no where to go but down.

Yet I can pick you up like a favorite book. I've seen all the creases and fades and lines and letters before, but it's been 5 long years and there's something exciting about you still.

If this steady crawl to the end is it for all of us, perhaps I'll meet you in the next life. Maybe next time, we can get it right.