I thought about writing down all the ways you destroyed me but every time I tried I ended up writing my own name.
it's harder to leave the place that's killing you when all of the people you love are there and you think of ways to hold them but they just keep telling you to let go.
let go
let go
you keep forcing yourself to believe you'll be happier that way but really when will you be happy? when will the dark circles under your eyes go away?
when will you forgive yourself for not being there when your brother blew out his birthday candles? when you weren't there to pick up the pieces of your little sister's heart when it was destroyed for the first time, and all the times after that.
he'll say you were different but he drinks whiskey with her too and now your voice always cracks when you call someone else baby. you'll whisper into her hair "honey i'm never going anywhere" but rocks turn into sand and leaves turn into dust and you turn into a memory she won't have the pleasure of forgetting.
I'll count the bruises that cover my stomach and pick out the ones that look most like something you'd apologize for.
I'll convince myself that I only ran back to you because I was homesick. I don't think we fit each other no matter how much I want us to, you were the closest and I'm terrified of what's going to happen after I'm gone.  
write down the names of all the lovers that left your hands cold and your eyes red and ask yourself why they're starting to look more like a picture frame and less like the person that never really said goodbye.
start drinking your coffee black because there's always a bitterness on your tongue anyways and scream their name at the walls because they will always listen to you.
we were alcoholics by 16 because the way they looked at you was too suicidal for a child to survive.
the school is so close to the hospital we're starting to feel comfortable with emergencies now.
this is an abandoned tape that keeps repeating itself and I am tired of waiting for someone to find it.

I always find starting things harder than finishing them
because everyone tells me first impressions mean everything
and whenever I introduce myself I almost always begin
by telling people I'm yours.
You could tell me you don't want to see me ever again
and I'd admire you for showing me that I can still survive
even though I've been holding my breath since the last time I saw you.
For a minute there we were one person.  
They say there's a time and place for everything,
but for us the times never changed and we had gone to every place imaginable.
Maybe we should have called it quits the minute you forgot how I take my coffee.
Maybe I should have realized things were different when you stopped spending Sunday's at my house and the "I'll text you when I get home" messages were taking longer to be sent,
as if every time you left the distance you had to travel was farther than before.
Don't tell me I never tried to save us.
Losing you was like listening to your favourite song backwards.
My mother always told me if I wanted something done right then I had to do it myself so I solemnly swear I will always be the one to break my own heart.
I am not sorry that my words always cut you deeper than anything you ever put against your skin.
I am not sorry I forgot you were human and treated you more like a sculpture than a heartbeat.
I am not sorry I made it impossible for you to ever really leave.
I keep trying to tell you that if things were easy
it wouldn't matter how it ends.
But all you can anticipate is it ending
and sometimes I wonder if you only stayed around to watch me try and pick up all the pieces by myself.

Sometimes words lose their grandeur at the same time I drop dishes and bite my tongue and bruises form and I forget to say it back.
Sometimes I forget how small I am and really I am so small and remembering the way someone takes their coffee doesn't mean you care.

I have been myself in small intervals and with each time change a stranger with my skin crawls into it's place, coughing up 8 in the morning on Saturday's and crumpled sticky notes with ink smudges.

The fever rising fixation on having pen on paper pen on skin scribbling thoughts that are fastened to trains without brakes.
Pen on walls pen on something, something that'll hold it together longer than you can.

I've heard airports see more sincere kisses than wedding halls and hospitals hold more prayers than churches.
Maybe that's why I started buying plane tickets and stopped talking to God.

We missed the last train out of the city, I haven't been awake at night in a while. I haven't seen the darker parts of the city since you.
Nothing like the town so quiet all the kids must have already left for college and for jobs and to make their own babies in other quiet towns.

All the houses on our street have the same fathers so we wash our hands before meals and pray to our church for forgiveness because all the kids at school have been saying it's your fault that daddy left mommy.

I guess at that party we were all lonely

Strangers starting to seem okay to talk to,
you have a better chance of getting picked up in a van by the older boys at the end of your street. Making you drink bottled love while doing donuts on First.

I find it hard to say I am stronger than my brother's when I've spent a lot more time holding my breath than tying their shoes.
I've become my mother in more than just one way, we both know facing it and not having the strength to leave are two different things.
And I never meant to give the key to someone who would make copies but lose the original.

I guess at that party we were all thinking too much

That party only celebrated pity and I only pitied myself.
So it was a couch full of me and a room full of you.
Sometimes I forget how small I am and maybe sometimes I'm not as small as I thought.
Sometimes words lose their grandeur at the same time I build towers out of them.

Sometimes I count backwards from 10 hoping with each passing number a month could go by so that when I reach February you still want me to die and we still both agree on something.
I keep your letters under the mattress like we used to, sometimes I feel brave enough to ask if you read the letters I sent you whenever you're tired but then I feel like that question would have to be followed by me asking you to send them back.
Even counting down from 5 would be good enough if it meant it was back to the part when you said you'd thought about it too.
Giving someone space by telling yourself to read their signals like an instruction manual and wait for the right away as if you've never given it to anyone else.
Still giving you space because I'm blind enough to not be able to tell when I should make a decision.
Maybe I could try to call you and count the rings before you answer.
I could wait for you to call me and save the candle from my 7th birthday for when I turn 70.
If I never texted you again I wouldn't have to to tell my future kids what serendipitous impatience feels like.
If you read this you're gonna realize it's about you as fast as I realize every girl I talk to still sends their ex messages at one in the morning on the edge of whiskey soaked lips.
In retrospect that's equally as fast as when I realize I build homes in muddy coloured eyes.

The time says its unholy but we say we are already in hell. 
Nothing to lose besides our prayers.
Shut the hour, let me sleep. 
"The pills will help with that," but they'll take away the motive. 
This isn't working. But then again what is?

things start to make sense as soon as you start feeling like background music instead of the main character in your own life and you'll start staring down at your shoes a lot and watching your phone die without making the effort to charge it again.
you'll feel lonely but never intend on making the effort to speak to anyone and you'll start looking for love in drunk encounters and every corner you can find it but it's not really love it's fake smiles and cold showers afterwards. you'll start to listen to songs that sound like all the apologies you want to tell them and watch sunrises that look like forgiveness.
you start spending a lot of time in busy coffee shops but at empty tables and in bed but never asleep.
and you'll start to realize that they haven't missed you in weeks and your hands started to shake more after they stopped holding them.
you'll begin closing yourself off again and silently apologizing to the next person that tries to love you.
you'll start drinking whenever you're around friends because if you don't they'll ask you why you're so quiet and silence is so much worse than slurred speech filling every gap and unfitting laughs every two minutes. then you realize you're just as needy as you were when you were three and someone had to rub your back to get you to fall asleep and all they had to do was tell you they love you for everything to make sense.

these are all confessions and I am the whisky at the bottom of your bottle.
only I never kept you warm and I never filled anyone's empty stomach at two in the morning.
I learned more about you after we stopped looking for ways to find each other.
and how sometimes you can't fix the things that came to you already in pieces.
now even on my peaceful nights I have more doubts than you and I wish I could give you a book filled with all the times I said "I love you" and didn't mean it.
and a map filled with all the places where I said "I love you" and did.
and all I feel is confusion towards you,
not in love and not in hate.
I think this is worse than both.
it's hard to believe that we ever had mornings of hot coffee and smudged makeup.
maybe if it was with someone else I wouldn't constantly watch my coffee lose its warmth and smudge my own makeup with the palms of my hand.
maybe if it was with someone else they wouldn't have felt the need to look for answers in someone else's bed.
it's okay to tell you I found more comfort in someone else's arms than in yours if it's okay for you to not tell me you were spending your nights with someone besides me.
that was never me.
these words mean something but I can't remember who they're for.
if I call it cheating then that would mean it was a game.
if I call this poetry then that would mean we both have a use for manipulation.

I call myself a writer yet I'm awful with words and every time I say sorry it's more like an exit wound than an apology. It's difficult to tell you what I'm feeling when I don't know how to speak and I'll go on talking in my broken languages until you realize you will never understand me. Everyone is telling me I need to stop running away from my problems but I've already tried hiding from them and they'll just keep finding me. I keep thinking that maybe if I smile a little more you'll always be here and I want to **** the thing inside you that makes you leave. I have attachment issues because I remember when I was little and not understanding when people told me they'd "be home later" that they never considered anywhere that I was a home. And maybe I don't want to talk about what you did maybe I want to talk about songs and cities and which direction we're going to walk next and if you want to keep the shirt I'm wearing and if touching each other a certain way is okay and how many buttons you leave open on your flannels and how I'm getting home tonight.