i think i will survive if i can wait a little more
i'll wait until
the last of you is walking
out the
door
the hours have been good to me
the miles
make it
clear
that life can still be beautiful
without you being
                           here
it's when i press my lips to yours
that everything
returns
and opens up a world with an intensity that
burns
enough with the explosives
i don't want them
anymore
the back of you in front of me, i'll run to close the door

I have been told by four different people that I'm not really trying to get better, that I'm just wallowing in this sorrow and letting it swallow me, like bleach, but from you, I think was the worst. No, no it wasn't, the worst was the first time, from the first boy I ever kissed, I remember how sweetly he said it, "I just think you let it get the best of you sometimes," and how I exploded, and so I was prepared when you said it, had been through this fight before, had a witty retort prepared for every "well if you just did this you could fix it" you threw at me, I have years of experience in defending my sadness. So when you told me that if I have lived this long just so I won't break any more hearts than I have to then I should just keep going, and I said "Good night", understand that I only left because that poses a question that I have not been brave enough to answer yet, that I know to you it makes perfect sense but there are days when the only thing that keeps me going is the promise that I will eventually die, and when you try to push that back, try to tell me that it will not happen as soon as I have been promising myself, I lose hope. So yes, you made some valid points, and yes, I probably could be working a little harder, and, yes, I am still mad at you. You're an *******. Good night.

I can't let myself
fall for you; I'm too close to
the edge as it is.

Every human walks around with a certain kind of sadness
stitched into the tag in the neck of their coat.
They carry it like a wallet weathered from use
and old gift cards in the pocket poke at the seams.
They keep it tucked away like a pressed flower
in between the pages of their favorite novel
and find it while they're thumbing through
for that line about love that they have forgotten.
They leave it in the bottom of their shoe
and let it poke at their soles when they walk,
and, becoming accustomed to it,
no longer feel it at all.

But I don't want you
to think this is me pouring
my heart out to you.

Art is either plagiarism or revolution,
but
we've all
heard that
before.
It feels like
originality is impossible
when only given
twenty-six
characters to work with,
and so
these are not
my thoughts,
this does not
belong to me,
I am
writing the same things
that all those before me have written.
We are either replicas or denying it.

I have been learning how to die,
have prepared myself at every
intersection or doctor's office,
have been whispering
Good Bye
like last words,
every time.

I have been learning how to be a corpse,
have been rotting from the
inside out,
have been peeling away the decaying flesh
beside my fingernails,
on the inside of my lip,
around the wounds that I know will never get the chance to heal now.

I have been learning how to be a skeleton,
have been leaving empty spaces
between ribs
and
vertebrae,
have been training myself to lie still
in small, dark places.

I have been learning how to be a ghost,
have haunted my own
home,
have found solace
in inhabiting this body
that I claim to belong in,
I have been learning how to regret.