every night i shower and brush my teeth and shave and try to look cute in my boy-short ******* and big flannel shirt because every night i hope i'll sneak out to see him
but i don't
and i miss him
and my chest aches

when i feel i'm lost,
i look for you
instead of
myself.

maybe that's my problem.

"MAYBE" IS THE ONLY CONSTANT WORD IN MY VOCABULARY
AND I ******* HATE THE WORD MAYBE
WHY CAN'T I SAY YES
OR NO
OR *******
"DEFINITELY"

random things start beeping in my home so every time i almost drift to sleep, i am reawakened by bomb countdowns and the thought that maybe I don't believe you and maybe that's okay
also my dog is laying next to me and staring up the stairs because he is too tired to walk up them
and tomorrow morning i will also be too tired to climb stairs but i will pretend i am strong
because i am expected to be

sometimes i think i'm telling a joke
and then i think about it for too long
and realize again how quickly time can pass
and how easily people change and forget each other
and how (speaking of easy) it is way too easy to remember that life is pointless
so sometimes maybe when i'm trying to tell a joke
I am actually trying to distract myself
and find a point in flashing teeth
(mainly my own)

maybe sometimes I'm not happy
and sometimes I acknowledge that
and maybe sometimes when you tell me,
"you can tell me anything,"
I believe you
so I try
sometimes, maybe I try
maybe I am still terrified, though
because I am still trying to figure out what words are scrambling through my head and how to put them together in a way that makes sense.
Maybe you'll never know because
I don't care about myself all that much.
I don't want to talk about me or tell you how sometimes
I am empty in a way that it feels like I'm drowning
-kind of like I want to, but mainly like I already have-
because I don't want to be a sad story.
I wish I never was in the mood to make up excuses for why I had to go home and sit by myself,
I wish I always wanted to get up and be something more than a waste of a body.
I want you to think I am more than that,
so please don't ask me to tell you anything,
please just tell me about you
PLEASE JUST TELL ME ABOUT YOU
and I will hold you when you need me to
I will laugh with you when you need me to
I will cry for you when you're too tired to
I will lay next to you and do nothing, if that's what you need
please tell me about you and let me ignore me

getting trapped in your time zone
never sure of how tired you feel
all the way on the opposite coast
but I guess you don't need to know
they'll tell you you don't need to know
"at least not right now," they'll say, "you don't need to know."
but occasionally
you worry
you'll never know