where does love go once it's lost? i think it still lingers behind in the shadows of our hearts and slowly steals our breath. why else do i want to faint every time i see you smile? you told me i was too fragile and i'm trying not to be. i'm trying to be an adult that drinks coffee, pays her own bills, and doesn't cry at words like we should just be friends. my history teacher told me to never make anyone my world. i didn't believe him until the night i almost overdosed. yet still all i know is to kiss you with my mouth full of forevers and smile at you like i'd never been hurt. but you knew i was lying so i just shut up.

how do you write about someone you can’t describe? when i look at you i feel language leave me. you twirl me around and smile like you’ve never been hurt and i feel like thats the part that makes me cry the most. i’ve been wanting to die for 1 2 3 4 5 now. i swear you don't even love me, because how can you love someone you don’t know. i’m not one to talk though i’ve loved you since before i even knew i would. you see we come from the same star. the universe knew what it was doing when it threw us together. the first time we kissed, i realized, and you smiled at me, because you knew. i swear you knew.

it always happens like this, you meet a boy and his touch begins to burn holes in your skin and his kisses leave bruises. you begin to crave his stupid hand in yours. it starts to hurt when you look at him and it hurts when you don’t. it feels like someone cut you open with a jagged piece of glass until suddenly, you realized you always felt that way.

i used to be afraid of my bed. i slept on the floor till my parents bought me a new one. now i share that bed with you. it feels empty if you’re not there. if we broke up i don’t now if i could erase you and the fact that for almost 8 months my bed was half yours. but i was all yours much longer than that. i just always wonder what i’m doing wrong. why can’t love just be enough. but maybe you just never did love me. i’m sorry

letter one:
blind. that’s what you are. you’re literally sitting next to me in this car high out of our minds eating Taco Bell. it seems this is the extent of our friendship. the idea that we have to be out of our minds to be friends. I can’t tell you how much I love you. I always told myself that if I found a guy with the same favorite ice cream flavor as me I’d marry them. I can feel your pain as you text her. I could feel your pain as you were crying in panera. you’re so silly. we can’t make homes out of human beings. someone should have already told you that. where are we? not location wise I know we’re in the Taco Bell parking lot, but in our feelings. where are we? when I told you that I went to school that one day looking like I got hit by a truck because I wAs up all night crying. it was because you told me the night before you would never pick me over her. well that one, that one hit me like a bomb.

letter two:
why do I always fall in love with the broken boys? the ones who’s hearts still belong to that girl they dated in high school? still saying “it should have been her”. or the ones who just can’t fall in love at all. who’s minds don’t believe in the concept or who are scared of commitment.

letter three:
I believe that we all are born with a hole inside of us and as we grow we fill it with something. some fill it with religion, some fill it with sports, and some of us make the mistake of filling it with another person. me? I’ve never found anything I’m permanently happy with even though I’m pretty sure the only thing that would come close would be you.

letter four:
I love you, and you love her. it’s like I’m trying to pick up the shattered remains of your heart off of the floor but I just keep getting cut and I’m bleeding everything and it hurts and I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry. I’m sorry for ruining everything ok. i hate that this is how I feel and you’re just blind to it. you’re just a blind boy who’s still crawling while I’m just starting to run. maybe we’re meant to be together but I’m not going to run any slower just so you can keep up.

As a child, i always had nightmares about someone removing my heart and replacing it with a broken shadow box. if the sun were to explode we wouldn’t even know about it for 8 minutes and nothing gives me a heavier heart than knowing I wouldn’t be able to get to you before the world goes black to tell you i love you. I’m sorry. No matter how many times I say it, I’m still sorry. That this low ceiling of this small room is our sky and that i am not your umbrella, but your rain. Some nights when I can’t sleep, I pretend you’re lying down next to me, then suddenly the world doesn’t feel so cold anymore.

The worst part was i knew this was going to hurt from the moment I told you there were other fish in the sea and you told me that she was your sea. But then i loved you more, and I decided I was going to give you my heart. It’s 3 am and this alcohol is starting to taste like the broken promises you keep telling me.

You know it’s always been you right? 3 years ago I looked at you and I had this strange feeling you were going to mess up my life. I want to talk about love with you like it isn’t a promise to the both of us. I still have dreams that maybe you and I didn’t grow up and maybe we didn’t change. But i could destroy you in the most beautiful way possible that then you will understand why storms are named after people.

if you’re ever sitting in your car and that song you said reminded you of me oh so long ago comes on, just know it’s probably 3 am and i’m probably sitting in the kitchen buzzed off of my cigarettes wondering if there’s anything bigger out there. i have galaxies inside of me and everything feels so ******* small in comparison.
i am always called beautiful, smart, and strong. yet i still always end up being alone every beating heart of every night. i usually forget i have only seen the world for 17 years. i have seen the most terrible things that have aged me beyond that. my thirst for red wine is never satisfied but you were able to get me to quit smoking for 6 months. so i guess some habits do die hard. now whenever i inhale my cigarette i can’t tell if i’m breathing you further into my lungs or exhaling you back out into the world where you belong. thats the trouble with loving a wild thing, you’re always left watching the door.
every weekend i pray that you're safe and not driving home drunk again like that night two years ago when you called me, completely plastered, telling me we didn't "understand each other anymore". I still think about that every day.

I want to save you with my mouth full of forevers. Listen to every beat of your ******* heart. Taste the morphine in your veins. I’ve never been one to do drugs but i wouldn’t mind inhaling you into my lungs. We haven’t even kissed yet and I already feel intoxicated.
1670 miles between us feel like nothing until all i want to do is hold your hand and drink ***** straight out of the bottle until one of us cries and confesses every sin that doesn’t even matter.
Why am I crying while I write this? You get my nerves us so much that it pulls the corners of my mouth into a smile while I cry. So don’t be fooled my nerves do a lot of crazy things. We could go to all the places I go alone if you want. I’ll show you all my favorite hiding places in DC. I’m tired of going to the art museums alone and thinking about how Picasso was so sad he ate yellow paint in hopes it would make him less blue and Da Vinci wrote everything backwards because that was all he knew. How insane do you have to be to make art as beautiful as the human body?
I look at pictures of her and I wonder why you would ever settle for a mortal after having Aphrodite. Now I’m left to pick up the mess she left behind. I’m trying to pick up shattered glass but my hands keep getting cut and I’m bleeding everywhere and I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry. I’m just not as beautiful as her.
you said if you find the right song, it flows through the cracks of your heart like liquid gold. I don’t think it necessarily has to be a song, it can also be a person. I know what it’s like to be broken so i’m not going to rush you but I’m holding my breath waiting for you to be mine and it’s knocking me the **** out.

There are 26 letters in the alphabet, A-Z, but how am I to string those letters together to make words into coherent sentences for you to have?
I know the rain tapping on my window right now is like poetry, because it's midnight and nothing good ever happens after midnight. I don't know you yet, or the way you walk, or the way you pronounce the word 'almonds'. I haven't even memorized the freckle pattern on your back yet so I'm not too sure this is going to work out. I'll try but we both know I'm afraid of heights.
I could show you why storms are named after people and the tiny ****** cracks on my porcelain body but you're broken too which is why I won't and we won't.
One day we'll lie on my bed and attempt to make constellations out of the stick on stars on my ceiling even though I put them there when i was 8 and had no method to my madness. Don't be surprised if you wake up at 5 am and I'm gone. I'm probably on the roof smoking a cigarette in the crippling heartbeat of the to-be sunrise. I'm selfish in that way.
I remember when I was 5 I left a bowl of mac and cheese on the table after i was done eating expecting someone to take it for me. 4 days went by until one morning it was gone. If thats not a metaphor for my life I don't know what is. Maybe thats why I'm a runner.
I guess this poem isn't really about you. It's more about me and what I think you should know before you decide I'm not a work of art you want to sting on your heart.

it feels odd trying to keep you alive through words pulled from my memory. but i don’t now why language always fails me when i need it most. i’m not drunk enough yet to miss you properly like i usually do.
when sea otters sleep they hold hands so they don’t float away from one another whilst dreaming, but while i sleep my phantom hand reaches for yours. on those nights i wake up in a panic because your hand is nowhere to be found. the only thing that calms me is going outside and saying ‘i love you’ as loud as i can in hopes that the heavens can hear me. when i see a star twinkling i know someone is saying it back. so suddenly, i don’t feel as alone.
during the day i am trying to learn how to be an adult who pays her own bills, drinks coffee, and doesn’t cry at words like ‘i think i just want to be friends’. i just want to believe i have the capability to make someone happy, but i know i don’t and thats kind of like religion isn’t it?
i should have been in california by now and you should have been graduating this year but you’re not and i’m not so thats why i don’t really believe the doctors when they say i’m getting better. i still read the last message you sent me on facebook before you blocked me. you said i could talk to you about anything whenever i need to. so i guess what i’m trying to say is, nows that time.

deleted

he told me he finally understood why i wrote about things that have never happened
he said it was because of all the lives i've lived.
i see everything in colors,
the nuns throat turning purple from screaming prayers,
the boys body turning black and blue by his fathers drunken hand,
the girl going home late at night, a heart beating and bleeding red. heartbroken.
but i remember him in every lifetime.
the hands on my clock developed arthritis
and my watch went into a coma.
forever stuck on the last time i saw him.
it has been 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 since we made love and he said 'i love you'.
and every 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 i've asked myself if i could have done anything to make that love stay.
i have laid awake in every lifetime with my phone in my hand,
like a poised snake waiting for a text that will never come.
but i guess i shouldn't overthink a text message.
if i over thought every unanswered text message i wouldn't have time to overthink anything else.
i have created a nest out of every soul.
crawled inside every empty cavity of the ribcages that were available.
swam in all of the collarbones and hips that i could find.
but you can't make homes out of human beings.

I have spent time in many beds on
friday nights with boys who have
never learned my last name.
hoping to find love between their sheets.
but they can see my rainforest eyes
are filled with violent secrets
and a thirst for red wine.
they always leave me for the
girls with a more gentile voice and
stronger arms.
there is a lonely hum in my brain
where your name used to be.
as if i was in an accident
and the only part of my brain that was effected
was the part storing my memories of you.
i can’t go back anymore. not ever.
not since that night you said goodbye
instead of goodnight.
i didn’t notice until now. 8 months later.
when it was too late.

you have asked me to be soft like the belly of a fish exposed to a knife.
but i can’t. for i am as violent as lightening and as destructive as a tsunami.
causing a collision between me and everything i come in contact with.
i want to be an unlocked house in a neighborhood of robbers.
maybe i don’t know what will happen tomorrow
and maybe that scares me to the point where i can’t breathe.
my fist is roughly the same size as my heart.
sometimes i punch the wall or the box of things you left in my room just to test my heart
and everytime, i can feel my ribs breaking from all the things i wish i could say to you that i locked between the empty cavity of my chest 6 months ago when you left

the thought of her running her hands through your hair makes me nauseous.
she doesn't know that you hate it when people touch your face
because of your scars.
she's going to try to sleep with you. but she doesn't know that you won't unless you're sure that you love her.
eventually she'll find out that your lips are soft like the belly of a peach.
and when she does she'll kiss you over and over again.
she's slowly going to get drunk off of the way you walk
and it'll make her so dizzy you have to carry her to your car.
you'll buy her flowers and she'll thank you and say she loves them.
but as soon as she gets home she'll put them in a vase and forget to water them until it's too late.
but i guess if she makes you happy, i'm happy.
(not really because i still love you)

i miss the sound of your voice but i guess the rain tapping on my window will suffice for tonight.
we haven't seen each other for months now and i was calling to say that this morning when i was getting my bagel, that song you told me reminded you of me came on, and i wanted to cry because, because -
well,
you know why.

and, i guess i'm calling because only you understand
how that would break my heart.

if my alarm clock was the sound of your voice the snooze button would collect dust.
nobody will ever be to me what you were and still are.

i'm trying to save up my money. to leave. to be free.
not afraid of being moved anymore. of packing everything and leaving.
with nothing but a wool coat and a pocket with a folded up address inside.
wishing i could do that with you one day.

sometimes it gets quiet enough to hear the emptiness of my bed without you.
i had a dream the other night that you and i were on a train. we were on this train and you were holding my hand.
thats the whole dream, you were holding my hand,
and i felt you holding my hand.
i woke up and i couldn't believe it wasn't real.

i've forgotten almost everything about you already, except that
your skin was soft, like the belly of a peach, and
how you would laugh,
making fun of me for the way i pronounced words,
or just your big brown eyes.
yes. your eyes.

i am a white empty room and there is no 2 o'clock august light shining through my window.
i think it skipped me because it thought no one was home.
i say i live in a house with too many rooms.
and that things are not supposed to love you.
i want everything to happen to me as it happens.
i am 11:12 pm.
i don't really know much, but once i heard that your fist is roughly the size of your heart
and when flies fall in love their brain is rewired to know only loving each other
and when one of them dies the others brain goes blank so maybe, i'm a fly.
i was born in the year of the ox, the month of the bull, and the body of a white rose.
ripped from my home, and given to someone who does not love me.

my name tastes of smoke and regret after a long night together.
it is the feeling you get that morning after you hadn't slept and there is nothing you want more than to have a good nights sleep.
it is everything pure, but broken.
a beautiful vase smashed into a million pieces just like your heart as the only person you've ever loved walks away and doesn't say a word.
it is the moon. always hiding away part of itself in the darkness of its sadness.
it has too many letters, yet it is still not enough.
in greek it stems from its root word meaning alone.
it is the name of a poet that doesn't succeed.
is is the name of a saint who used to sin.
it is rainforest eyes that blink too much.

it's 2:00am.
and no matter how many books i leave beside me,
how many times my dog sneaks into my bed and snuggles me,
how many pillows i have,
or how many times i sleep on your side,
only you will fill this






*space

i tried to spend time with you inside my head
because i'm not important enough for you to give up a lunch break for
or to sleep beside on a 2 o'clock august afternoon as you make the light shine through my bedroom window.
brown was never my favorite color, until i saw your eyes through my tears.

                you think it's romantic to **** the girl that writes poetry about you.
                the first time we slept together you took your underwear off first.
                and kissed my forehead and told me you loved me.

i'm asked why i don't leave you
and i say i live in a house with too many rooms.
that i want everything to happen to me as it happens.
i think you have the most beautiful mind
you're the type of person that people write songs about
and stay up all night crying over
praying to their imaginary friend for the pain to stop.

deleted

it’s 2 am
we’re sitting in your car, squeezing in the front seat.
you’re holding me in your big arms
you look at me, wild eyed and restless and whisper,
“i love you. and i don’t want to lose you.”
so i looked away and fought back my tears
i held your hand, but then quickly let go.
“but you don’t intend on keeping me either. do you?”
and to that you had no response

so we continued to lay there in silence
because i know you don’t love me.
or maybe you do, and maybe it’s just in a way that i don’t understand.
we always hurt the ones that we love
so maybe you just love me too much.
i can’t wake up in the morning without you on my mind.
it troubles me to think that we might not be meant for each other.
or this entire time you are just a dream.
if you are, how could my mind ever create a creature so beautiful?
a human so perfect.

you come to me with every unbalanced emotion
but i know if i ever show up at your door,
wild eyed and restless,
you will not show me sympathy or let me in.
you will tell me to go home.

there will be nights
where i’ll stumble home, drunk,
in a dress clinging to me like a second skin.
with heels in my hand
getting down on my knees in front of the toilet
wrapping my arms around its porcelain neck
greating it like a friend or a past lover.
whispering apologies after vomiting my sorrows
down its throat.

There will be a time when i won’t remember
the faces i drove home with late at night.
or the ones i loved so dearly
and spent many sleepless nights
sobbing miserably over.

there will be boys i will ache for.
boys my mother warned me about
and my father keeps a knife in the drawer for.
boys whose names taste of smoke and regret.
who will leave in the morning
and i’ll never hear from again.

there will be times where i’ll lose myself
during the darkest hours of the night
and only you
will bring me back to reality.
and if you find me in that state
just hold me whilst i weep.

you caused me the greatest pain i have ever known by leaving.
yet the thought of you returning to me is more beautiful than any dream i can imagine.
my heart aches and breaks for you.
but i think i’ll miss you forever
like the sun misses the stars in the morning skies.
sometimes we meet somebody who’s iridescent
and nobody else can compare.
i guess i accepted what i though i deserved.
it’s like i’m drowning, but i can see everybody else breathing.
this summer is just a blur of all the perfect nights we spent together.
now from friends to lovers to absolutely nothing,
but complete strangers who were once very much in love with one another.
and i think about the last time i saw you. all the time.
yes, i’m drunk. but you’re beautiful.
and tomorrow morning i’ll be sober,
but you’ll still be beautiful.

oh how it rained and rained
and there you were still inside my brain.
a headache that wouldn’t go
along with the constant aches and pains of your remaining essence stored away.
i went outside on the roof. i saw the moon and thought of you.
summer is over and so are we.
the birds move on but i cannot.
flowers dying all around me
remind us the earth misses the laughter too.
you keep appearing in my sleep
stitching up the seams on every broken promise you couldn’t keep.
the rain begins to penetrate my skin
and thunder shook my feet.
i remembered the shape of your tongue.
the feel of your hand on my bare back.
every single one of your scars.
so now, i’m just cradling broken feelings.
but there’s so much beauty in a storm.

deleted

I’m sorry. For all that was left unsaid.
For all the mistakes that were made.
The beauty of what we had is fading.
I remember our summer beneath the trees.
Things may change, but our time never will.
We may grow up and move on,
But our summer never will, because we were young.
Our memories will never leave me.
I wish you’d stop
And maybe you’d remember
The time of our lives.
Then maybe you’d believe me when I say, I’m sorry.