in past lives,
my heart was a corn maze with no end
and I wandered aimlessly
searching for answers and explanations
to questions I did not know existed

I viewed life through a kaleidoscope
of blurred colors and fine lines
that could never be crossed,
fixated at stars whenever I kept my head up
for a little longer than necessary
in order to catch a glimpse
of hopes falling faster than my eyelids could
drop to tango,
at the end of a dizzying afternoon

the woman with ancient eyes cradles her rosy-cheeked daughter,
wide-eyed and bursting with the innocence of the youth--
she is a tenement child, raised gracefully in the shadowed slums of her father's mistakes,
wears a tattered dress, spinning alone in a whirlwind of dust mites and silenced laughter.
and when she hears tales of the children with taffeta dresses and China dolls, she
smiles--
out of love, replacing envy with euphoric contentment, because
she has her mama's eyes, the voices
of the fatherless children
singing along to her same song,
shouting cries of hope against the crumbling walls
of a broken world she is beginning to heal.

I fell helplessly in love with an angel
possessing the Midas touch
and stained glass wings
that had since forgotten how to fly,
but as we immersed ourselves
in unpredictable oceans made of
bizarre dreams and treacherous emotion,
we taught each other how to soar again.

We danced slowly to the melody
of our own syncopated heartbeats
that matched perfectly to the rhythm
of the hushed songs emerging
from the depths of our parched souls

Gone are the hopes of a future
dedicated entirely to our selfish intentions
replaced by ambition revolving around
the art of a future devoted  boundlessly
to each other

We will continue to glide together,
locked in time by fragile pinky promises
as we venture through a broken world
created entirely within
the small waist of an hourglass

And for one day,  I can only pray
that we find ways to love without the limits
of sand aspiring to run out,
because the vastness of the universe
calls me to not only follow
the hushed echoes of my own voice,
but the brilliance of gold my heart has become
ever since he learned how to caress it

She held more secrets than seconds in a day,
mumbling pained confessions in hushed whispers
that bled out like stab wounds trailing paths
on white snow,
painting a china doll façade made of scarlet
as an eloquent attempt to mask the fragility
she aspired to hold

And that is just what she did,

She held,

onto hopes dangling from the edge of skyscrapers,
breath permanently stolen from her lungs
despite shaking hands itching to let go

storing memories made of dust within damaged pockets
even when the weight got so gruesome
she could no longer bear to walk
with a soul made entirely of gray matter,
training heartstrings to stretch
and cradle every delicate moment
she feared losing
before they could even take place


She is the girl who will collect your voicemails,
hoarding letters like seashells
resting along abandoned shorelines
due to the danger of losing the soft breaths
of the only one who was capable
of breaking all of her rules,
who whispered her name like
unfinished stanzas of a poem
she did not know how to write

Fear,
and fear alone-
of the potential that the ocean could swallow
the glass shards and kiss the remnants of her joy
goodnight
before she could even feel them
splashing against the same skin
she never felt at home in

even now, there are days I spend floating
in unfamiliar skin that never stops
aching to crawl away from me,
plagued with thoughts that sit
like clumps of undissolved sugar  
in tea that tastes different this morning

outside, I can hear the love song
of snowflakes caressing my windowpane

and it is strange to think that
somewhere, someone is
holding their newborn child,
tiny hands and dark hair, with eyelashes
fluttering like trees in blizzard wind,
and someone else is hearing the ancient voice
of the father they never got to meet
at the end of a static telephone call

my heart leaps for the little girl
with pink dimpled cheeks,
her favorite polka-dotted dress
spinning in unpredictable circles, eyes up
at the kites dancing against the baby blue sky
somewhere warm, whimsical, and
dreamed of

today, there is joy
but it cannot find me

the poet smiles at her reflection
in a mug of English breakfast,
tiny sips of truth as she dreams
of the return of her muse

and as expected,
today he is silent

dotting her i’s with his lopsided grins
she hums quietly,
sealing the thousandth one
she will never get around to sending

using kisses as postage stamps,
she adds another to a pile
of flimsy envelopes addressed
to a ghost
who cannot answer.

Sometimes, when the world is still
I find faces in the tile cracks
of the bathroom floor

Tainted with age and despair,
they are trapped where ceramic
meets skin

It is with them that I worry,
crushed like expired cherry blossom petals
that litter the streets of early summer

It is with them that I sigh
for freedom,
Maybe we have time
but it does not
have us.

I am here to tell you a little secret. It really shouldn't be one, but perhaps that is the main problem. I hope to somehow fix it. But here it is:

You are beautiful whether you believe it or not.

Here is a dangerous lie that our society and culture endlessly romanticizes:
• Beauty is skin deep.
This is the part where I prove them wrong.

Beauty is not skin deep.

Beginning at a young age, I developed an unhealthy concept of what true beauty was. To this day, I can still recall being twelve years old and devastatingly unhappy at my physical appearance staring back at me through my own reflection in the bathroom mirror. I saw nothing but ugliness glaring at me, the glass revealing all of my visible flaws. I didn't look like the girls in the magazines that scattered my bedroom floor, faces glowing like angels on glossy paper. I wanted to. I wanted more than anything to be comfortable being myself.

There was just so much that stuck out to me, so much that needed fixing. Curves in all the right places? Forget about it, more like a stomach that hung over my jeans. My hair was so thick that it snapped every single hair tie and couldn't hold a single curl. My nose sat awkwardly on my face, always something to sigh at whenever I would catch a glimpse of myself. My eyes were too dark, too brown to be beautiful. I couldn't grasp this idea of unattainable perfection, the kind of beauty that only exists on the airbrushed models on movie posters.

And because I could not love my appearance. I could not love myself. My self-confidence plummeted at this age, causing a wave of hysteria to envelope me. Trapping me in its embrace, this flourishing hatred began to consume everything that I was, distorting the visions of the potential I carried within me.

There was nothing beautiful about it, hating every single inch of myself. I was so busy trying to fit into the mold of the most gorgeous human being, trying to wear a mask of a person who turned heads whenever they entered the room. My mind had been wrapped around this idea countless of times to the point where I could no longer find anything worth loving inside of me.

But while chasing this idea of flawlessness, it was almost as if I had forgotten about everything else. The things that composed myself during that time period, the things that were not visible to the naked eye. The magnificent things that were present in me, that made me who I was- hidden by a wall I had put up by myself simply because I felt the need to hide from the judgmental eyes of an imperfect society.

Years have passed and now I love who I am. I am no longer twelve years old, but there are still many painful insecurities that plague me, except now I am strong enough to look at them and smile.

I have so much to be thankful for. Though I do not stand 5'7 like I had wished, I feel tall when I radiate kindness to the people around me. I do not have runway legs, but they are strong enough to leap through the air and run away from everything that no longer respects me. I do not have piercing blue eyes, but mine are capable of finding art in everything around me. I may not possess an hourglass shape, but I know how to use the time I am given to impact my peers in a positive manner. I may have bad days, but that doesn't mean I have to give up every ounce of faith and hope left within me. I may be ridiculously imperfect, but I am so outrageously real- and surprisingly, that is all I ever want to be.

The skinny girls in magazines and shirtless poster guys are still beautiful, but that doesn't mean that you aren't. To my boys- You can be attractive without a six-pack or a six-foot stature. And ladies, you can be stunning without a Kim Kardashian figure. You cannot be defined by a number that reads on a scale or the way your hair looks like when you forget to brush it in the morning. You are not labeled by the color of your skin, your athletic abilities, or whether or not your thighs touch when you walk. You are beautiful because you are you. The way you speak passionately about the things that keep you breathing. The way you laugh with your friends on the bus ride home from school until your sides feel like they're going to cave in. The way your eyes light up at the desire to understand, to learn, to grow. The way your smile spreads like the flu, even the way you fall asleep at your desk when you spend four hours finishing up the homework you could have finished two weeks ago.
You are made of blemishes, scars, imperfections, and insecurities- but they are just as wonderful as your soul. They are constant reminders of how far you have come, and the journey you have yet to fulfill. This is your life, and it would be a shame to go through it without leaving a mark.
They are the flowers growing in the sidewalk cracks of your mind. Do not let them be overshadowed by the debilitating weight of the world's words.

Let them grow, Let them be free.
Let yourself be beautiful for who you are
rather than who you are not.

love exists in the crevices of his lips
when they meet mine, fluttering
with promises and words powerful
enough to knock me down effortlessly

it thrives when we're sitting on the couch,
Christmas tree lights like dazzling fragments of heaven
reflecting in his familiar eyes,
and it blossoms when we walk together
in the autumn wind, the sighing
breeze echoing like wildfire in our
ears, whispering both elation
and disbelief

that I am even here right now,
after sixteen years of mystery,
a collection of dust-covered insecurity
now an open book beckoning to be read

yet here we are, and
he holds my hand like a crystal glass
he is afraid to drop, and
I cannot stop thanking him
over and over again,
a fragile metronome of gratitude-
for willing to be brave enough to read
my very first page.

I am just me,
a dreamer who keeps her eyes peeled at the sky, wide open like overflowing saucers
wondering, imagining the life that exists
beyond these familiar clouds and stars
that blanket gently over the sins of mankind

Staring up at the vibrant hues of the
sky's palette, I wonder if,
somewhere past the threshold of everything we know, there exists a parallel universe of sorts,
a timeless paradox or reflection
of the lives we have lived
and perhaps, the ones we have yet to live

Maybe somewhere existing outside
of our solar system, there is a girl
who resembles myself, with the same
passion to understand
encompassing the irises of her eyes,
and I wonder
if she has tasted the bittersweet flavor
of love yet, or if she had ever experienced
the emptiness of feeling it slip
between the hollow cracks
of her slender fingers

and I crave desperately to hold her,
to shelter her from her imaginary torture
and to be able to embrace
the faraway dreamer in my own arms,
and if I could, I would
send a shuttle into outer space
filled with enough love to orbit around
the uncontrollable expanse that lacks not only
gravity, but art-
the art of loving
and being loved


so I shout up at the sky, hoping that
the highs and lows of my voice
will resonate to her, and console the damsel
so that she will be greeted with care
rather than distress,
so I am able to send her the same love
given to me-
even when I believed that
no one in the galaxy
had any left to give

Ground control to Major Tom,
please send her my heart.

You are fifteen the first time someone says your name like it is made of electricity. He is made of sunlight, the kind that you wake up feeling on your skin and the kind of voice you still hear ringing like your favorite song in your head even after you hang up the phone.
You love him simply because he is real.
When you talk to him, you no longer feel compelled to think with your brain. Rather, it is the monotonous thump within the cavern walls of your chest that does the thinking for you.
When he says your name like a contagion he is desperate to catch, it skips. The spaces between the beats become less and less defines, both snare drum hearts pounding in unison for each other. Nothing else exists except for him and those hypnotic eyes, like footprints he leaves behind on the surface of your soul.
Your lips meet under the luminescence of the Big Dipper above, beneath the radiance of the same stars you used to curse before you met him. You recall the moment you had given up at the irrational idea of love, shaking your fists at God, screaming questions that only time could possibly answer. The days when the only thing reverberating against your lips was a collection of absence and everything left unsaid. But those days are over, and now he looks at you- gazes into your eyes like had found what he had spent seventeen years unknowingly searching for.
You can't help a smile from blossoming across your face because your heart, though it thinks, over analyzes, now it understands. He is your serendipity, a piece of heaven revealed to you at the least expected time. When all you wanted to do was destroy your fragile skin with the remnants of what could have been, he became your guardian angel. One that pulled you from the wrath and toil of your deepest afflictions and whispered, “You are safe. You are home.”

We’re sitting on the plaid couch in my basement, your hand in mine like a puzzle piece we took forever to find. It’s when we’re doing nothing when I realize that I want to do everything with you. It is almost always winter in my mind, my thoughts permanently frozen in time, paralyzed to my bed sheets the way icicles cling to shivering windowpanes. But with you, it’s different, our blossoming love proving the existence of a perpetual spring. We grow wildly- like two oak trees embraced behind the fence in my backyard, our branches intertwined and our roots firmly entrusted in the dampness of the soil. Not even the strongest breath of wind could destroy us.
And we walk hand-in-hand in the breath of October, the kind that stings like knives to the bone. You forget to bring a jacket with you but you insist that you are perfectly fine, that the electricity radiating between our fingers is enough to keep you warm for a collection of intoxicating eternities. And to us, the rest of the world barely exists, their watchful eyes and orchestral voices like anthems proclaiming the silliness of our juvenile love, a bright-eyed girl in a violet trench coat and a boy with a smile so bright it’s almost as if she had accidentally fallen in love with the rays of the sun. The kind of livid brightness that warms the coldest of hearts, the darkest of rooms.
But we walk to the neighborhood coffee shop with the combined tranquility of two retired lovers strolling through Paris and the frenzied excitement of exhilarated children on the seemingly endless journey to Disney World. Every welcoming front porch and townhouse we pass feels empty in comparison to the home we created within us, with a fire permanently kindled in our souls and between our restless fingers. You kiss me where the sidewalk ends, between the trees that resemble the magnificence we have become- the sky melting every molecule of transparent sadness I had left within me through an endless palette of pastel bliss. And in that moment, we become the fragile remnants of summer heat stuck trapped and misunderstood in the birth of autumn.

some seek art in sidewalk cracks
or between fragile spines of old books
and some search for meaning
through the gaps between the oak trees
where solitude exists and melts
together with the prismatic hues of
every sunset fading into memory

some find purpose in silence
or rather, the center of bustling conversation
and some find beauty in the enigma of the ocean
and the shy touch of the sun, warm,
like butter coating our lonely souls

everyone but her,
she never had to search, for her masterpiece
was herself.
her love was made of notes strung together
and played colorfully, radiating through the air
as smooth as mother's finest silk, and
with every beat, she painted the most beautiful
of images, dancing along to the hum of her heart
that never understood the meaning of silence

and her paradise meant being blinded
by stage lights and pride, each song
a testament built by bones
that taught themselves how to bend
but remain vigilant,
because breaking was never an option
in her pink-ribboned world of piercing perfection

but they will continue to search for happiness
in howling wind and steady rain,
never bothering to find her smile
fluttering effortlessly in the music,
that smile- the one that could put
the world's most beautiful dance
to shame

I learned all about paralysis
when I found myself waking,
cheek pressed against the wetness
of a blank journal page, aching
with the stifled screams of
my unvoiced muse.

Perhaps it was the cold hand
of my nightmare that shook
me awake, Vulnerability-
who carried himself in vain
and laced his gaze with the
severity of a thousand swords
bracing for impact, framed with
the familiar mask of the Joker-
whom I have become.

Crippled by a force almost demonic
which hovered my thoughts over paper
close enough to almost feel them come alive,
yet distant enough to watch them
disintegrate from the rooftops and
collect as a *** of torment
stuck permanently in the part of my throat
I could not bear to swallow.

To unravel like the peel of
a summer tangerine, lying exposed-
cool air breathing under naked skin
I have taught myself to shelter
from the judgment of  bitter eyes
and words put together only
to criticize.

but in visions I see a girl, dark eyes and
charcoal hair spilling over paper
covered in pretty penmanship
and she is fearless-
hand dancing along to the symphony
of her thoughts, staccato beats
and Allegro! her passion encompasses
more than just ink on lines, you
can see them echo and reverberate
fragmented poetry through the channels
of her veins

and it is so evident- she is free.

and for her, my dream expands further
and I begin to unravel words
stuck trapped under thick orange skin
and invisible walls designed to shelter,
exposing myself to him-
my nightmare, and the retinas
coated effortlessly in judgment

and I am reborn today rather
than tomorrow, eyes a little brighter
and this time, I awaken to the aroma
of new beginnings.

It’s strange, really, how I find myself tangled in a relentless cycle of pause and play, of fast forward and rewind. So often I envision myself with my hands reached out in attempt to catch a moment in the air, to take hold of a feeling before its color dissolves into another collective memory. Emotions flutter anxiously between my fingers, like restless fireflies trapped inside glasses they cannot escape.

But I do not wish to steal their euphoria, only to preserve it.

They say I was born with a soul incapable of finding rest, possessing an interminable wanderlust that refused to dwindle. A blessing and a curse it was, the perpetual desire to hoard memories like expired love letters in the deepest trenches of my mind. I chased Love until my legs would give out beneath me, and even then I found myself crawling to graze its touch.  

Pause, play, rewind.

A lethal dose of nostalgia. Each solitary moment dances to the tempo of my blood flow, the erratic heartbeats that remind me how alive I have become. I have taken them hostage.

Each ephemeral moment, possessing a life so fleeting and bittersweet. The mellifluous echo of my favorite song being shouted at the top of my lungs, the familiar scent of the first book that stole my breath away. The first rush of freedom, the bewildering taste of loss, the initial weight of a damaged heart.

Like fireflies, they emit an effervescent light that radiates through the darkest chasms of my mind. A focal point. A distraction. Something beautiful amidst the murkiness of tears and unrequited love.

And I see their light shining through my fingertips, illuminating the gaps where nothing but absence exists, and I let go. They are free, an autonomous ray of light that floats through the spaces where I once felt so alone.

But I am not alone anymore, I am never alone, because I’ve created something permanent. A home in the middle of nowhere. A shelter for the explanations I could never bring myself to elaborate upon. A dazzling luminescence that will never die out.

We are everlasting.

i think i'll always think of him as the ocean
with his eyes made of tidal waves and
a voice like a current that could always
pull me closer

i was the weather,
a pair of glass eyes that would rain
when i could no longer find reasons
to fall in love with the sun, and
i remember the days when he would
hold me in his arms when i could no longer
find shelter inside my skin, and
how our intertwined fingers became
my newfound reason to live

and letting go always felt
like i had run out of oxygen, gasping for
a feeling i thought i would lose
because i was taught that
love always dies, that it would only be
a matter of time before i would be left
suffocating in silence alone once more

but i am able to breathe on my own now
without feeling as if my chest could collapse
and swallow me whole
because i know that even the darkest skies
hold beauty within them, and if i just look up
a little farther,
i will see the moon

I often think about how and why our lives intersected
and how strange it was that we used to be nothing more
than two bright-eyed five-year-old kids
in the same kindergarten class over a decade ago
and how now we were lying down side-by-side listening to Hozier
through his beat-up headphones and stargazing in the back of someone’s pickup truck

and it’s strange how
neither of us had the courage to point out
the fact that there were no visible stars in the cloudy sky that night
because
that
didn’t
matter


all that mattered was the fact that for an eternity and a half,
I had felt more like a glass left half-empty and yet now I wished
that this moment would never end,
that we could just lie here in the freezing cold that burned my bones to the core
just because my head rested fine on his chest and that was enough

and I wonder why it’s so hard for me to open up to him
even though he unfolds himself for me,
opens up doors to his beautiful soul just so I am able to peek through
the cabinets where he stores all of his reasons to live, and
where he hides the parts of him that he would get rid of, if he had a choice

I want to tell him about the poetry I have found in the way he walks,
he talks,
he breathes, and
how staring into those ocean eyes makes me feel
like I’ve suddenly hit the bottom, permanently gasping for air,
but
I love it,
I love it,
I love it,

and as we stare up at the sky
in the back of an old pickup truck
by an old crumbling church,

my God, his voice matches the silent hum of the street lights,
burning in sync with our imaginary stars
and at this moment, I am no longer an almost-empty glass,
I am alive

if you can hold her hand
without feeling torn at the idea that
one day, you may never feel its warmth again,
then you are not in love with her

do not keep muttering worn-out
i-love-you's
under your breath
just to fill the empty spaces in the air
even if they no longer beat with passion,
do not try to explain the thousands of reasons
why you love her
if you don't

because if you can live with the thought
of her name being engraved in
someone else's mind,
her fingers running through someone else's hair,
the thought of those beautiful words
whispered into lips that don't belong to you
then you have never loved her, even for a second

and the bitter fragments
of the love she gave away
were never worthy to
belong to you

when i think of you, my brain fills with white noise
like the muffled static on a TV screen, you were always something
that filled the void, that kept the emptiness occupied
but you're gone and i'm left here wringing my hands together
when the chorus of your favorite song comes on the radio, and
i cannot breathe, i cannot breathe, i cannot breathe
with all of these words draped around my neck,
with the weight of a thousand sharp memories that
still sting despite the thousands of times i've tried to demolish them

i used to dance endlessly to the beat of your heart,
but a music box can only wind so much, and now
i'm stuck listening to the same silent scream of
i want you, i want you, i want you,
i'm still addicted to every part of that familiar old voice
though i swore i was finally clean

every day that passes feels like the last page ripped out
of my favorite book, not even worth reading anymore
because i wouldn't want to waste my time reading a story
that ends without you by my side

I look at you and I see half-finished poems and words that don’t exist, your eyes are like indigo oceans I keep drowning in but somehow I don’t mind not being able to breathe.  I wish I knew more about why you are the way you are, what terrifies you the most about yourself, and why I find it difficult to catch my breath when you look at me as if I am a stolen daydream. You make up for a lot of things, really, like going through fourth period half asleep because last night it took me three hours to stop thinking about you. You make up for that, and everything else. You are made of electricity and good intentions stitched together with a voice that could shatter a million hearts, and I am just a lost soul wondering why I trust you with mine. And I do, I do, I trust you with my stupid old heart, and I want to memorize every single corner of yours like the back of my hand. I want to know how a heart like yours could love such a wounded one like mine, but maybe that’s what love is, sacrificing perfection for something tragically real. I look at you and I see fluctuating potential, like the morning sun peeking out behind tired gray clouds, and how sometimes that has to be enough. Ever since I met you, my heart has remembered how to beat, my hands have remembered how to hold, and you love me enough to make me forget how much I don’t love myself. Maybe you are temporary and maybe you’re an illusion, but I still cling to the hope that maybe, this is why I held on until now.

I remember the day you left me as vividly as yesterday
and how I tried to memorize every detail of your face
when we said goodbye, as if I would never see it again,
because I wasn’t sure if I would be able to live
not being able to remember the person I called my home

I used to think of you as my oxygen,
as tightly-sewn thread,  holding me together,
as a half-finished love story,
you were always something that I swore
I couldn’t live without,
you were always the reason I woke up
every morning feeling brand new,
and I wasn’t even sure life would be worth living
without you

but the clock kept on ticking without you by my side,
and I’m learning to let go, you beautiful creature,
I am still learning,
but one day I will understand
and although my heart still stings when I read your letters,
and even though I feel a pang of emptiness
when the air gets cold and I remember
everything about you,

I am learning how to forget you,
we will always be words left unsaid
but maybe things are better this way
(I will live without you)

i am the type of girl who is afraid of looking down
who shuts her eyes in glass elevators
and fears heights almost as much
as she fears herself

and the moment i met you was the moment
i decided to loosen my death grip,
realizing that i was exhausted of clinging to my high hopes,
suddenly feeling weightless, fearless,
flying away from the stranger i used to be,
flying away from the person i was
before i met you

they teach us poetry in school,
the kind we read in those dumb literature books
filled with stupid stanzas and rhymes
and words on paper made to make you feel something

i know you're not made of paper, and that
you aren't words or letters or rhymes
but you were the first person who made me feel something,
something so real, something so catastrophically alive
and i love you for that,
for being my favorite poem

i love you to the rooftops and to the skyscrapers and clouds
and i know i'll always have to keep my eyes shut tightly
and have to hold your hand so tight my knuckles turn white
but you are poetry,
you made me feel alive again

i wasn't afraid of heights,
i was afraid of falling
but you caught me anyway
and i love you for that,
for teaching me that falling doesn't always
have to hurt

they ask me if i love you
and i am quick to shake my head
no, not anymore,
but my dreams still revolve around you
and my stomach feels like cherry stems
tied loosely together, and even though
the words that leave my lips scream
no, not anymore,
the empty feeling in my heart
feels like a snare drum of contradiction

you are fireflies in the backyard dusk
and i am barefoot and flushed cheeks
trying to catch you in my hands
you are red sunsets that fade into dark skies
and the sky seems as though it is bleeding tonight,
and so is my heart,
all for you

it's like i am holding you still, forever
cupped in my hands like fireflies in the summer
and i am sorry,
i am sorry,
i am so sorry,
for holding you captive in
this jar of broken promises

they ask me if i love you,
and i am quick to shake my head
no, not anymore
but i still love you,
i still love you,
i still really love you,
and the reckless, dangerous part of me will always love you

you are my firefly,
and i cannot bring myself to let you go

It still terrifies me when I remember
the moment I swore I would never believe
anyone who said they loved me ever again

At the end of the day, as I lie here
with my pillow soaking wet with tear stains,
words are just meaningless fragments,
and lately I've been feeling like a malnourished plant
desperate for a drop of hope amidst a barren desert

Even though the wounds you caused on my heart
have aged into stronger scars,
I still stand with clenched teeth and a weak stomach
whenever another boy with pretty eyes tells me
I'm his everything

I miss being the bright-eyed girl
who reeked of confidence and wasn't afraid to accept affection
with open arms rather than always keeping them crossed.
I miss feeling invincible, like my heart was unbreakable,
instead of hearing the monotone thump
of what used to live in it

But most of all, what I miss the most
is waking up every day without having to wonder
if your eyes have found someone else's.
I wonder if holding her hand makes your jigsaw heart feel complete.
I was convinced that I was your missing piece,
but I haven't felt whole in the longest time.

Missing you seemed like the biggest mistake I had ever made,
but as I sit here feeling broken and utterly irreparable,
like the frail skeleton of someone I used to be,
I'm starting to think that perhaps,
My biggest mistake was giving away all the love I had stored inside of me
to someone who never even tried to love me
in the first place.

two months ago i swore i'd rather die than live without you
but recently, it's been scaring me
how much i've been forgetting to think about you

i thought that distance meant
gasping for air and constantly searching
for someone else to fill the empty puzzle piece inside of me
since you weren't there to do it anymore
but the empty space you left behind doesn't feel lonely at all
and i finally feel like i'm allowed to breathe
without the weight of your cruel words around my neck

i admit that i miss the fragments of the person you used to be
and i still get shivers when i hear our song on the radio
or when i reread the letter you gave me for the thousandth time
but i'm not hopelessly in love with you anymore
and i'll never stop thanking you for leaving me
so that i could grow to realize with all my heart and soul
that i don't need to hurt
to feel alive

There are so many other girls with perfect hair and skin and eyes and compared to them, I am a walking joke. I am an unfixable calamity of dark grey circles under my eyes from staying up all night because the thoughts in my brain always seem to bloom at the worst times. I am the weight of a thousand words that sit at the tip of my tongue but refuse to come out. So please don't ever tell me that I am flawless because that word is so far away from what I aim to be. At the end of the day, I want to be so incredibly flawed and real and incurably human but still beautiful because of what is inside my heart instead of what sits on my skin. I have slowly become a whirlwind disaster of running away from your toxicity. I am a hurricane of good intentions gone wrong but I can promise you that you'll never find a perfect person that could love you as imperfectly as I ever did.

i am not a metaphor
for the cracked sidewalk
that sprawls outside my door
growing unwanted weeds,
littered with faults and things
people don't want anymore

i am nothing like the sidewalk
my heart is not made of cement
and it is not used to being walked on
yes, i have faults, but i was not made
to be stepped on repeatedly
because i am human, not asphalt
and my heart is often stuck in my throat,
not steady enough for your heavy words-
not built for your harsh footsteps

i am not a metaphor
for the card games that are played
in rundown casinos
filled with bustling people
with foreheads gleaming sweat,
the sole ambition to conquer the first prize-
people just like you

i am nothing like the card games
and i can't keep pretending that
nothing bothers me, with
a permanent poker face
and always settling to be the sore loser
because i've spent too many forevers
hidden under your shadow,
and it's about time that i pulled a joker
because i am tired of always letting you win

i used to write about him
endlessly
in tattered journal pages
and in cheesy poems
but i didn't want to admit it

i didn't want to admit
the fact that he was gone
and writing him into paper
wasn't going to bring back
the person i once knew

i didn't want to admit
that i wasn't in love-
that instead, i was cold and lonely
for endless summer nights
in the pitch black vacuum of my room
when everyone else was sound asleep
and i should've been, too
i guess at that time
i just didn't want to admit
the fact that i was too busy writing
to realize i was just lying to myself

so this is me finally admitting it-
this is my apology letter
for blindly lying to myself,
for believing the miserable lie
that writing about him
would bring us back to life

because so far it hasn't worked
and i'm undeniably sick
of lying to myself
and ignorantly believing it will

i was in the seventh grade
when i met a boy in a red shirt
whose voice sounded a lot like home,
and i remember hearing them say

"silly girl,
you're only thirteen years old,
you don't even know what love is!"

but who are they to judge
when their ancient bodies
have already forgotten
what it felt like to be yound
and electrified?

who cares if it isn't their
dictionary definition of true love,
i'd still rather be young and clueless and trembling
with my veins pumping his name
over and over again
than having to spend the rest of my life
away from the only thing
i'll ever love enough to call
home

one of my favorite things in the world is the way i catch you smiling after we talk. there's something so captivating about the way you smile to yourself when you think i'm not looking (but i am, i always am.) i have memorized the way your hair catches the rays of sunlight and how you hold your head up in class when you are too busy falling asleep to pay attention. i think that your eyes are windows that hold thousands of different galaxies within them and lately it has been killing me that one day i will no longer be one of them. you always saw things the way i did and i could have sworn our souls were tied together in another life. i find myself getting tired of love stories but i don't think it's possible that i could ever get tired of ours. we were never about red roses or cheesy valentine's day cards or sloppy makeout sessions in the back of the movie theatre like the other kids, but that's okay. shy "good mornings" and deep midnight conversations mean more to me than anything left in the world. you can write anything on a blank sheet of paper and call it poetry, but our story is not just a puddle of words and fractured sentences. it is not a menagerie of fancy words dressed up to look like they mean something, because our story is the epitome of beautiful. i understand that time is just the sad ticking sound of the lonely clock on the wall, but if a genie granted me three wishes, i would wish for more of it with you. forevers are always infinite and i know it's hard for a girl like me to wrap her mind around a concept like that, but all i know is that i'll never be ready to spend an infinity without you by my side.

my stomach sinks to my feet
whenever i think about you leaving me
and my mind is occupied
with the same haunting thoughts
of needing you to stay

i think of you as a thunderstorm
but i'd rather drown in your rage
than be forced to live without it

our fragile hearts are tied together
with a string of pinky promises
and when you finally leave me,
the best part of me will leave too

maybe one day
i won't have to wait for a call
glancing at the clock
as empty seconds pass by
because you'll be calling me
from the kitchen instead

maybe one day
i won't have to wonder
what our hands would feel like
intertwined
because we'd be too busy
not letting go

i'm still waiting for the day
that i won't have to write
poems about missing you,
wondering if you still love me
because you'll be lying next to me
whispering the hundreds of reasons
why you do

If he makes you feel like you are just the sum of your flesh and bones, run away. Run as fast as you can and do not dare look back. The rush of cold air will light your lungs on fire anyway, but keep running until your legs give out and you find yourself somewhere far away.  Once you leave the past behind, you are no longer a girl with stringy hair and beady eyes who fell asleep every night with her throat burning of choked-back tears and missing him. You are no longer the empty girl who counted seconds waiting for a sign to stay. You are, and always will be, greater than the sum of the stars in the sky. You are the bird's song and the rain's hum. You are every seedling sprouting in an open field, but you yourself are responsible for your new beginning. Do not let anyone tell you that you are equal to the scars that scatter your skin or the empty face staring back at you in the mirror. When you finally find yourself somewhere far, far away, I hope you also find who you really are.

it's been one whole year
one whole revolution around the sun
365 days of wondering why
you told me i was your everything
but you left it all behind

how could you leave everything behind?

you left me with empty hands
after i gave you the whole world
but i am not your sun
and you do not revolve around me like you used to

one whole year
of broken promises and mumbled friendship
and memorizing each other
like the backs of our hands
even though i'm not sure if
i still want to remember you
anymore

you're the throbbing pain
and also the heavenly relief
and even though i cannot stand the thought of you,
you still take up the most space
in my mind

she was a novel
with twists and turns
the kind shoved behind
library bookshelves
and under heartsick beds

she spun words
into velvet
and they seeped
right through her lips
and onto his lonely skin

and oh, how she loved him
with the passion of a sunset
and the bravery of a child
and her words craved him
even more than she did

he was the reason why
her eyes strained a torturous fog
and her words clogged her throat
and a dozen unsent letters
desperately cluttered her room
and her words weren't velvet,
they were just word
and just like her,
they were not worth loving anymore

you were not a verse
or a stanza
or a meaningless jumble
of half-hearted words
and you were not just
the crossed-out name
in the back of my book

you were the ray of light
wedged between the pain
and how the colorful feelings
that decorated my mind
could never be put into words
no matter how hard i tried

you were never smudged gray
or ink stains on skin
and you were more than the substance
that spilled itself onto paper
because to me, you meant so much more
than a collection of words,

you were the story

home used to be
a fire crackling,
the furnace roaring
the stack of books
piled up by my bedside
and home was the
creaking stairs,
my favorite hiding places
and the words i could not say
written gently on my wall-

that was home before

but who would've thought
that home could also exist
in the eyes of a beautiful boy
who hid my secrets
better than the space
behind the cupboard ever could-
who understood what was written
on my walls, engraved in my mind
even better than i ever could have

home used to be
the place i would run to
whenever the skies bled
in somber gray,
and i wonder why
i always end up running to you
every time