you’re not allowed to miss me.
not when you had me in between the lines of your palms so deep i could not find where you stopped and i began — to the point i merged within your being — you don’t get to miss the spine shudder i gave you now that you are left hollow and seeking solace elsewhere — craving the one thing you failed to give but loved to take

you cried wolf so much — ripped out far too many hearts to feast on that you forgot to guard your own, the security system only being a thin layer of your pride

you are not allowed to miss me
because once i finish drinking your blood, there will be nothing left of you to dissolve in my shadow.

there’s something wrong with me. there has to be — because how else would i have been able to look into your eyes, touch your soul, and taste the warmth it lacked? how could i stomach you so easily yet still want to purge you up like bad liquor? you never were quite right, but that’s okay. because somehow, that’s just what i liked.

i beg of you — romanticize me.

when my bones get heavy, and my eye-bags darken — romanticize the way i still slide my hands into yours and allow myself to melt in your embrace, no matter how much it aches to breathe. no matter how much more i crave from you but cannot do. the pain turns into pleasure and this pleasure is pain.

romanticize the lack of words i attempt to create, to express in my own fashion when all i can do is show through repeated phrases that make me more machine than human.

that is all i am — all i can be
but please romanticize me.

i’ll never be sober from you.

intoxicated by your fermented words, i know i’ll always drink up your breath as if it is an antidote waiting to be crushed into my lungs.

sometimes i wonder if my trauma is still after me. i sit in my bed and try not to count each chipped paint mark on my wall by two’s and how many knots in my stomach that tightened in the last hour, i wonder if my trauma is still alive even after all of those years ago

i fall like the autumn leaves, the same ones that crunched under my shoes when i was thirteen, what do you do when the music finally stops?

you could start it over and replay the same record or you could put in a new one, they say old habits die hard but mine keep showing up at my doorstep like old family coming home for the holidays, except they overstay more of their welcome and never like to be put to bed.

maybe the punch line is that i don’t really know when to stop either, that i don’t like the feeling of my heart not being in my own mouth. every time i get an option to put in a new record, i put the old one back in, even if it’s damaged and has too many faults.

i wonder if my trauma likes to be held, because when i was fourteen, i refused to be touched at all.

and i can’t help but wonder if my trauma ages along with me, because sometimes i still see the same little kid with guns for hands staring right back at me wondering who the hell i am.

i like to think that soon i’ll grow tired of that record and put in a new one, let it play out and have myself enjoy new music for the first time again, and then when it dies, i can give it a proper burial and move on to a bigger label

and maybe i’m capable of doing so right now,

but my trauma likes to sit at the edge of my bed & play that same **** record as a theme song of my wake.

“will you just hold me?… please?”

you hiccuped due to the amount of heaviness you poured out that night, sniffling and begging for me to open my arms to invite you in for a sense of comfort i knew you craved but were always too prideful to ask for. here you were wanting to be cradled like a child, and i answered the call. my arms felt like they were only pushing your broken parts together again for just a moment as you dismantled under my touch — falling limp and cold, face buried with soft whimpers, you were a broken child in a grown man’s body.

you clutched my shirt tightly, knuckled into your fist until they had turned white — you begged for me not to leave you like your dad did. if your own father saw you as unworthy and left, that meant anyone could, right?

you lifted your head to grab my face between your cold shaky palms and pressed your salty tear stained lips onto mine with a delicacy i haven’t felt from you since—i hold onto this memory too much than i probably should.

i hold onto it because i know this was the real you. the real person behind the facade you carried with you for years since LA.

i knew you that night
until the next day i didn’t.

and i had been feeling more hopeless than i had ever felt romantic with you but i constantly tried to convince myself that it was okay because hey, at least i felt something, right?