...and as you fall in love with yourself,
You might lose your love for him
Do not apologize,
You deserved your own love more than he did.

I do not need to look in your eyes
Whisper honeyed words in your ear
Trace your tattoos like a memory
Those mornings are long gone
But tonight, I will love you
Like I never left to begin with

You asked me to marry you,
10 years ago,
On an old, musty couch,
You asked again today,
In a field of dandelions,
Standing there surrounded by wishes,
I wonder if the universe,
Thought I was ready this time,
Or if it was only reminding me,
Of everything I'd already lost.

To have survived,
Is to have every touch,
Feel like theirs,
This is how they win.

To live anyways,
Is to let myself be loved,
Feel whole again,
This is how I win.

You never liked the taste of coffee,
Until you tasted it in my mouth,
Who do you drink it with now?

I have stood under hot water,
Pinching skin,
Breathing in steam,
Begging my lungs to heave,
To sob,
To wail,
I'm empty,
Just steam and grief,
Lodged in a moment,
I cannot escape from,
I am not happy,
You don't believe me,
I am not happy,
I am not happy,
I am not happy,
I cannot weap,
But I am not happy,
Do not take my smile,
Do not call it love,
I am not happy.

I hate to say that you're always right,
Sometimes anxiety is just truth,
I'll keep you calm anyways,
Tell you you're not always right

You will forever,
Be my always

Grief begins to clump,
In the shallows of my stomach,
Clay settles, builds, hardens
How can one be so full
After such a loss?
I loved who I was,
I speak of myself like a eulogy,
I am a priest over my own bed,
Demanding myself to leave,
To come back,
To do anything but lay here
I am grieving myself,
Becoming a mold for my own casket.

I heard about how kind you are
How good you are with children
You are a good man, you know,
I'm lucky to have you around.

I heard about where you were
When you didn't come home
How lovely you were with strangers
Before you came home drunk to us.

When faced with a mountain,
I discovered that I could climb
A raging river in my path,
I learned how well I could swim
In the midst of hatred,
I knew the depths of my love.

I used to take every bit of pain,
Rage burning, building, breaking me
I used to take it and place it on Ben Affleck
A shrine for my disappointment
A religion created to spare you my anger,
Funny how I couldn't hate him,
When I realized you were both the same Devil.

Last night I ran out of patience
If only I could perform an exorcism
On the demon living on 50th St
I'm not possessed, he's just possessive

If I told you the truth,
Where my heart sleeps
And my mind wanders,
Would you still call this love?

It was the last night I loved you,
I let go before I ever arrived,
It was the first time you held on.

It's okay not to fall in love,
Some of us must climb.

You belong here,
When you are trying to be enough,
Remember you already are.
The days when you feel nothing,
When the world slips between your fingers,
You still belong in it.
There is nothing wrong with you.
The weeds outgrowing your lawn,
Do not represent your laziness,
They represent the jungle inside of you.
It's okay that you're wild,
Do not tame yourself for anyone,
Do not cut your hair again,
For the sake of a photograph.
Your life is not a puzzle to put together,
You are whole,
Do not keep looking for the missing piece,
Look for someone who already sees your image
As complete, perfect, artwork.
When I told you that you were too much,
I meant only that I could not hold you,
I wasn't strong,
I'm sorry to have asked you to be anything else,
But the fire that you are.

It impossible to tell the difference now,
Whether this ache was from your absence,
Or from your presence.

Your silence doesn't need to be so loud,
It will still fall on deaf ears.

Is it possible to be born 1000 times over
In a single lifetime?
To find new ways to feel the sun,
Even brighter reflected in your eyes
The air is different in a world
Existing beside you
Knowing that you are breathing it too
Has given it new meaning
In the same way my lungs collapse
And reform with every gasp
I will take you in
You have outshone the sun
I will be reborn in this love
1000 times over

It still hurts, seeing you exist
In this world where nothing happened
The way we wanted it to

I'm happy.
By that I mean:
I want to be happy.
By that I mean:
I'm not happy.
By that I mean:
This isn't what I want.

Am I still looking for him
When I search your face?

It's okay to want the things you shouldn't
As long as you love the things you should
I tell myself to ease this guilt
When all that remains is nostalgia
And a warm bed

This is for the "windows open and stars bright"
Your skin that smells like Hemingway novels,
The "ardently" Darcy spoke about,
For making the "silent unspeakable memories",
This is for bringing to life in me
Everything I read about,
To escape what I was living.
You are the book I always wanted to write,
The story I woke up in,
Living forever in the last chapter
Of my favorite fairy tales.

It didn't hurt to say his name
This is it,
This is when life begins.

When reduced to a body
By the man who held my worth
I thought
"This is what an apple tree feels
When reduced to paper"

You brought peace
To a Battle fought for generations
Civil love feels like giving up
To a heart beating
In rhythm with war drums

Day 1 of not missing him
when I wake up
Day 132 of trying not to think of him
When you tell me you love me
Day 786 of wishing he had meant it
The way I wish you didn't

It is important to remember
Something can be both terrible
And remarkably precious
I can tell you that my father
Has held me with all of the gentleness
And care one would use
To catch a snowflake in the air
He has looked at me with awe,
Love pouring out of him in a way
That overwhelmed the both of us
I can tell you that when my father
Raises his voice, I am still afraid
I do not know which is more relevant
I only know that both are true

This always happens
I never understood how the storms in your eyes
Could make my heart so still
In the center of your chaos
I found a purpose
A home
Until your eye settle
And stop looking into mine,
I will love you.

You, with hands like Ambien
Talking me down off the ledges
I was born and raised on
Slowing down the heart
That's beating for you now
Out of my chest
Into your hands
Safer than it was with me
I didn't need to be medicated
Just loved,
Just loved.

You love how I don't love myself,
A little feels like so much to me,
I couldn't tell you didn't love me either.

When I'm sad I like to think about traffic,
The way it might feel if a car swerved,
And every one of my bones crushed all at once.
When I'm happy I think about traffic,
How terrifying it would be if a car swerved,
And I lost everyone and everything all at once.
I'm in love with you like I love oncoming traffic.

Fingertips brushing along a bent spine,
Grazing ribs and collarbone,
Not breaking, memorizing,
Show me again,
And again,
And again,
Love, how to love.
I didn't know I wasn't supposed to cry after,
I was just relieved it didn't hurt.

"I'll give you a ******
For every feeling you talk about"

I don't know how to apologize for the bruises that are gone but I still remember, for the grooves you didn't make but fit into so well, and no of course you're not like him, but god knows he was nothing like himself either when we met, my body feels at home wrapped around your legs, but I still have to cover my throat when you lift your arms, I do not recognize love unless it is curled up inside of violence and if you don't hurt me I will so I feel like I still deserve you, you don't know it yet but even when I'm with you I will be with him, he will stand behind you until you both look the same and then I will leave you both behind but only he will follow, and I will be missing you but tasting another in the back of the throat, nothing, oh nothing, will take the taste of him away, and it's not that I can't love you, but that I can't love the part of me that loved him, and so you will never have a home inside of me, I burnt that shelter long ago.

It's like being locked in a cold room,
With a window facing south,
Watching everyone bask in the sun,
Oh how you know it is there,
But you cannot feel it,
Yet you know you need it,
And that makes the cold so much worse.

It's 3 am,
For a while now,
I've woken up listening for you,
Funny how I used to complain,
About your drunken wake up calls.
All I could say at your funeral,
Was that I fell in love with you,
At 3 am.

I remember loud music,
Shades of reds and blues,
Laughter and warm bodies,
I thought "I will never be sober again"
I remember the shouting,
The color of blood and white sheets,
Sobbing and a cold body,
I thought "I will never be sober again."

You're an animal in bed.
By that I mean,
You devoured me
And then left the bones,
Like my body was scraps
For the starving.

And if you wish to hurt me
Do it in the ways I hurt myself
I am the only one
Who still gets away with it

If you were to ask me what I am looking for,
I think I'd only tell you what I've found
I found love in a bathtub I lived in
My body soaked in gin and glitter
He loved me like he'd love me more
If maybe I just wasn't me
So when he moved me out of my bathroom
Into a hardwood floor home
Changed my clothes and my hair
But not my habits
He decided it was my fault
For not being what he wanted to love
And not his fault for telling me he loved me
Instead of telling me that he might one day
And if I didnt try to leave him
He wouldn't have to lock the door from outside
And if I'd just remember to do the dishes
He wouldn't need to break them
And if I'd just say yes
He wouldn't have to make me.
I found love in a basement with a guitar
Hair pulled back in a ponytail
A pipe that never stopped burning white
Crystalline eyes and cheap wine
Slow dancing in the early hours
When we wouldn't wake up, but we'd get up
And that was enough to call it morning
Until I stopped turning our pipes
And he found veins he didn't know he had
Invited death into his bloodstream
And asked if he could share it with me
In a letter written in crayon
Sent to the rehab he'd begged me to go to
And was now begging me to leave
He tattooed me on his back
So he can pretend I didn't leave him
So I'll be a part of him when he leaves.
I found love in a room full of addicts
His head bent down making art out of sorrow
I wondered if he could make me beautiful
Like he did everything else
When he met my family they found love
In the lack of bruises he left
And in the way his nose was clean
And he slept at night
And we called that enough because at least it was more
But it was nothing at all when he left
While I did laundry and cleaned
Stared at a wall because nothing was beautiful
If he didn't make it so
And I remembered too late
That people like me love everything else
More than they love those who love them
I became the one counting minutes
Believing that tonight didn't mean in a few days
Believing it was my fault
For not already being beautiful
Or maybe for loving someone at all
So if you are asking me what I am looking for
I'd say that looking got me lost
And do you please have a map

You have been looking at a broken clock for years now
Always waiting for the right time to come

"I want you" is not the same as "You are a priority"
"I am trying" is not the same as change.

And so this is what it is
To want something so badly
I wish it never existed
To want something so badly
It is all that exists

How long will I look for my father's love in the beds of men who smell like him?
What will I do if I find it?

If we fall in love with the people that remind us of our families
I should be in love with dead boys and distant hearts
But I am only in love with myself and everything I could be

I am ashamed for not being as in love as I thought I was
My heart didn't break, I just needed to break the silence again
By running water over my legs like I never opened them
From the waist down I am myself but if you smell my hair
You would find the scent of homes I've been letting myself into
Just to see if the beds are more comfortable than my own
I'm not trying to fall in love I just want to buy more groceries
Hear cutlery clinking while I eat instead of chip bags opening
To take a picture of two bowls for a ******* instagram story
To tell someone I got home safe when I crawl into someone else's bed.

When I was young I saw a bird break it's wings
I took it home with me and slept it with it on my chest
I still wake up and hear it's wings fluttering in my ears
I couldn't fix it, and ever since I've never been enough
I have spent a lifetime trying to fix every broken wing I find
Housed the flightless birds and waited for my redemption
I have weighed my worth against their ability to heal
But my chest is not a nest, nor my bed a sanctuary
And perhaps it is not me that is broken, it is just their wings