Where the image of tearing my veins to shreds plays over and over.
This broken record of ****** drowning.

I'm in a higher league, apparently,
She wouldn't even talk to me.
I scared her.

I just wanted to kiss.

She taught me that I miss having a mother.
She taught me I could cry.
She taught me new ways of kissing.
She taught me who I really love.
She taught me how to sever mutilated limbs.
She taught me that everybody can be selfish.
She taught me that laughing only eases the pain for a day.
She taught me that scars never go away,
*They just get old.

i don’t want to be someone who writes in pencil
and eats too slowly and walks with eyes that
are glued to the sidewalk and tops of strangers’ feet
i’ve been underwater for so long that
i’ve forgotten lungs are meant
to be filled with air; exhaling seems
more like something found
on the second star to the right, rather
than a process that is meant to be
done twenty-three thousand times a day

i feel like an old woman who
looks in the mirror and all she can see
are wrinkles and white hair and tired eyes and
the absence of who she used to be

but i am not someone who turns away
from sunsets and pretends
that darkness is all i’ve ever known;
someone who thinks
the sun will never rise again

because the sun will rise again—
the words hiding inside of me will
find their way out, because
i cannot hold my breath forever

i am not someone who writes in pencil
and erases the bits that are too
honest and too imperfect and too real
to claim as thoughts of my own

i cannot keep my lips pursed and
hands tied behind my back,
i cannot keep pretending i am
a shadow of who i used to be

my tomorrows hold suns much
brighter than ones that have risen
over horizons of my past;
i have not reached the summit yet

there is so much more me
for me to become

each day, i am new.

To dare not tell the ones I dream of
That I do
Is to revoke a right they have earned.

You stuck in my brain,
The lot of you,
And it is my thoughts you now burn.

I feel guilty for withholding
so few words,
But I can't bring myself to speak.

The effects have lingered,
Their personalities
Every single one of them is unique.

I wake with their faces and
I stare at my phone.
These are just memories
That I can postpone.

My brain no longer thinks in poetic lines,
Nor my heart.

My heart thinks in colors and sounds,
My brain does too.

I think I'm nearing a hiatus.
And that's okay.

But I really think I am.

It's wonderful.
You finally respond.
You smile and things are normal again.
I don't have to wait anymore.
You don't hate me.
I exist.
You do too.

And then I wake up.

The only true reflections come from the mouths of those who love you.

The comfort in monotony comes when she doesn't stop loving you.
When your nights are always blessed by the same phrase of affection.
"Dream sweet."
Every night you speak,
I dream sweeter.
And to see her,
Her smile and hair and skin from hundreds away,
Makes me say,
"I love you."

Silently.