I never should have said anything -
I should have kept my mouth shut, but I didn't.
The words were pulled out of me like an anchor hauled from choppy waters -
I had no choice when it came to if they were going to be revealed or not.

"Have you ever been suicidal?"
"Uh, yes."
"Are you currently suicidal?"
"Um. I don't really feel comfortable talking about it, to be honest."
"I'm going to make you an appointment with one of our crisis counselors. I think it would be a good idea..."

It's not funny at all to find yourself in an office with a person who genuinely believes they have the capabilities to fix you.
I know I want to die. I know nothing is going to change that.

I find it more saddening to sit across from a person who looks at you with false pity. They can't fix anyone and I know, deep down, they're waiting for me to leave.

I'm waiting for myself to leave, too. I should have just kept my mouth shut like I always do -
Never let it slip that you have the desire to be dead. What ensues afterwards is more humiliating than the moment you finally do **** yourself.

Eyes heavy with sleep,
limbs weighed down by something that could be called love -
It's been a couple of hours since we spoke and I'm a fool for missing you.

I really shouldn't get ahead of myself -
you're probably tucked into clean sheets and dreams that don't involve shaky hands and warm lips.

It's not about me, shouldn't be about what I want and what I need.

But I want you more than a little girl wants a night light in her room -
And I need you more than a budding flower needs rainwater in a dry season.

I hope you wake up soon and, without acknowledging what I've been asking for, give me anything you're willing to give.

I find it hard to decide -
if our tragedy is defined by loving each other or by not loving at all.

Would life have been any different if I had not felt my heart collapse within my chest, or watched you leave a hundred times over?
I don't think anything would have changed at all -
because in the end, you are always gone.

That is something that will never change,
no matter what lies my heart tries to tell itself. You are gone.

I don't feel any pity for my heart when it's tucked into a dark corner,
barely alive on its last few beats. It's abandoned and I can hear it shedding tears from across the room.

Come back, it cries.
It has the face of a little girl and her brown eyes are wet, long lashes dripping with memories. They splatter on the floor and become nothing in an instant.

She's clutching her hands against her chest -
such a tight grip for small, shaky hands. I don't feel any pity. I don't.
There's nothing I can do for her. Nothing at all.

Come back! she screams. She's too weak to crawl, too tired to run.

She stops beating within me the moment she whispers, please. Her dead body is left, untouched, in that dark corner where it'll never be found.
There's nothing I can do for her. Nothing at all.

The biggest tragedy, I've come to realize, is not the fact that you left me so many times. It's how slowly the realization of your loss crept into me when I wasn't looking, wasn't paying attention, wasn't thinking of you.

You made me leave myself and now I'm left with nothing at all.

When I look at you,
something strange yet familiar washes over me.

I stand under the shower of emotion -
lathering it into my hair, scrubbing it roughly into my skin, allowing it to wash away every sin I've ever had.

I've had many, so I stand here for a long time.

But your voice, your voice calls to me and beckons me to come out.

Come out of there. Come to me. You're clean now.

I've never been clean, or at least I don't remember a time when I wasn't. But I trust you. Your eyes are gentle and there's no hint of malice in the corners of your mouth when I step into the room.

Come here.

I sit next to you on the bed and you pull me into your side, my head instinctively seeking the beat of your heart.
It mimics the single thought that throbs in some dark corner of my mind.

I trust you. I trust you. I trust you.

Trusting another heart has been my biggest sin. But this doesn't feel wrong.

Maybe I'm making a mistake,
but everything about this feels right.

Who could ever love a woman like you?

You came from deep within the ground - out of a crevice where nothing should have survived.
You crawled out, knees ****** and jaw broken, and stumbled to your feet.

You walked alone until you found something on the ground -
a bud, a seed, a sign of life.

You laid next to it and, although you didn't realize it then, protected that unfamiliar thing with your life.

A life you now carried on your own because you had survived. You have survived.

And this bud, this seed, this beautiful thing -
you will protect it from harm and try with everything you have left in you to let it grow. Let it thrive. Let it become what it's meant to be.

Who couldn't ever love a woman like you?

I've been standing at the edge of the ocean for a long time -
watching the crystalline waves when they come close and yearn to touch my skin.

Just like how I want to touch yours.

There's been a thousand sunrises and a thousand sunsets -
after a lifetime or two, they don't really matter anymore.

I remember the way you looked when you left -
although your back was turned towards me,
I felt each tear when it bled across your face.

When you looked into the horizon and silently begged
for the courage to go, I felt it through each chamber of my heart.

Seeing is believing, they say.
I don't really believe you wanted to go.

When I speak of words that can make you believe you are nothing, of hands that hold you so tight you can't breathe, of eyes that are always there when you lay in bed at night -
I hope you don't understand what I'm talking about.

When I stand in the shower for two hours and look at the scars on my body, at the fine lines that will remain there until the end of time -
I hope you don't understand what I'm thinking about.

When I'm sitting in the passenger seat while you drive and staring at the people and places that pass us by, at the mother and father holding their child's hand while they walk down the pavement -
I hope you don't understand why I need to hold your hand for the rest of the trip.

When we're facing each other in bed, hearts beating together, and you rest a heavy hand on my face and whisper I love you -
I hope you understand why I can only answer with tears.