and when he told me
he’d **** himself if i left,
a part of me believed him.
a small stupid part of me,
foolish, young and naive,
wanted to believe that i’d meant that much
that the lack of my presence
would make his blood run cold,
leaking into the creases of the bathroom tiles.
if i left,
and he killed himself.
his blood would be on my hands
but unlike my blood on his,
this time it would be metaphorical
but would feel so much worse.

sometimes i want to open up to you.
slice through my bruising flesh,
to reveal to you what words could never say.
i trust you like that.
to see how my ribs cage fragments of a broken heart,
and how my lungs are black from second hand smoke.
i want you to dig in,
and pull out all the things i’ve always questioned.
til the only thing left is a hollowed out hole.
maybe that way i can really feel nothing,
instead of saying i don’t
to avoid the conversation.
i want you to drain me of my blood.
like the vampires in movies i watched as a child.
so i don’t have to feel it pumping through my veins,
every time i feel the urge to open myself up
and search deep,
deep,
deep,
for a reason to feel nothing instead of feeling everything all at once.

he doesn’t love me anymore,
now his love lays inside another.
may he kiss her lips like he never kissed mine.
hold her in the night like id never laid there before.
hold her hand like he’d never felt a grip so strong.
my memory is still there yet so easily forgotten,
and now he’s loving someone else
i’m stuck feeling like it never even mattered.

i miss all the love letters
he never writes me,
all the late night calls just to hear my voice.
texts to read in the morning,
and cheesy poetry to read in bed.
i pretend to sleep just to see if he’ll kiss my eyelids and tell me he loves me.
he doesn’t but i love him anyway.

sometimes i wonder if people would know that i’ve died.
i play out fake scenarios in my head.
plan my funeral with my own eulogy on my tongue,
watch as they cry as i’m lowered to something that shouldn’t be desired.
sometimes i wonder if people would know that i’ve died,
but i go about my life everyday and they never do.

i'm convinced *** was never meant to please me.
after so many times of doing it only to convince them to not leave,
i'd given up trying to find some pleasure.
i don't know wether or not to say,
but i'm scared that it'll make him not want to stay.
so i pick apart the stitches from my seeping wound,
and open it up with no remorse or fear of infection.
and i'll bleed everywhere in clear not red,
so he can't see through to the tears that I shed.
cause if i fake a smile it'll make him feel better,
and convince my body so it becomes wetter.
but inside my mind its just a lie,
because being wanted is better than being left to die.

you're on my mind again.
though i left you back in the year of my downfall,
i want you to know that i forgive you.
no matter how vividly i remember feeling so numb,
taking you to a place no one had been before i was ready to.
taking my innocence
and stretching it into an unrecognisable form,
pulling it out like barbed wire through my open wounds.
though, despite all of this
despite knowing that i probably should hate you
and the realisation that you never really truly loved me.
i couldn't help but love how my blood looked on your hands,
nesting deeply under your chipped black fingernails.
i hated to admit that maybe
just maybe,
i loved how vulnerable you made me

so call me tonight.
lets sing the songs of summer romances
and make plans we'll never follow through.
listen to me pluck the chords of this scratched up acoustic,
humming the lyrics that only i know apply to you.

and here i am,
cleaning myself off my bathroom tiles
in attempt to try again.
but trying again isn't as easy the 4th time around.
i want to be a kid again.
but even at 9 and 10,
11 to 16
being a kid became an adults job.
looking after myself and cleaning the dishes of uneaten food,
cleaning wounds and kissing plasters like my own mother.
i'll be okay.
that's what i'll always say,
and i guess when you say it enough
the lies become the truth
and my eyes blink away my youth.
here i am
cleaning myself off the bathroom tiles
knowing that i have to try again.