I wish I could run away. From myself. From the thoughts that stream through my mind. From the creatures that peer into my soul. I wish I could escape the thought of you. The boy who doesn't think twice about the girl who's thoughts of him float endlessly through her mind. I don't know why I think of you always, I really don't. When I find myself doing it, there's a part of me that wants to run. There's a part of me that wants to **** the thought of you in my mind. To you? Well, I was simply a soul you encountered. To me? To me you were the bitterness in the cold.

I wish I could erase the fact that I ever met you,
yet I continue to write about the little things you did,
How your hands drifted down the the creases of my body
How your laugh became the soundtrack to my night
How the words you spoke made me feel like I was dreaming
But you erased my innocence and left me in shavings
You obliterated my past and constructed my roots into something I was not.
You drew my mind into a structure I thought it could never be.
You crumpled me as if I were paper, but continued to smooth me out as if the damage you formed had never existed.
“I love you”
Three words that made me feel like I was worth something
Three words you wrote in ink.
Three words that could not be erased
They were a lie.
I was the dull picture you painted
But I soon became aware of what you had created.

I was petrified of heights, but for some reason, my body moved faster than my mind. My hands grasped onto the warm metal bar of the spire ladder. A spire that was placed one thousand feet above lower Manhattan. The sun shined a golden tint on my face, making my body heat up. But a light breeze whistled through the air refreshing me from the warmth. I gaze upwards to the pinnacle of the metal structure. Audrey was standing at the top of it, her black camera pointing downward towards me. My chapped lips twitched upwards creating a smile. Before I could realize, I was up there with her. Strands of my dark hair took over my vision as the wind tasted it. My adrenaline rushed as I stood on the narrow piece of metal, centimeters away from death. But after seconds it was gone. The feeling that I chased every day had vanished and my mind became blank. Watching over the city with no one below knowing became peaceful to me. I drifted out of conscious and into my own world. I felt as if the city was mine. The light breeze pressed against my face softly, bracing me from the warm sun that hit my body. Curtis's voice drifted into my ears, taking me back to reality."Helis!!" he called from the platform of the spire. The sound of my heart beating blared through my ears like music through a speaker. The feeling I yearned for was back. I slowly found my way down the ladder and onto the platform. The three of us stayed concealing ourselves on the opposite side of the structure, away from the helicopters. We played hide and seek for what felt like hours.

To us, the city is our playground,
the city is what makes us feel alive.
We are the city kids that no one talks about.

Beautiful calamity bled from her wrists.
Her mind in complete disarray
And now her heart fractured from a boy who didn’t have one.

I’ve been exhausted for what feels like months
and I can never close my eyes without my mind screaming a million thoughts that take over my consciousness.
and it’s during these moments where I wish I could escape myself,
where I wish I could be someone else and discover the thoughts that lie underneath the rocks of their mind.
but if I were to be someone else I think I’d have the same problem.
I wouldn’t be able to get away from their mind.
I wouldn’t be able to run away from the dark thoughts that peer into their soul.
so I guess I’ll be forever trapped in a place I can’t escape.

Cold rain slithered down my skin
The clouds above sighed upon the foolish kids of the city with a look so somber and dull,
But the city lights illuminated the night and the foolish kids continued to be foolish.
When we met our minds intertwined,
I never met someone who viewed the world we lived in like I did
But then I met you and everything started to make sense.
You understood me
You understood how exploring was my sanity
You understood how I saw this destructive world with beauty.
You understood my mind
You saw me as something different.
But I saw you as just a boy who figured me out.  
Why is it you believe we were something greater?
Is it because our photos captured the similarity between the two of us?
Or is it because our minds are like music notes;
but yet you're on a different bar than me.
And this is the truth that you couldn’t discern.
You weren’t truly acknowledging my words, but rather you let them travel through you.
Your words of admiration grazed my soul, but never made me feel the way you felt for me
You couldn’t fathom the words “Just friends”.
“Just. Friends.”
A phrase that stabbed your heart and filled your eyes with the violence and the melancholy of the clouds.
Your mind ran for answers that it couldn't find, lost between the knowing of what we truly were
My heart burned of pity for you
But I distanced us with my apathy.
To the Brooklyn boy who fell in love with my mind,
We’re Just friends.

We live for the adrenaline rush,
The rush that makes our heart skip a few beats,
The rush that makes our minds clouded,
The rush that makes us feel alive.
We live for the memories created by the process,
Running through the vast tunnels
Concealing ourselves from the trains the move by our bodies briskly.
Or gazing over the city a thousand feet above, and no one below knowing we’re watching them
We live for the thrill, for the height, for the risks.

We’re the city kids that no one talks about.

They believe I am the girl whose lips stay sealed but thoughts stay absurd
The girl whose eyes sway across the thin pages of a novel and consume the words that fill it
The girl whose imagination runs wild.
And I am that. But no one has uncovered my true self.
No one has uncovered the girl who is concealed behind this.
They don't know I run through the subway tunnels when the sun dies and the darkness takes over
They don't know how the infrastructure of the tunnel shudders as the train travels by in one swift motion
They don't know I sneak onto the rooftops of the city to get million dollar views only the wealthy ones can see.
They don't know how fast my blood flows when the wind blows and my dark hair takes over my vision as I stand towering over my death
They don't know I'm searching for a sense of freedom and thrill that will take me away from my own reality.
They don't know me, yet they move their tongues and slither words like snakes pretending they do.
This is my youth, this is my sanity. This is what makes me feel alive.

The bright sky was masked by dark clouds that poured rain as if it were sobbing.
The opposite of me.
I mask my dark clouds and cold sobs with a bright smile strangers fall for.
They fall for the trick my lips play on them, making them believe I’m elated.
But if they look deep enough into my eyes they can see the dark clouds that swarm over my soul,
The dark clouds that create a thunderstorm in my mind.

The buzzing sound of silence screamed in my ears,
Reminding me that I had no one.
I was drowning in my own thoughts,
believing and knowing that no one understood my mind.
It's disheveled and cluttered with debris
Tangled and knotted with thoughts that no one could fathom.  
I yell to the heavens, yet i’m still left with the piercing buzz of stillness playing vehemently in my ears.
The silence is a routine.
It comes everyday at the same time,
When I need someone one to listen.
When I’m drowning and my lungs are filling with water
When my thoughts become a twisted structure
When my mind becomes deranged
With my last breath I yell to the heavens, only to hear the painful hum of nothing

All I wanted was to be wanted,
I was naive,
I gave my all
To a boy who changed his mind
The love he gave me was all make believe
I didn’t look before I fell,
And now I’m left with bruises
And a broken heart
At age sixteen

Lured me in with your charm
And placed a spell on my soul with your words
Lost in a trance called love
Necromancer, you killed my mind
And slit my heart

Compulsory took a role in the love story of us.
It tore me down,
But I tried to piece us back together.
The walls I built were made of glass,
But were destroyed by the inane words that left your lips.
I despised the fact that you were a habit of mine,
A soul that I felt obligated to come back to.
But you were just a trick that I let play my mind.

How can the thought of one person take so much space up in my mind?
He's the ocean, consuming my thoughts.

I accepted his lies because I hoped there was truth in them.
But, as I stared deeper into his eyes,
Past the beauty of the ocean blue color that I once adored,
I saw the coarse tides that he bordered. The coarse tides that flooded my mind with what I believed was the truth,
But it was nothing but nonsense.
It was all a trick.
I fell too deep into the trance that they called love.
For a moment I stood on a step that looked over reality,
But I was petrified to dive in,
Too afraid of what could happen to me if I saw your actions from a different view.
But now here I am,
And although I once saw the blue ocean in your eyes,
Filled with nothing but beauty,
I now see a simple puddle filled with dark lies.

It was the idea of you that I liked
The idea of you that I spent most nights at home thinking about
You were the exhibitionist, and I was just the viewer
You were the sadist, and I was the sinner
You were reality, and the idea of you was just a fantasy

the memory of youth feels like home to me.
sleepless nights spent reminiscing of the past.
the part of me I was always frightened to loose.
and here i am at twenty-one.
a girl i never would have thought i'd become.
lost her passion and her love.
but maybe that's what growing up is all about, right?
or maybe that's because I gave my love and passion to someone else,
leaving me in a void characterized
by the loss of who i once was.

"I don't give a ****!" He screamed. His eyes closed and arms raised in the air. He felt free. His eyes fluttered open searching for mine.  "Are you serious?" A belligerent voice met my ears. Laughter escaped our lips as a lady grabbed her son and ambled towards the other side of the park. The two of us were now alone with the city lights glowing upon our skin. "Do you?" He rose his eyebrows waiting for my reply. "Do I what?" "Do you give a ****?" He asked the broad question. A simple "no" slipped from my mouth before I could process the question and think of a valid answer. "What?" he asked, a smile appearing on his face. "I don't give a ****." My voice increased in volume. "A little louder now." He cupped his pale hands over his ear. "I don't give a ****!" I screamed, my eyes closed and chin up towards the clouds. But I did. I did give a ****. As much as I tried to convince myself that I didn't, I gave every single **** in this world. I wish the truth had left my lips that night in the park. I wish I could've spilled every single **** I gave to you. If I did, maybe now would've been different.

I wish things worked out differently between you and I. I wish I understood the hatred you have towards me and I wish you could understand my frustration. I remember that time at Paton when we laid on our backs, the pavement cold against our skin but the warmth of our bodies side by side making it worth it. “Do you think if we lay here long enough we can feel the earth move?” I fell in love with you that night. Under the stars, laying on the cold pavement in the middle of the park that I can never drive by anymore because I’ll think of you and the many moments we spent feeling the earth move.

He tried so hard to forget about my existence,
making me feel insignificant to this world.
Please don’t forget me.
Please don’t forget me and all the things we did,
all the songs we listened to,
all the times we laid on the cold pavement of Dean
with our bodies intertwined
and our minds not fully comprehending the concept of love.
Please don’t forget me.

I hope these memories are stained in their mind.
The moments we once thought were nothing special
But now yearn to relive.
The moon shining on our bodies as we danced slowly below it,
Hearing the echoes of our voices singing out of tune,
to songs we loved as we stood in the darkness.
The cool breeze slithering over our skin,
as our heads layed on the pavement and our eyes focused on the stars above us.
Drifting between trees in the twilight, our laughter and whispers being the soundtrack to the night.
These moments of youth meant nothing at the time,
But these moments of youth spent with friends I loved
Made me feel alive.
Thank you

In the outskirts we stayed, away from the chaos of the city we longed to run away to.
A place where we were brainwashed to believe was our safe haven, away from the “destruction” of the city
We’d roam the streets when the moon would shine, bored out of our minds.
Hoping to create distraction from our lives before the sun dies.

Liquor and cigarettes stained our breath,
The night was foggy
But i remember your hand touched upon my skin,
my vision blurred
and mind swarming with thoughts I don’t remember
What happened that night has made me think differently of you
You were suppose to be my best friend, but you thought of me as something more,
For some reason I still remain friends with you,
But your apathy is making me distance myself.
I wish things were different between us,
the same as they were last summer.
But the night of December 31st changed everything, and I guess I saw who you truly were.

how does one escape the ceaseless grip of reminiscing about "what once was," entangled in a web of words and memories? how does one break free from dwelling on the immutable, unable to alter who i once was? amidst the passage of fleeting years, akin to a rapid flutter

elusive, unpredictable, selfish

self-less, clear, calculable

what once was, is
the past is rigid, immutable, ineradicable
fixate on what is in front of you

There's something in my chest
Weighing me down
I’m beginning to feel the dreariness,
Fatigue sets in my weary bones
As I sit frigid and fearless for hours in the snow
If I lay here long enough, maybe my thoughts will solidify and my eyes will flutter closed.

the most painful feeling I've felt
nostalgia
an elusive, complex, memory
a connection to who I once was
a recollection of memories, weighing me down
a source of comfort in the present that somehow seems to leave me a little bit emptier inside

She laid in her bed, darkness enveloping her body.
Her mind was full of thoughts that she struggled to fathom,
and she wished the world could turn off her insecurities.
She never understood why he did what he did.
She never understood how someone who could mean so much, could leave you, making you feel as if your existence is insignificant.
She wondered if he regretted what he did
If the thought of her still danced in his mind.
If he ever heard the strum of the guitar in those few songs, and remembered the many moments they spent dancing in the moonlight to the melody.
She wondered.
She wondered.
But she still struggled to accept the fact that she would never know.
He was ambiguous, perplexed, bitter sweet, and selfish.
And somehow she managed to fall in love.

i stand on the side with the majority
a life i never thought i'd live
i don't see the sky the same way i did when i was seventeen
the way the sun hits the buildings isn't ever as beautiful as the way i remembered it to be
shutter speed and rooftops
two which should've never been forgotten.
the past slipped a way, along with who i once was
and now i stand here with the rest of them
viewing the sky the same way as those stuck in the maze.
but within this shared vision, i'll find my own way
and maybe amidst the struggles
i'll find myself seeing the sky a different way