I could be heartless
I could reply with who is this
And some part of you would shatter
knowing that I have attempted to remove you from my life but
the truth is you are still on my phone as much as you are on my mind
There, but not given much attention
Sure, you exist, but only quietly

I think of you sometimes like when my toes are touching sand or
when I have a glass of maker's mark in hand or
when I hear your name in someone else’s mouth
But to be completely honest
I am not broken over this

So your hello comes a few months too late and mine from a few months before has been left without response
I could say hey I miss you too but
that would be considered a lie
Maybe I do now and then but mostly
I only miss you when there is nothing else to miss

Like a vague memory of something that used to sit in the corner of my room
I know it was there but I don't remember much else about its presence
I don't know what to say after it’s been almost a year
I waited for you, too long but
I am not broken over this
Summer has passed and another is coming,
Maybe I will find another you in the next

When you send me a text five months too late I will not be heartless
I will say hello like time hasn’t added pressure on the ache, like
maybe I could still love you the way I did yesterday and
some part of you would be whole knowing a part of me is living in the past,
where we are alive together

we present ourselves as perfect manuscripts
nobody sees the crumpled rough drafts and messy handwriting
scattered around the bedroom carpet at home.

nobody has seen the way i've
scratched out parts of myself
that didn't fit into the high school mold
then the parts that didn't fit into my suitcase when i moved away from home

nobody has seen the revisions i've made
do i sound too formal, am i too quiet, do i need to be a little bit funnier in order to be considered acceptable art?

i've thrown entire scenes of my life into the trash
because i don't want anybody to see them and i am ashamed

i sit for hours staring at blank pages wondering how anyone could ever find me interesting enough to spend time with

do you ever feel that way, too?

She looked for love in the backseat of his car
She looked for it in dusty store rooms
In abandoned buildings, the rough palms of hands
She didn't find it in his whispered sweet nothings,
She didn't find it in his apartment building either

He looked for an easy conquer, a one night stand
He looked for an innocent smile, naive doe eyes
He looked for it in needy fingers, hitched breathes,
He found it in her hair balled up in his fist
He found it in her salty skin, her soft thighs

She was looking for love in all the wrong places

He loved with the cruelty of nature
growing like ivy on my heart;
I'd cut him away but he'd only return

He nestled in my branches
making a home out of my rotting shell,
forgetting home is where the heart is

He said "destruction was a form of beauty"
So he pretended to be reborn a hurricane
Firing open doors better left closed in his wake

At times, it was better to hide from him
Wait out the storm and pretend
everything was perfectly alright

Then when it was all over
He'd kiss my wounds,
grow flowers from my dying veins

But not so long after they would wilt
because even the sweetest of things
couldn't survive within our own toxicity.

lately happiness seems to come and go
like a lover who bores easily
as i don't offer them enough to stay
while the depression always returns
like an abuser, it's fists made of ravage fire
masquerading loyalty and love i know is insincere

The thunder clouds are rolling in
And all I want is your skin
On my skin
The taste of your sheets
In my mouth
As I bite down
Hard
They smell like you
Like us
Our lust
And the rain on the roof
The whisper on your lips
A kiss
A moan
An unsuppressed groan
When you touch me
With fire
Fingers crooked and long
Our bodies together
Dance to a song
The music we make
My whole body aches
For you
For us
Our lust
In these sheets
I taste
A future
Where this
Rainy day bliss
Of your skin
On my skin
Long after the sunshine
Has filtered back in

why do things that are destructive to you, and your health, just to benefit other people? you know, you're not obligated to set yourself on fire just to keep other people warm and you don't have to bite your tongue to the point where you feel like you don't have one anymore and it's not logical to cross oceans and seas for people when you're deathly afraid of drowning and they won't even bother to get their feet wet and you can't let someone hold power over just because you love them. oh no, no, no. no one should ever hold power over you. you are such a perfect arrangement of atoms. there's only one of you. you're special. you come first. you matter most. don't blatantly put yourself into harm's way without ever contemplating the outcome; especially if the person you're putting yourself into harm's way for isn't reciprocating the emotion.

1.) don't ever confuse my kindness and generosity for weakness because trust me, i will choke you with the hand that i fed you with.

2.) every single thought of you accentuates my internal flame and let me tell you, i'm ******* burning, but i don't mind.

3.) i try to make people's arms walls even though they never will be stable enough and i've attempted so many times to make someone's chest a pillow and i try to make homes out of people when i know that it'll never work

4.) i had to be my own hero

5.)  my mind is a galaxy but you refuse to stargaze

6.) i found my reason and now it all makes sense

7.) i should have loved myself with the love i gave him

8.) i wrote about you so often that every time my ink pen scraped a piece of paper, the ink pen bled your name

9.) i think i'm gonna be forever homesick for arms that don't want to hold me

10.) my thoughts are always all over the place and i think that's okay. a girl's brain is like spaghetti right? spaghetti is messy, but it's good.

11.) i'm not a difficult person to make happy

12.) so sometimes i try to jumble letters together to create beautiful words but they don't always make sense. whoops.

13.) my self-image and the way i perceive myself is very demented and distorted but i'm working on it.

14.) i think the best present that i've ever given myself was self-acceptance

15.) my body aches to intertwine with yours

16.) my stomach has cobwebs where butterflies are supposed to be

17.) you always whispered to me, "come in" but the more you let the words roll off of your tongue the more it sounded like get out.

18.) i loathe sympathy because sympathy is one of the worst forms of kindness

19.) i want to fall in love with myself before i fall in love with anyone

20.) no amount of carefully picked metaphors and beautiful run on sentences will ever be able to depict the beauty that is you

21.) sometimes i'm just a really sad poem with feet

22.) i'm the most optimistic pessimist you'll ever meet

23.) they say that if you fall in love with a writer, you can never die. wanna become immortal?

24.) this doesn't make sense and it won't.

i think that writers have a hard time loving people
because we fall in love more often with words
than we do with the people w beating hearts standing before us.
"just remember that the way you think about someone is the way that they actually are."
we fall in love with metaphors and similes and conceits.
we fall in love with the idea that we're the hopeless romantic
and that they're our savior.
but the paper has its limits.
and one day,
our pen will run out of ink.
our pencil will be out of lead,
and our hands will have cramped so bad
that we'd probably believe that we'd have carpel tunnel.
and what would we be left?
heartbreak.
because we'd be left to fall in love with nothing but
smudged lines, faded words, and crumpled up papers.