I don’t want to let you in
because I already know how it ends.

I am now that girl who
ends up leaving something behind
My shoes, an ear ring, a bra,
and a hoodie.
A half pack of cigarettes and
a Vuse vape pen.
A small amount of ****.
I don’t know when it happened.
After I started drinking more often,
after he left me and I can’t
seem to remember where anything
is anymore.
And after all,
I was left behind too.

I feel like I’m ready to give up
to be honest.
I just dealt with the hardest year of
my life and it was all for nothing.
Once he’s gone I’ll have nothing.
I am nothing.

Maybe I’ll just find a decent, boring man
and get married because it’s better than
dying alone.
I’ll have a kid or two because there’s
nothing else to do and it would be nice
to feel love that is actually real.

And since I’ll never see him again,
I’ll forget all about him.
Never say his name or think of his face.

Hopefully some day I won’t feel
so empty and none of this will hurt anymore.
Hopefully some day I can be okay again.

I’m scared.
I always have been.
I knew from a young age that the world
was cruel and unfair and I never wanted
to be a part of it.
I never saw myself being part of it.
Until he came along and made me feel safe
like he would protect me from
whatever the great IT is I’m afraid of.
I don’t like to admit that I am so familiar
with fear, so I pretend to be brave.
But I’m scared.

It was nice in the way it felt quiet
even with the roar of the wind.
I had no choice but to wrap my arms
around him and lay my head on the back of his shoulder.
He smelled good.
I noted that it would be a memory I would think about when my hair turns gray.
I used to ride on the back of a motorcycle with a guy, and smoked joints in the woods.
It wasn’t even that it was romantic,
it felt sweet.
Gentle and kind like this man I was trusting with my life.
We’ve come and gone into each other’s lives but that feeling of comfort is always there.

He thinks I’m pretty,
even though he fell asleep
when we were supposed to hangout.
I can let it slide this time
because he still had me
kicking my feet and smiling
like an idiot.
I read up on his horoscope
as most girls with a crush do,
and was pleased to find we are
very compatible.
I am going to be filled with
butterflies all day
because we rescheduled for tonight.

I woke up angry.
None of this is right.
It’s all wrong.
I’m done with the universe *******
with me,
giving me little hits of serotonin
only to end up smashing my face
in the dirt.
So I dealt with it the only way anyone with the same blood as me knows how.
I stopped by a gas station at 9:30 in the morning
and grabbed 2 shots of liquor.
I downed the first one and a big swig of the next.
I’m sitting in the lobby of my therapist’s office
waiting to tell her how ****** everything has been since last I saw her.
Sorry my breath smells.

Sometimes I can find joy
and peace in my small existence.
I wake up and make my coffee,
grab my backpack and head to the
gym.
I go to my office job
and laugh with my coworkers.
I come home and build a fire,
hauling wood across the yard.
I make dinner for one and have a beer.
I pack my yellow pipe
and watch YouTube before I go to bed.
And I almost eat this up.
It’s so simple and quiet,
not speaking out loud for hours.
It’s just me, and my pet fish
in this old house.

There’s a version of me somewhere
that is a little goth princess.
Or as a fairy somewhere pretty.
Like a bumblebee just floating along.
Or as country as a scarecrow,
homegrown and strong.
Or maybe I’d live in the city,
turtlenecks and glasses and coffee.
Hopping the train to work at the newspaper.
Or maybe I could try to like me.
A girl who’s not really a girl anymore,
and is completely lost.
Who knows who she’ll be.

You know what ***** the most is knowing that some day he will give a girl the chance I wish I had.
I wasn't worth it but some totally uninteresting girl who wears American eagle and who is probably a nursing assistant with a kid from a previous relationship will be.
She will be prettier than me in the traditional sense but there's nothing unique about her.
She won't write or paint or play an instrument but she will make an excellent wife.
I bet her name would be something like Marissa.
Yuck.

The devil has fake red hair
because she’s too scared to accept
the beauty of time.
The devil puts off a perfect exterior,
a seemingly perfect person.
Until she ***** the love of your life
and then pretends to be your friend
the next day.
The devil is a coward who will
never say sorry.

I don’t know what I need from you
for me to feel secure but I know I like when you smile at me.

I have so much love to give,
and I give it to him everyday.
But he doesn't accept it or give it back.
I still try though.
I wrote him a poem and sent it to him,
just inside stuff that explains how much I miss him.
I don't expect him to even address it and
that's okay.
Because I have so much love to give
and I will keep giving it because I don't know
how not to.

The pair to my peach.
I can’t be one without two.
This cute fantasy world doesn’t
exist without you.
I can barely hear the foxes mreeping,
they don’t speak much anymore.
The orchard has been left unattended,
peaches left to rot on the ground.
I didn’t know it was there
until you showed me.
But I am not enough to keep it alive

I think maybe tomorrow
I’ll just stay in.
There’s too much trouble beyond
my front porch.
Land mines and black holes,
snakes and fires and too much
broken glass.
It’s better to peek through the curtains.

Life is changing as quickly
as Ohio weather.
I can feel it in the warm breeze
we have today.

Spring always brings the possibility
of a new chapter,
just depends on whether or not
I’m willing to jump.

This time I don’t have a choice,
the way back has done grown over
with thorns and fallen trees.
So it looks like I’m going to jump.

I want you to know I have wanted to write a book since
I was 5 years old. Since I would send short stories to
Children’s magazines I would find on the back cover
of a scholastics, just hoping they might pick me.
They never did, but I kept trying until I grew old
enough to become self conscious about what I have to say.
Is it important? I still wonder that now, and often I find the
answer is no, it is not. To anyone but me anyway.
But I’m a bit of a narcissist. I know this because I have been
in the darkest depths of depression. Like at the bottom of
the ocean, hiding under a rock like a scared crab. Paralyzed with
fear, ready to stay there forever. But yet, I don’t want to die
because without me the world wouldn’t exist, and for
some reason naive hope dwells within me still.
So maybe what I have to say is important. To me.
And to you too. Guess we’ll never know until I write
that book.

I imagined sitting beside him.
Leaned against his shoulder,
laughing about something.
I felt like I was home again.
I don’t know how to move on from that.
I feel lonely and scared around other people
because my person isn’t there.
I don’t feel safe without him.

Sometimes I feel such
painful, deep sadness that I want
to scream but because I am an adult
I just scream inside my head.
That’s not crazy right?
Yeah I’m totally fine.

I still want our’s to be the story
that could be written as a romance novel.
I still hope that 5 years from now,
when we’re both done with college,
starting our lives for real
that you’ll think of me.
And we can finally be together.
We’d buy a cute little house,
get a cute little dog and get married.
We would travel and workout together.
Do projects around the house,
have breakfast before work at the table.
I still want that.

I drive in circles around our
hometown,
looking for you in every gas station
parking lot.
Luckily you’re never there.
I still get that feeling in my gut
sometimes because you haunt
me.
I still wonder if you ever miss me,
if you can’t get my face out of
the back of your head.
I know it’s for the best because
I don’t cry anymore.
In fact I breathe easier too.
But there are still
plenty of times
I still wish that maybe it
could have been you.

You make me feel so ******.
I don't know why I deal with it.
There is something wrong with me that I
keep doing this painful dance with you.
Lately you've been even farther away than you
already are in Florida.
It feels like lying, sneaking, and ghosting.
But I cant understand why.
Honesty is all we have in a relationship that
doesn't even involve seeing each other but...
I don't think honesty has been here for a long time.
I see you drifting farther out to sea,
and I can't hang onto you.
It hurts too much but maybe so would letting you go.

The sound of a passing train in the distance is so loud.
Even though he lived closer to the tracks, I used to never notice it when I was with him.

He said,
“I keep picturing you looking at yourself
in the mirror and hating everything you see.”

Maybe he knows me better than I thought.
Because when I do catch a glimpse of myself
I don’t like that girl.
Her eyes are too deep, too sad.