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.

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.

Years of work mending
all for nothing
because I am bleeding again.

I lay in bed on my side
frozen in place.
Eyes wide open,
no blinking.
Quick shallow quiet
breaths,
hoping that if I’m small
enough and I don’t move
I will be safe.

He hugged me and
kissed my cheek
and said,
I like you.
I put my arms
around his neck
and said,
Well I love you.
I heard him laugh
and he said,
I’m just bad at saying it
but I love you too.

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.

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 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 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 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 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.

I am dating someone
who draws me when
I’m not there,
and looks at the photos
I’ve sent him
in private.
He pays me back
every time I buy something
and writes a cute
note in Venmo,
and asks me to stop
by before work just so
he can kiss me.
He is romantic in
ways that I am not,
but I am grateful.

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.

I try to enjoy every moment I can,
even the ones that get under my skin
because it’s for the last time.
Hauling our ***** clothes to the laundromat,
and struggling to find an open washer.
Getting a beer at Wings while we wait.
Going to our favorite pizza place for the 200th time;
hold the mushroom add bacon.
And then stopping at UDF for a scoop of
cotton candy ice cream.
The fight to get him to wake up to his alarm the first time it goes off, even though it usually takes an hour.
Every hug I hold for a second longer.
I don’t let go of his hand in the car.
I have cried to him and wished I could go back in time, I’d do everything differently so we would’ve lasted forever... somehow.
He said it wasn’t me, I was his favorite girl but everything comes to an end eventually.
And now is that time.

I suddenly felt like
I needed to scream
or explode or
both.
I was hunched over
trying to coax a teeny tiny
***** into place,
listening to the two women
I work with be
scandalized by some girl
doing Onlyfans.
What a *****!? What does her man think?

Ugh YUCK SHUT UP
I wanted to burst.
Instead I hurried up
to finish this menial job.
I am surrounded by
boring people who
talk about boring ****
all day.
It is killing my soul.

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.

The ghosted messages
still sit there cold and unforgiving.
I wish my brain could let me forget
let me enjoy what I’m doing now,
who cares what you’re doing now.

I had a dream about you.
I know you were there although
I can’t remember your face.
But I felt it in my heart when I woke up alone.

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.

When women with kids
ask me about not wanting
to have some of my own,
I respond with an answer
that’s something like,
I enjoy my freedom.
But what I really mean
is on Thursday after a tough
shift I was able to
have enough drinks
to make me feel like
life is worth living again;
while listening to
90s pop on full blast
in the house in which
I live alone.
And there is no one
to tell me I shouldn’t.

I spent my
grocery money
for the week at
the dispensary.

After I picked up my order
I took myself out to lunch
at the Mexican restaurant
my ex and I used to frequent
almost daily.
We’d spend too much
on shots of tequila and
beer and tip
really well.
The greeter said,
Hi amiga! How have you been?
It’s been awhile!
I smiled and told him
I moved out of town.
I got my usual,
beautiful Al pastor tacos
and a Dos Equis with lime.
I ate and drank slowly
listening to the families
chat around me.
Then my beer was almost empty
and I was feeling good,
so I knew it was time to go.

I remember my dad
told me that if I’m
going to drink and drive
I should throw
the empty out the window.

It’s the only time he’s okay
with littering.

I imagine publishing
these little poems
that I write
in my kitchen,
and my car and the work
bathroom.
Or anywhere it hits.
What would people
think of the author?
Would some girl
in 20 years,
find my book in the
back of her high school library
and relate so deeply
that she also begins writing.
Or is all of this just drool
from a depressed person,
no more than an open journal.

I can’t go back and read anything
I’ve written in the last year.
I don’t know if I ever will.
It makes my stomach hurt.
So I’ve kind of quit writing;
for now.
I don’t need to remember this
part of my life.