this is an open letter to anyone who has the audacity to try and love you like i did.

dear whateverthefuckyournameis,

i apologize in advance for spilling my boiled blood on the hem of your skirt. what you need to understand, is that you are standing on ground previously reserved for my feet, so forgive me for any bitterness that seeps through the cracks in my clenched fists. i don't hate you, but i can't be your friend. you probably don't know about me, and if you do, let me commend your bravery. i have a tendency to set my problems on fire, and in my bouts of anger everything looks flammable, especially girls with paper complexions. i'm sorry. i have never been one to walk away, so i don't know how to explain to you the holes in the bottoms of my shoes. but i have been further than you will ever go. this is not supposed to be an angry letter, but lately that's the only thing coming out of me. i don't even know your name but the thought of your hands reaching for him makes we want to break them. i will douse your dreams in gasoline and strike the match against your cheek. but i know that's not right, see, the poison crawling out from the end of my pen belongs to a scarier version of myself i try not to know. my heartache is an insatiable war cry in the dead of night, that will stop at nothing to shatter all your windows. it shames me to admit that i've found a sort of twisted satisfaction in using passive aggression to breach your armor. i am sick with missing a set of arms i was not privileged enough to know. i speak with all the grace of an atom bomb and wonder about the rubble at my feet. you are white picket fence and i am barbed wire. some girls are lions, some are lambs, and i learned to love, teeth bared and snarling. one of the only things that keeps me going is the hope that one day i'll learn how to love something without making it bleed. i may have never been his, but for a time he was mine, so please understand why i taste acid when i think about your mouth on his. again, i am sorry. i know it is not my place to be so full of resentment, but there is a part of me that sincerely hopes it bothers you to know he dreamt of me before you were even a thought. there is a side of me that thrives on the image of the color being drained from your face when you read this. but i am trying to learn how to be softer. this letter is the manifestation of a self-inflicted war that has been raging in my chest since he first told me about you. you will try to be good to him, and you might even succeed. if you ever find yourself singing him to sleep, like i did, don't ask if he wants to hear another song, just keep going until his breathing slows.

- m.f.

you are eighteen and you're in love
with a boy who hates his birthday.
you don't know it yet,
but the world gets so much bigger than the back of his car.
you think he needs you to be happy and so does he
but both of you are wrong.
it'll take you almost a year to stop crying.
and then you don't talk for another three
and when you finally do,
he thinks he still knows you,
but your heart is heavier than it was then.
and you **** him because you're lonely
but it isn't the same.
neither of you can fake love.
at least he still makes you laugh.
you'll pretend it's enough
because at least he's a body.
at least you're not by yourself.
at least you're alive
and you're good at *******.
because bodies are distractions
from the things we hide inside them.
you have him inside you
and he wants to gut you of your ugly, your sad.
he scrambles for an excuse not to stay the night
and you laugh.
you know what this is and how it goes
and you both love someone else.
you swear you won't **** him again
but you do anyway because you're still lonely
and you like the way his hands fit around your neck.
you **** him because it's good for your art
and you get bored of your own hands on your body
and you're fine with letting him feel useful.
and you think about when you were sixteen
and how *** was supposed to be special
and it makes you cry
because you're not who you wanted to be.
it makes you cry, because the world got so much bigger
after you left the backseat of his car.
the world is so big and you don't know
how it ended up on your shoulders.
you would have died for him.
you have been ready to die for every person you have ever loved.
you have dreams where he dies
and you can't save him.
you have dreams where people die
and you can't save them
and you're the one who tied your hands.
your mangled heart and all its bleeding.
nobody asked you to die.
what good is all the love in your chest
if you don't leave any for yourself?

- m.f.

i wonder if the doors in the house you grew up in
started slamming themselves to save your father the trouble.
i wonder if you can remember the last time you prayed,
and if you had trouble unfolding your hands.
i wonder if your mother knows
about the collection of hearts you hide in your closet,
i wonder if she could tell mine apart from the rest.
i wonder if your shoes know the reason why
you keep them by the back door and not your bedside.
and sometimes, i wonder
if you ever think about that night when i told you,
you wouldn't need to drink so much if you had me.
but it seems like we only speak when you've got body on your brain,
whiskey in your glass,
your judgement is overcast,
and you know i'm too weak to ignore you.
i learned how to translate your texts
from drunken mess back into english.
i am fluent in apology, but i don't ask you for them anymore.
this is just how it is.
it's not enough for either of us
but ******* it we are not above settling.
so i will ignore her name on your breath,
and you will ignore the fact that this means something to me.
i always thought the first time i kissed you,
it would be on your mouth.
i just wanted to be something warm for you to sink into,
something that could convince you to stay a second night.
but i sneak you out in the early morning,
and you take a piece of my pride with you when you go.
i am left to nurse the hangover from a wine i've never tasted,
wondering how this is possible.
waiting for the next drunk call,
for the next time i get to pretend we are lovers,
the next time i get to live out the fantasy i am most ashamed of.
it is the one in my head where you want me when you're sober too.

- m.f.

Her weapon of choice is not what you think, its not some metaphorical blade or a toilet or a sink. A bottle of tequila and whatever else she can think, makes a good girl go bad and her breath start to reek. Shes become an addict before the age of 21 because when her lips touch the bottle and she throws her head back shes not thinking of others when the liquid pours down her throat nearly drowning her. Shes grown fond of the warm feeling it brings that no one else seemed to do, its made her feel alive. And without this magic concoction her insides are like antartica, there is no heartbeat, no simple treatmentto make her come back alive from years of damage and scar tissue. Another night alone shes let her friend convince her that she needs more of this juice of life and shes lying on the floor now, barely able to breathe the liquids filling her lungs like an hour glass slowly losing time, her sense of reality is gone, the sirens are going off now the men cant save her because after all the alcohol percentage in her blood is more than her body can take."Another girl taken by a simple mistake" no one will come to her funeral because no one ever got the chance to love her like he did before he left. The bottle controlled her to the very end

It didn't happen all at once, it was like a slow simmer. Or maybe even how a sunburn appears, it may have even felt the same. It was like a constant sting that burned every time we tried to fix it hurting oursleves more and more as time passed. The hollow feeling throbbed every kiss felt like a gut punch and I wasn't ready to fight you. We had the world and then suddenly we didn't. How could a love be as bright as the north star yet die out as fast as a birthday wish is made. Promises made of forever and happy ever after were spun and I swear to god ive been so in love with you that I look at you with pure love while all you'll ever look at me is like a friend or another notch in your tally board. I swear to god every time I said I loved you I meant it, there was such intensity behind those words that I am the one paralyzed unable to get up. Its like I am the one who was holding the gun but you were still the one that shot me bringing me to my knees begging for a little tenderness. It was like a slow simmer or maybe even how fast the summer disappears.

Sometimes it feels like I’m looking a stranger or maybe even a ghost in my mirror. Dark eyes with no sparkle stare back at me and part of me wonders when I started looking like a corpse. Meals get skipped more often than I actually eat and my body starts feeling like it’s made of glass that people keep breaking while she tries her hardest to put me back together. And when I get sick, because it always happens, it’s like my bones rattle as I shiver and each cough feels like my throat is being torn apart from the inside out and after each fit I try to be surprised that there’s no blood. When I’m asked about medical history I have to tell them I don’t know because I really don’t. I’m so stupidly afraid of getting some preventable but hereditary disease because I never knew it was in my genes. I find myself turning the same words over and over in my head while I lay in bed every night: they didn’t want you and they didn’t love you and it’s your fault. It’s gotten to the point where I believe the lies my anxiety-ridden subconscious tells me. The logical part of me knows the lies aren’t true but how do you console yourself in those lonely hours when you’re alone and no one can hear you cry yourself to sleep? Six nights a week it’s all fitful sleep and when I wake up I’m still so exhausted it takes everything I have just to haul myself out of bed to take the pill that makes it so I can just barely scrape by during school and even then it’s not good enough so I find myself failing and then I realize I just don’t care anymore. There is no in between for me, I can’t just kinda care it’s all or nothing and ninety nine percent of the time it’s nothing so I lose myself in my video games and ignore the screaming in the back of my skull that tells me to get up and do something productive with my life but I just can’t. It’s not that I don’t want to try it’s that I physically cannot make myself care enough to do anything and it’s almost like I can ******* feel my muscles begin to atrophy.

car engines. headlights. traffic. the way home.
not home, just somewhere i live.
we sit in the back of your mother's old mercedes,
"the ugliest tan color that ever existed" according to you.
it's a stick shift, and it skids and skips and sputters quite often.
i won't tell you, but i like when you tell me you want me to put on the seatbelt.
your head rests against the window,
and every knick in the road
makes you bump your forehead against the glass.
you're too tired to give a **** about it.
"i wish it was a better night, it's too cloudy,"
your breath visible on the window.
i can still see Vega, i don't think you can.
i nod my head and move my hand into yours.
i silently beg you to look at me.
maybe it's not a bad thing there aren't many stars out.
maybe it's the sky's way of telling us we should pay attention to each other.
maybe we hit every red light because the universe just wants to give us more time.
maybe the reason the light from the passing cars moves so fast is because it can't wait to touch your skin and
maybe the sound of car horns moves so slow because it loves the way your heart beats in the silence.
i mean ****, maybe i just want you to touch me again.
maybe it's just that i still need you and you're too tired to give a **** about it.

Trust me when I say you are not the first to love me against your will. I am your every I-shouldn’t-be-feeling-like-this and palms pressed to eyes and dreams you don’t want to end and touches you wish were real. I make you want to stay and change me or change yourself and break your every rule you have ever made for anyone before me and most importantly I make you want to break the world.

Do not make me the epitome of a riddle because, you are smart enough for this and I am not something that can be solved. I am selfish and I am aware of that and I want you but you’re not the only one. I am sorry I never warned you about how I can make you feel and I am sorry I didn’t want to anyway because you are this little book of hope and innocence I lost when I grew up and I need you to be my refuge.

I am waiting for something uncertain in the future and that is why I am playing with the certainties I have in my hands now. Just because I have your feelings intertwined between my fingers doesn’t mean I don’t know the consequences they have on my sentiments. This is not the first time I have done this but the intensity does not die down with the next person and I know I shouldn’t be doing this but I look for homes in people.

But trust me when I say you will fall in love with me on your own will. These moments are temporary and fleeting and they’re the most beautiful mirage you will ever come across. In these moments I am more than just a dream and I am more than who I am and I am more than the 20-year-old girl you fell in love with. And more than anything, I will become nonexistent right on front of your eyes.

I’m measuring heartbeats and gauging miles across torn atlases and
each space between the intakes of breath while saying I miss you
feels like my lungs are freezing over or decaying or burning

I’ve been pacing around my room for so long that I think
my floorboards are starting to form fault lines
and some nights I miss you with the magnitude of an earthquake

I’m digging trenches in my chest because
my heart holds more use as a graveyard
and I’m burying your memories there

It’s midnight on the first day of autumn and I don’t know
if the thunder cracked again or it’s just my voice
begging and screaming at God to bring you back to me

except no one can hear prayers over the silence
that’s fallen over me since you left so I keep missing you
until heartbeats can keep up with distance