there’s something so deeply and inherently terrifying about romantic love and attachment; it’s like giving someone a neatly written postcard detailing all of the various ways in which they could take your heart and pick it apart into a heap of broken fragments.

it’s the fact that you were so agonisingly in love with your sadness that i became (always was?) an afterthought. it’s like mum always said, “you are powerless in the face of someone who doesn’t want to be helped”.

i wanted to soak my skin in your madness and chaos.
to take all of the mismatched jigsaw pieces of your mind and will them to fit together enough to love me back even a little bit.

one day that you will realise that they are just boys. they are boys with closed-off hearts and cynical minds. with their inherent need to drain and empty you of everything you have to offer; with the burning desire to be both fixed and left alone all at the same time.

i actively avoid thinking about the estimated number of minutes i spent trying to burn the imprint of your fingers out of my lungs.
oh honey, one day all these valiant notions of self-sacrifice are going to get you hurt; you won’t know how to tell him that you are in pain.
                                       that every time your knuckles brush against my lips my heart feels like it’s going to give up on itself.

i don’t know what to do with the knowledge that i am heartbroken over someone who is indifferent to my plight, someone who watched the cracks deepen and spread yet still chose to walk away. that’s the problem with feelings; you can’t simply pick them up and store them in a jar for later.

you left and i’m stuck with limbs which ache from the sheer weight of the feelings that i can’t shake.

with gentle fingers full of promise and parted lips you drew confessions from me that i swore would never come; you were messy and indignantly proud of it. your mess leaked into mine and for a few precious minutes we coexisted in our state of disarray.

your hands knew me far better than your heart ever did;

it must have been so dark up there, on the pedestal that i nailed you to. a martyr for your cause, i tried to tie your wrists to mine in a desperate fear of being alone again.

all i wanted from you was to coexist but you were never shy about telling me that, for you, that wasn't enough.