I wrote poems for a boy
that didn’t know words flowed from my veins
that a mountain of bones
made up my brain
neural pathways that could only be described
as broken branches from a tree
that saw too little sunlight
and overdosed on rain.
I put my soul on paper
for a boy who didn’t realize that it was cracked
that the sun didn’t shine through my broken parts
and love wasn’t a band-aid that could fix
the damage that had chipped away
at my ability to feel.
For longer than I have the ability to remember
he couldn’t see that these words
meant more to me than living
and when I wrote about him
it meant that I was even more broken
from thinking about how
he couldn’t fathom a world in which
I couldn’t understand my own thoughts
until they were ink
drying on a page next to my tears.
I wrote poetry for a boy
who didn’t understand
the words that ached to be released
from my bloodstream
and it hurts me that
he probably never will