they played our song today, and it all came rushing back to me, all at once, like i'd stood up too fast: there i was, sitting next to the raging bonfire, chilled to the bones, despite its incessant warmth; and there you were, across from me, distant, despite the skin on our hands kissing intimately; and there you went, drunkenly stumbling away toward your friends, toward something better, singing at the top of your lungs a song that i wanted you to whisper solely to me.
and he asked me how a guy like you could break my heart, and i told him i was in too deep: i was at the bottom of a deep, dark hole and you were at the top, hollering down to me; and all the anger, the lust, the frustration, every twisted emotion you ever made me feel, came to a boil, bubbling over my surface and out onto my tear-stained cheeks; and i wondered, after almost a year, how you still had this kind of hold on me, when i'd told you goodbye and meant it, how you could get me to feel something i thought i'd forgotten, how i was quick to defend you like you never defended me.
but no more.
i've had enough.

i can tell you about every boy
who’s ever held a piece of my heart
in his hands:

I.     my first love (or so i thought):
       the one who sang all the right notes
       and kissed all the right places,
       sending my body a-humming,
       the one whose goodbye
       sounded like a sweet melody,
       the one who had me believing
       i had stopped the music,
       that i was at fault

II.   the one that never really saw me:
      always looking over my head
      to the next best thing,
      always full up with big city dreams
      and castles in his skies

III.   the boy who couldn’t pick me
       out of an empty room:
       the one who grabbed my hand
       and held so tight
       that i almost forgot it hurt,
       the one who left and came back
       like nothing had changed
       when i tried my hardest to forget,
       when i’d promised myself
       to never be a second choice again

IV.  my one-night stand:
       the one i’d spent years
       daydreaming of and, in minutes,
       had reduced me to half my size,
       because i thought love existed
       somewhere within the thread count
       or in the feeling of the cotton,
       the silk, against my bare legs

V.   you:
       but our story hasn’t ended yet,
       only just beginning,
       and if i could pick up every penny
       off of every sidewalk,
       i would,
       just to toss them all over my shoulder
       into a wishing well
       and make our forever come true

tonight i’ll leave
the window open
because the summer air
feels fresh and new,
full of possibility

tonight i’ll sleep
without the covers
because the blankets
weight down on me
like regret
and suffocate my skin

tonight i’ll listen
to my entire music collection
and laugh at
the songs that used to
make me cry,
the ones that
reminded me of you

tonight i’ll throw caution
to the wind
and tell that boy
that i love him
because you taught me
exactly
what love wasn’t

tonight i’ll stay up
until my eyes shut themselves
because i have nowhere
to be
in the morning light

tonight i’ll finally
discover myself

i spent the first couple years of my youth
with my arms crossed tight around my stomach,
arranging myself in the mirror to see which ways
would make others see me how i wanted them to,
twisting my body into shapes it wasn’t designed for,
trying to find some semblance of beauty.

you kiss the creases where my body folds in on itself,
the marks where the skin on my thighs
stretches apart, not quite reaching itself,
the tangled mess that is my hair,
and you still find it somewhere within yourself
to tell me that i am the very semblance of beauty.