they ask me if i love you
and i am quick to shake my head
no, not anymore,
but my dreams still revolve around you
and my stomach feels like cherry stems
tied loosely together, and even though
the words that leave my lips scream
no, not anymore,
the empty feeling in my heart
feels like a snare drum of contradiction

you are fireflies in the backyard dusk
and i am barefoot and flushed cheeks
trying to catch you in my hands
you are red sunsets that fade into dark skies
and the sky seems as though it is bleeding tonight,
and so is my heart,
all for you

it's like i am holding you still, forever
cupped in my hands like fireflies in the summer
and i am sorry,
i am sorry,
i am so sorry,
for holding you captive in
this jar of broken promises

they ask me if i love you,
and i am quick to shake my head
no, not anymore
but i still love you,
i still love you,
i still really love you,
and the reckless, dangerous part of me will always love you

you are my firefly,
and i cannot bring myself to let you go

I look at you and I see half-finished poems and words that don’t exist, your eyes are like indigo oceans I keep drowning in but somehow I don’t mind not being able to breathe.  I wish I knew more about why you are the way you are, what terrifies you the most about yourself, and why I find it difficult to catch my breath when you look at me as if I am a stolen daydream. You make up for a lot of things, really, like going through fourth period half asleep because last night it took me three hours to stop thinking about you. You make up for that, and everything else. You are made of electricity and good intentions stitched together with a voice that could shatter a million hearts, and I am just a lost soul wondering why I trust you with mine. And I do, I do, I trust you with my stupid old heart, and I want to memorize every single corner of yours like the back of my hand. I want to know how a heart like yours could love such a wounded one like mine, but maybe that’s what love is, sacrificing perfection for something tragically real. I look at you and I see fluctuating potential, like the morning sun peeking out behind tired gray clouds, and how sometimes that has to be enough. Ever since I met you, my heart has remembered how to beat, my hands have remembered how to hold, and you love me enough to make me forget how much I don’t love myself. Maybe you are temporary and maybe you’re an illusion, but I still cling to the hope that maybe, this is why I held on until now.

There are so many other girls with perfect hair and skin and eyes and compared to them, I am a walking joke. I am an unfixable calamity of dark grey circles under my eyes from staying up all night because the thoughts in my brain always seem to bloom at the worst times. I am the weight of a thousand words that sit at the tip of my tongue but refuse to come out. So please don't ever tell me that I am flawless because that word is so far away from what I aim to be. At the end of the day, I want to be so incredibly flawed and real and incurably human but still beautiful because of what is inside my heart instead of what sits on my skin. I have slowly become a whirlwind disaster of running away from your toxicity. I am a hurricane of good intentions gone wrong but I can promise you that you'll never find a perfect person that could love you as imperfectly as I ever did.

Through so many years I ran
Afraid and ever cowering
The darkness always at my back
Voracious, all-devouring

Through my mind its black claws reached
And picked apart my sanity
They scraped all chance of joy away
With endless inhumanity

Through the days and months and years
it chased and clawed relentlessly
Eventually I wondered why
I ran unending breathlessly

Through the dark I turned and looked
Pursuit suspended nervously
I granted it a name and face
It glared with vicious fervency

Through its threat I held my gaze
And ventured forth an inquiry
Its flare of rage could not repress
My newfound curiosity

Through the long nights we conversed
Debating, chatting, bickering
The darkness that devoured my life
Shrank back, diminished, flickering

Through the darkness I now saw
With unexpected clarity
We spoke as friends, no longer foes
Embracing newfound parity

Through the dark I look, and laugh
My friend now laughs along with me
Despite how it had always seemed
The darkness is a part of me

i have
six burns on my hands and wrists
that i am dealing with and
healing with
all on my hands and wrists.

it doesn't hurt anymore.
i used to be afraid of fire
like i was scared of thunder
kicking at my windowsill
at night when i was six.

now i can sleep with
both laying calmly at my feet
nothing scares me.

nothing hurts me like before
i am always the one asking for more
and i do it so it feels real.
i do it so i feel.

If you love her, remember that on bad days.
If you love her, love her harder when she least deserves it.
When you spend the night out being intoxicated,
remember she is drunk, choking on her tears.
When your eyes lust over another woman's body,
remember that she stripped herself-
3 layers, 300 walls
she was naked for you.
When you light up and carve a smile on your face, talking to a past lover,
remember that she,
she has been kissing those scars on your soul for them to heal,
she has fermented herself in your bones for you to stand,
she did not expect her sacrifices to be sacrificed.
When you are buzzed in your life, when there is hardly any energy left for you to talk to her,
remember that every ******* second she's without you,
it was a hell of a marathon for her.
When you get upset over her mistakes, correct her.
But remember do not correct her when you have wronged.
When you are tired of handling her emotional hurricanes that storms through your routines,
remember that those are just bad days.
Remember that storms pass.
Remember her when she laughs at your jokes that everyone else finds less humorous.
Remember her wide smiles and her glittering eyes when she looks at you.
Remember how she survived your storms.
If you love her, remember that on bad days.

( FAH )