i miss the gorge and the collective breath it takes when the sun sinks into clouds that melt together into colourful lights and through the darkness above you see so many stars and there are so many people and you notice the moment when it starts to feel perfect because there’s lights and music and dancing and you’re with your friends and then you’re sitting on top of a car or somebody’s shoulders looking out into a sea of glow sticks and feeling the cold air on your face and the bass to the core of your body and I swear it’s like nothing you’ve ever seen before.

everything is clear
this is how you know
moments of strange magic

I forgot to fill my prescription.
How is it that I always forget something that makes such an impact on my life?
Without it, I am not myself.
or am I more myself?
Who is to say that depression and anxiety aren't characteristics as opposed to mental illness?

A chemical imbalance of the brain.
That's how the doctors describe it.
That's how we describe it,
To make ourselves feel less ashamed.

So I forgot to fill my prescription.
Sometimes I think I forget purposefully.
Is it possible to cautiously make a sub-consous choice?
Cause' I think I might.
I think I do it to make myself feel alive again.
**** being able to "function".
I don't see functioning as living.
I truly feel alive when I allow myself to indulge in the pain.

Treating the emotional agony as something that I shouldn't feel, only makes me feel more ashamed of it.

So instead I indulge.
I don't cry.
I don't cut.
I don't expose.
I indulge in my inner sadness.

It makes me feel like a rebel.
Indulging makes me feel more alive than the actual act of living.
And that terrifies me.

I terrify me.

Oh Michael how my heart breaks for you. For I will never have you, and yet my heart is cracking from all the love I'm not living. And you are so oblivious. And you are so unobtainable and untouchable; because I am so broken. I'm not putting you through that. I would crush you with the sheer weight of me. You will never see all of these true pillars of myself, for I find it hurts to beat at brick walls with bare hands and tear skin before secrets. All of the space in my head is so grand, that even you, with all your space of your 5'9"(I'm guestimating here) figure could not begin to fill the empty space in my chest. Your smile can light everything in a room, but the unswept corners of my mind remain unlit. And your hands are the gentlest I've felt (perfect for a gentleman. you've always liked my puns), and yet they have yet to take away all of the hurt I place upon you. So it is for these reasons I will always love you, but cannot.
Yours forevermore,
Kristen Nicole White

How can I save you, my brother.
I am trying to save myself.
Can I save us both, my brother.

I reach down to grab you, pull you out of the hell I inhabit myself.

You will never be too far gone, my brother.
Just do not lose grip.
Don't slip through my hands, my brother.

We all want these years back,
if need be I will carry you on my back, my brother.
We all desire to be cut a little slack,
too many brothers depart from me not in tact.

My dreams are as real as fact.
We all face our abyss and look back hopefully,
in triumph,
this abyss will not hold our gaze, my brother.

How may I help you, my self.
Do you need to count days on a chain?
Will this help or be another attempt in vain,
and you'll be back on the train,
to the badlands of our city,
the streets you still yearn and groan to roam.

Have you ever tided upon tsunamis?
Indeed, these giant brooms clean everything in its wake.
This is the only time you are glad to have resisted
transforming someone into poetry,
as the waves sweep ink and paper off your desk.
They kissed the shores too passionately this time around.

Have you ever fuelled a fire in the woods?
Eyes burning brighter than old flames.
Exchanging breaths of smoke and dust,
and feeding what has already been strangled dry
To red and orange and blue tongues.

Have you ever triggered an avalanche?
It's a ride that gets faster and faster and faster.
The world spins around you,
And you still hear your echoes
Albeit in the end,
it still is all white and
nothing else.

Have you ever clapped alongside thunderstorms?
Fight poison with poison, they say.
So I shouted your name,
and the storms are singing along.
Up till now,
I still wonder if you could build homes
out of ruins.

Have you ever stood in the eye of the hurricane?
There's a weird kind of serenity in that.
As though you could halt the whirlwind and the cold and its monstrous roar in their tracks
With your bare hands,
and place them where they ought to be.

Have you ever buried yourself in the epicentre of earthquakes?
The earth spins on its axis;
your consciousness hinges on your emotions.
Hold on to the loose gravel around you-
it's the closest you can get to
the warmth of someone safe.
The debris destroys both you and the haven.

Have you ever counted flames, cinders and lava that leaves a crater?
An eruption of falling stars;
home is where they return.
There is always a takeaway
from tragedy it seems.

a letter came for a dead man today

and i was certain, if i looked down, i'd see a ******, mangled mess beneath me where my heart sputtered and dropped right out of my chest cavity
as  i watched, through a stranger's eyes, the pad of my thumb smear the ink of your name

the serrated p's and t's slicing open the makeshift stitches i used in vain to yank close the gaping hole left by your gravestone

five hundred and eleven sunrises I have seen without you

counting each one like I counted the letters you never wrote me

because I wrote you letters, but they never left the sweaty lines of my palms.

& i wrote you sonnets, couplets, painstaking metaphors like how my heart living inside your hands was like a telescope reaching for moons.

but that's the thing. you left mine unwound, dangling towards the ground and all that my lips held never reached your sky.

all ever i wanted was to make my stars and moons live inside your eyelids.

but my wishes were like flowers left next to tombstones, and you never brought me daisies.

five hundred and eleven mornings I’ve awoken
and found my hands disgusted with the way my body moves beneath me

and it wasn’t until you took your last breath that I started being grateful for mine

I hurt, do you see?

i could write you more than one poem about suffering, as routine as a heartbeat

the things i've done, the mistakes and places and the ways i've lost my pride and grace for the sake of sanity

i've spent too many hours weaving windflowers between my fingertips
hoping the stinging vines stealing circulation will bleed safety
hoping if I say your name enough times it’ll lose its incantation

but you were a magician
and I’ve still got too much pride to admit that I thought I could get rich on the lies you pulled from behind my ears

you told me that you loved me
you told me that you understood me
you told me that you needed me
you told me that you wouldn’t leave me

five hundred and eleven days ago I learned that the things you told me were as worthless as the promise you made to keep breathing

and now I’m second-guessing myself on the corner, begging strangers to tell me i’m worth something more than the words you imprinted on my lips

all this time I’ve spent trying to make the pieces of my shattered self fit together in the same way they did before your eyes became the reason that I opened mine

I don’t care what they say
They can’t tell me I’m wise for my age when I let you redefine the truths of my own existence

But I’ve had 511 days to rewrite this one, and I’ve got enough modesty now to tell you the truth.

when you died, you stole all the ways I ever felt validated
you had my secrets in your pockets, my innocence like an offering on your altar
when you took your own life, you did me a favor

A letter came for you today.

i ripped it up.