Every time
We say goodbye
I hate myself
For not saying
Don't go.

I meant to go out and practice
And I did
For a little while
But then
I ended up laying in the grass
And pointing out the sky
To no one in particular
(As I was alone)
I watched it turn from teal
To orange to pink
And I watched it fade
I watched the clouds pass
And I'm waiting for the stars.

Apparently I'm crying
I hate it when I do that.
Most times I don't notice
Till my shirt's stained

I wouldn't have seen your poems
If I hadn't used this website
As a booklight!

I often forget to watch the clock
The hours tick by
Without my knowledge
I very much love to
THINK
About time
Being apart of it
Is another story
Moving along
This linear wonder
Is it really so linear?
You see
I often dream of time travel
As I feel so out of place
Here
And now
Will be so important
Someday
But here
In now
Is not where I belong.

You see
I've been thinking about running away
Leaving now
For a different day.

I barely remember the nights when I woke up saying your name
Your name is etched in stone in my head,
And the rock has weathered smooth
I loved the way your name looked when you wrote it
I loved how it felt to write it myself
I barely remember the dreams when I saw your face in my sleep
Where I saw your name in golden letters
Because dreams fade fast,
Just like you, sometimes.

I haven't been asleep to dream
I want to be asleep,
But I'm not in control anymore
I can listen to the airplanes outside
Or my own heartbeat and watch the stars
Am I always this scared?
Yes.
Why do I forget that?
It's easier not to think about
It's easier not to think how I won't sleep tonight

Yes,
This is a dream
I know that may be hard for you to except, seeing as you can't actually change anything
But it's true. So wake up.

Congratulations. You managed to sleep until three AM. No, you cannot go back to sleep.

No,
No one else is awake yet.

No,
Playing that song you hear in your head,
(Over and over)
Will not make it go away. It is not recommended.

Yes,
You should write down every terrifying second of that dream because right now,
It's a memory, not a dream.

Yes,
You actually do feel that angry and hurt
You can actually see that bruise on your arm
You are actually crying.

No,
You are not the one screaming in your ears, but maybe in your head.
No one else can hear you.

Yes,
The fear is actually there.

No, I can't tell you how to fix this
I'm so sorry.

Yes, you absolutely must be terrified
Forget how to breathe
Hear your own heart beating too fast

Resent your heart for beating,
Your brain for thinking
Your body for being cold and stiff
The air for being silent
Your friends for being asleep
Yes, It has to be like this and you don't get a choice.

Yes,
This is a dream.
I know that may be hard for you to except, seeing as you can't actually change anything
But it's true.
So, please,
**Wake up.

I miss the sincerity
The oblivious sort of floating
Reaching out and swimming in galaxies
It's fascinating to leave my feet on the ground
Brilliant to swim in place and breath in fluid
I couldn't feel myself
All I could feel was oxygen, molecule by molecule
The atmosphere bent around me piece by piece
I held onto nothing but I didn't drift off
I held fast to everything that I've never been able to feel
I let the universe soak my skin to my bones and chew on my lips
And my pillowcase made an excellent towel

You used to call me Tinkerbell
Or maybe you called my older sister that,
I don’t remember
I do remember a purple sweater with Tinkerbell on it
I remember the matching blanket folded up in a bin somewhere
I didn’t take it with me
I remember the Tinkerbell windup Christmas ornament that sits in a box for eleven months a year

Memory is funny thing
It hurts, sometimes, to remember
It hurts because we’re growing up and moving on
Ir hurts because we leave blankets folded up in bins
But it hurts so much worse to forget
It hurts to argue over who was Tinkerbell
It hurts to forget her sitting in a box until December

When I wrote you a letter, because you can’t use your computer anymore
When I thought about every single word being as clear as humanly possible
When I thought about every flick of my handwriting and every possible way to make it easier to read
I still almost forgot to write love before my name instead of the dash I haphazardly throw in front of my name

So as you forget all of the insignificant details
As the plaques takeover like plagues and everything fades
As the nuance is lost with the fine motor skills
I hope to God you don’t forget that I love you.

I've had to tell myself over and over again that you didn't really mean it
- every time you said you loved me
I swear to myself that love would not bite me
Love would be artwork on my skin instead of scars
Love won't strike for the jugular or slice my achilles
Love will hold my hand and sing songs for me
Love will be written in satin cursive
It will be written in front of my vision and all over my face
Love will not hurt if it doesn't have to
Love will not leave me there until it feels like coming back
Love will be a human being- not a ghost, not a robot
Love might not say its name
But it won't hide from me
It won't leave for weeks without a word
Love will not tell me that my ideas don't matter
Love will be an entity, and I haven't found it yet
But it has taken me all of this time to convince myself it wasn't you.

It's that moment when you give up on life
That it really begins
That awful second
When you realize nothing is going to work
That it does
That imperceptible instant
When you are trapped
In the bitter clutches of failure
That you succeed

It would take them about an hour to realize I wasn't coming home from work
My father left me a truck and a full tank of gas
My house is two miles in a near straight line
But there are three highways 350 feet away and I could go 25 to 90 in seconds
Home must be hundreds of miles away
Because it's late but the street lamps look seductive
How easily I could leave it all behind
How hard it would be for anyone to tell which way I went
I turned left at the stoplight
House is a mile away in a straight line
Home is drowning in road signs and streetlights behind me
But it promises ressurect when I lose faith again tomorrow.

And suddenly, just for a second, that was all I was
Words on the paper
Dandelion seeds in the wind from the wishing flowers
My hair underwater
All I wanted was to be part of the atmosphere

You are a wonderful, beautiful thing
I don't know why I was just sitting here thinking about how flawless you are
You are radiant and incredible
And I think about you all the time
It's kind of crazy but right now,
I don't care if you hate me
Because I love you
Because you are so perfect
**Absolutely perfect

Dear Grandfather,
This is my response to your second response to my Thanksgiving card
I put your letter in my drawer
Didn't realize it was the last time I would be able to read all of your handwriting
I'm glad you're enjoying the baseball games
Sorry my college doesn't have a football team
If we did, I'd be in the front row so you could see me on the cameras

Dear Grandfather,
Merry Christmas
I got your letter right before my father picked me up to take me home for break
Crying, it found a home in my backpack
I would ask my mom to make out the words I couldn't understand
I didn't
Realized you were just talking about bingo
Congratulations, sorry about the snowstorms

Dear Grandfather,
Happy Easter,
Please forgive the smeared ink on all of my cards
My eyes are trying not to see what's happening, so they tear up
I could only make out a few words of your letter
I'm glad you remembered my science classes
They gave me a position researching diabetes
The one diagnoses you don't have
I think that if I studied Alzheimer's, I'd forget you are more than a patient
A failed trial
I can't do that to myself

Dear Grandfather
This is my response to your radio silence
If I were there, I would hold your hand
Knowing that touch and smell can jog memories
I envy your ability to read my letters every time as if it were the first
Hope that you can feel me through them
Hope that some days, you remember the first time, the first letter
The sweatshirt you gave me when I was little
I can't find any other way to hold on to you
So I'll make cards for the fourth of July weeks early
I'll write in the cursive that reminds me of you
I'll read your old letters like it's the first time

I’m falling in love with the campfire ashes floating up and kissing his cheek
My dad warns us that some are still hot, so we watch carefully just in case
We make up songs about hot tea to his guitar because he dare not sing about cold beer in front of my father
I’ve never felt warmth like cool nights and skin I never thought I would orbit
I’m caught in the grace of his feet swinging back and forth under the lawn chair
He’s a speaker for rhythms I don’t recognize but need to know
He calls me a manic pixie dream girl with her own plot line
Imagines me ruining a ball gown in a river
He is not the violinist my mom always said I would marry
On a good day, he’s a catastrophe rolling on the railroad tracks I’m tied to
Mother, we are late nights and bad decisions
No, I never got that tattoo but yes we’re going out again
Because he makes me want to hit the ground running
Convinced me that the sun orbits us, because
“it’s all about perspective.”
Ashes and smoked clothing like glitter and perfume
Like he promised mom we’d be home by midnight, and dad that we were running away already
I’m dancing on my tiptoes in the moment he makes a little girl’s dreams come true, not a woman
I can’t imagine a world in which I am grown up
Because he has chosen to grow up with me
I’m gonna kiss him, mom.

She drinks her iced tea with whipped cream
She fell asleep an hour ago;
Laptop open, mug on her desk
Her cups leave little rings on the wood-
She keeps saying she'll paint over them
There's this garden where she always finds butterflies
She has a photo album on her computer,
Calls it her "real-life fairytale"
She says that the twigs in her hair are "artistic" and that the paint on all her clothes adds character
She paid way too much for that shirt that she tore on a branch the first time she wore it,
But still wore it enough to fade the colours and soften the fabric
We went swimming at the lake: She left it at my house and it smells like her-
It smells like pinewood and eraser shavings and hairspray
It smells like the over-sweetened tea that I bring her for class every morning
I'm always late for trig after that, but I don't care
She makes me go for runs on the weekends, even slows down for me sometimes
She sings songs in a minor key every time she cooks
She makes rice almost every night, but she never sits down to eat-
Sets a formal place at the kitchen stove and plays orchestral music
She reads my text messages at one in the morning, almost never replies
But I can imagine her sitting up all alone, quietly humming or tapping her fingers on the mattress
Her hair just makes sense- she likes to braid it over her right shoulder so that it hangs when she leans over somethings

She always smiled as she left
She said it was because she was looking for next time, and there always was a next time,
Until we graduated high school and she said she was moving to Texas
As far away as possible, she said
I loved her sleek ponytail and her blue eyes
I remember her as an apparition, walking out my front door
Smiling gracefully, over and over
She didn't smile when she left for Texas
I think she made a mistake
I don't understand how a girl from the coast of Maine can live like that
The heat and the desert
All she's ever known is snow
I remember one time her parents let me sleep over with her because of a storm
Her pajamas were soft and we came down with the same cold two days later, but nobody asked questions
I was convinced that we were going to be together
She wanted to be in the Navy
I joined up yesterday
She said she just wanted something exciting
But she was the most exciting thing I'd ever seen, all packaged into a human being
She didn't have to go
Any school would've taken her and we could have had a life right here
I miss her
She sends me pictures of her and her tan friends in stupid hats and I hate her so much now and
I save every single one

Glucogenesis makes the process sound holy
If we look closely enough, I'm sure that we would find plants are praying
Sunflowers are facing Him sitting on some golden throne of fire that's burning my skin
They do all of this work, and then we eat them. The sweet ones are the worst. Their prayers were answered over and over until they were saturated with sugars I am stealing
I cannot regret being alive. I cannot feel remorse as my fluid gives way to a vibrancy unheld by the entire person
The body is made up of millions of parts that decided they were better off constructed. Some parts have decided they were better off as parts and they invade our castles so we **** them.
Some of them make glucose. Most of them don't.
It's sad to only understand life through the pages of a textbook. To read about the life I took to read about. Cellulose is just glucose the body doesn't recognize. My papers were a body but my skin cannot be read.
I cannot feel remorse for being alive. I call my dog to me and wonder how his mind was put together. His fluid is all stitched up with body in between. He does not think about the little grass prayers. I do. I sit and join them but I do not pray because I cannot complete glucogenesis. I am not created. I will someday be soil and maybe parts of me will be used to make glucose and then I will pray because this is all I know of afterlife.
I am grateful that plants are religious.

I didn't realize
How upset I was
Until I noticed I was crying
In the hallway
I was slipping on my shoes
And praying that you wouldn't touch me
I was messing with my hair
My thoughts tossing around in my skull
I was whispering
And apparently you couldn't hear me
I wasn't saying much
I didn't want to
I wanted to walk out the door
And keep going
I know the ground
And I don't want to know you.

Sometimes my brain is the most incredible thing
I breeze through classes at school
Excel in math and language
(An everything else, really)
But then it gives me flashbacks
And nightmares
And that one dream
That one girl
That one time
My parents don't know because I don't tell them
But these things happen
And I'm fighting myself
How does that even happen?

And I didn't know that I was kissing you,
But for some reason, I'm still kissing you
I've fallen into you and into dust
Floating into the sunrise at five am on Sunday
It's like I've been shot but it's okay
I'm slipping through your fingers
I'm dissolving; You're loosing me
I'm kissing you
Years just happened when I blinked
You just happen to be standing there when I find myself a whole person again
Please tell me why you are still holding handfuls of shattered glass
You have lost me so many times
You have lost me to terror and hysteria
You have lost me nightmares and flashbacks
You have lost me to myself
I wake up, and you are still holding my body
Limp and useless...
Some days I see you tremor when you catch me
I know that the thousandth time is much heavier than the first
When the glue washes off in the rain
Your life is halted while you wait for me to put myself back together
I'm always left with spare parts that were meant to go somewhere
You carry them for me
The glass is making your fingers bleed
You won't let me stitch them back together
But I will hold them the way that you hold me
When you peel off the scars and reveal yourself to be human, I will not walk away
And I will pretend not to notice that you were crying on my shoulder when I've gone under
I know that every single time feels like the last one
I know that you don't expect me to wake up tomorrow but you are hoping
You are hoping and that hope is like razor blades to the skin of your soul
You've been cut like you weren't one piece to begin with
But I think you love me...

I fell asleep staring at my phone
Waiting for you
Hoping sometime you'd hear
My whispers that never existed
My mind caving in and my walls giving out
I'm waiting for you tonight
One more attempt at your hand
I miss being allowed to love you
When I get a chance I still lace in the words
Of my favourite songs and I'm waiting for you to notice.
I'm waiting for you in my dreams
I wonder if I've been waiting for you for too long,
Or if you've been waiting for me, too
But I won't ask, because somebody might answer
I won't ask because I might give up on you
I might stop thinking that every shadow on the wall is your silhouette
I might stop loving your beautiful ghost
I'm holding on to nothing because nothing is the most I've ever had
I'm waiting for you to tell me you love me, and if I wait forever, I don't care
Because I've fallen in love with the idea of holding your hand
You are not gone, you're just waiting in the shadows
One of these days, I'll get to see your face again,
Rounding the corner fast enough.
I remember all the days I wake up screaming, and hope that you can fix everything.
All the days you fade into vapour,
It makes rainbows as it passes by the light
So maybe something good is about to happen
I need to hear your voice somewhere other than my mind
Sometimes I feel like everything is tearing me apart
Sometimes I feel like the tears are made of acid,
Working the way that water can break glass
Or fingertips can crack chalk
I am sad tonight, and if sad means beautiful to you,
Then society has made a mistake.
When did we start describing blood as beautiful crimson?
I think today will be the first time that I've cried myself to sleep
Missing you
And fearing the dreams I haven't even had yet

We’ve been living in the right lane of the highway
Going way too fast way too carefully
I think we missed our exit but I know that we missed everything in between
But honestly,
I think the whole world is right here, in the cab of your beat up pickup truck

If this is love, then I think writers got a little confused
This is confined, and nuanced, and breakable
There is no indestructible rope tying us together
Our love is trapped inside a glass prism
All you have ever needed to do was knock it off the shelf
But that doesn’t mean it was any less beautiful in one piece

You need to learn a lesson
Girls in short skirts and tall heels will not dance with you
They will fix their lipstick and take pictures for the internet
But they will not move any further into the party
The dance floor is lava and you are children
Your love is an ocean and she is a hot air balloon
You will never reach her
And she will never fall into that

But it got your imagination going
Some rusty old gears that you thought had fallen apart
And that makes it worthwhile, right?
Or maybe it doesn’t
Maybe it rots your insides until your soul melts out your eyeballs and you fall apart for real this time
Maybe it makes a pin ***** scar that you’ll have to explain to somebody someday

But honestly, if we left hand prints on beaches or carvings in trees,
I think we’d be wasting our lives
I have never regretted taking out my camera
Because nothing is permanent, but you can last for as long as I carefully back-up my memory card

People were talking about you
Someone said you were strong
So I said you were beautiful
And I would've kissed you right there if I had the chance

God look!
A sky
What wonders I cannot describe
Lay not within
But beyond
As life
So expendable
Has no known meaning
And is by far
The most complicated thing we know
As we are just electricty
Anyway
As we have no purpose
I give myself the purpose
To see the most brilliant thing I can
I believe it is there
Out past Venus
Or on the rings of Saturn
That I should find my meaning.

I know I said I wasn't coming home tonight, but
Leave me space in the bed.

The word "Love" sounds exactly like your name
Except it has completely different letters and
Syllabuls and
Sounds
I love to write your name

I have nightmares about girls in busted-up porcelain ball gowns
Their teacups overturned but the party isn’t over
Their clockwork fingertips uncurl
Clicking like gears into the hands of the flesh-and-bone boys who will lead them onto the dance floor
The question is met with the sound of high heels hitting the ground all at once
The violin belts out of some boy's phone left on speaker
He steps on their toes.

Autumn hit us like a truck
Our 90 degree race was promptly followed by days of 40 degree practice
Our elbows chaffing against our shirts, nevertheless grateful for the rest,
The shelter from the humidity
I don't think I was actually breathing as I crossed the threshold of the second lap of our three mile loop
In some odd twist of fate, I'll be running in the varsity semifinals next week
As my lungs tried to tear themselves from my chest, I tried to remind myself that this wasn't my first run
I've had six months of slamming my heels into the ground, just like every other ******* this trail
I heave every time someone passes me
I think, "Just one more deep breath and I will cross that line,"
I think that my height is betraying me and my joints are grinding to a painful halt
I think that I am still moving.

You are the biggest mistake I've ever wanted to make

By telling us that “healing is a process,” they seem to say that you will never be whole again
Your hand will fall to your side and you will no longer be reaching out to that person you swear you remember
Some day, it will be good enough just to whisper, “I was her.”

My bones ached when I heard she had died in a car crash
I could feel her skin pressed up against my chest
I had never met her, of course
But somebody had to remind her that it wasn’t her fault

When someone commits suicide, they are not depressed
They are furious and relentless
And they are coming for you

Good God, if it hurt you to see me cry, think about how I felt
And if it didn’t hurt, you weren’t trying hard enough

I think that growing up and being mature are an active defiance of human nature
And ****, I am too good at this
Nobody will date me because I won’t fight back

She ripped open her knees like they were old jeans but she was going to nail that skateboard trick
And she pitied all of the teenage girls who were too impatient to wear them out
She is the worn-out jacket I will take with me to my grave
She is living for all of us
And I’m going to catch up to her someday

It's almost eleven
And I can't sleep
I hear your voice
Bouncing in whispers of the raindrops
Please don't leave
I should have told you not to go
Before you left

Oh how I love our broken little talks
I almost want to mention the great proverbial elephant in the room that we aren't even in together
It's interesting how everything sort of fell apart like a house of cards with one single breath
You were supposed to be the light at the end of my tunnel, but you blew out the candle
And I'm walking down a street that just falls off of the earth
We've all wondered if heaven was real, but you were my heaven when I was with you, and every god was on our side so in the end,
It didn't have to be
And I would tell you again that it's going to be okay, but we both know I'm lying, so
If we're going to be sad, miserable people, can we at least go back to doing it together?
Stating the obvious back and forth isn't what we do because * we are best friends
We were *lovers
But all we have left are these broken little talks

Racing heartbeats isn't love
Fighting and cursing isn't love
Calm, cool and comfortable,
Ready for anything today.
That's love.

I don't want to look up anymore
Because I know you won't be there
I've always known, I guess
But I've always hoped
Because it helped.

I watched her
It was like the she was breathing for the first time
Brand new lungs, air that wasn't holographic
No more illusions or tricks, just
In and out

And that's when she walked away
Saying goodbye was the first time she had ever experienced oxygen
She suddenly understood the rhythmic movements of my chest
And why I had never liked diving

And I started to choke

I don't expect you to come around anymore
Every morning when I wake up,
It feels like you're a little farther gone
More like a memory-
Or a daydream-
Than an actual person
Now, every night
I wish on those tiny little far-out stars
That you could just talk to me for a second,
Kiss me once
Or hold my hand for a minute
I want to hear you tell me you love me
In your real-live voice
I want to hear you breathe one more time
Once you leave, I'm all alone again
Why did you leave again?
It's getting cold back here,
But you never minded winter
I always forget that you aren't standing next to me.

My dear friend,
I'm sorry I kept you up tonight
I got caught up
In the sound of your voice
Separate from the pounding in my head
Separate from the nightmares
You are your own dream
I just don't see you enough
It's so easy to get wrapped up in your words
I love to read your writing
I wish you'd show me more
I'm sorry I kept you up,
I love you.
Love,
Rosey

I don't miss the cold winter mornings
Walking to school all by myself
I miss the days that smelled of fall
When I knew that you would be there, too