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

You could kiss me
But you seem so far away in both body and mind
That I don't think you will

My hand has been outstretched to you for so long that I'm afraid you can't see it

I wonder if I've become a ghost to you, the way you have to me.
Whenever I try to lean into you, I fall into a canyon
Like I somehow missed your body
And then the ground broke away from our feet
But you aren't falling with me

I don't know how to kiss, but you can teach me
But first, become a solid entity, exist where I can see you, even if that's through a screen. Tell me that you will hold my hand as soon as I see you. Tell me you love me, because it doesn't matter if anyone else does. And don't worry about what people will say because I won't let them drown us.

Let me write you a letter, in cursive script.
Practiced, intricate loops, most beautiful when I write your name
Forget that someone is watching our every move like a dancer on a stage.

Maybe we are dancing. Or maybe we should be.

You could kiss me. I wouldn't mind.

You want me to tell you how I slit my wrists
Or how I became addicted to drugs
You want me to tell you how much I hate my life
How sad I am
You want to find beauty in my pain
You want the blood to paint pictures for you
But I never hurt myself
I sat and watched my friends break
I tried to help, at first
But it became easier to sit
And watch
And sing pretty songs so I can't hear them crying
There are exceptions
People worth saving
People worth fighting for
But everyone else;
I wish they'd just fight for themselves.

I don't blame you.
I think it was more of a mutual surrender,
And that's okay, isn't it?

Mathew always tells me to do what makes me happy
On days where I'm afraid to step under the rain
Or speak my mind out loud
And coming from everyone else, I would ignore them
But when Mathew says it,
I know that he knows how to be happy.
A lot of us forget to do that sometimes.
To do what we love,
And love what we do.

I need to hear from you by Monday
Because I'm leaving on Monday
For my competition
And I am scared
I am scared of a lot of things
But right now
I'm mostly scared of failing
I need you to tell me it's ok
Because when I talk to you,
It really is
And I know
You're busy
And you have a life
And all
But I really
Need to hear from you by Monday.

I can not show you the pictures in my mind
I can not accurately describe to you
How bright the colours shine
Like the Northern Lights,
Or how soft I remember your skin to appear
Because in my mind,
We can still stand together.
We can watch the stars together.
The stars are dull, standing alone.
I feel dull, standing alone,
Your radiance is absent
I no longer wish to stand, you see
I am very tired.
Alone is very taxing on the mind, you see
The memory of you
I do not wish for it to fade.
If no one knows you exist,
Then you don't.
If you do not feel loved,
Then you aren't
Because love is an energy
It is tangible
It is visible!
And I can see it when I think of you.
When I think of you,
I can see you
Surrounded by roses of every colour
And the colours are so wonderful,
So real
That they simply cannot be
And I realize that you are so wonderful,
So real,
That you simply cannot.

If I had a car and $100, you would never see me again

You make me feel safe.
I can fall asleep when I'm talking to you because I feel like there is a reason to wake up
I feel like there's a chance I won't have nightmares.
No matter what you say it's a lullaby
So I am a little girl and you are my big brother,
My guardian,
The blanket that keeps me from shivering at night
You are like turning off the light that seeps under my door so that I can't see shadows,
You are like telling me you locked the door fifteen times so I don't have to
You are like checking for spiders and finding out there aren't any
Like shut blinds and soft-glowing green alarm clocks
You probably can't imagine how alone I am because I am completely terrible at needing people but I need you
I need the door locked fifteen times,
I need blankets and reassurance
And total darkness except for soft green glows
I need to know you'll be there if I wake up screaming because I already know that no one else will.

I am your little girl
I blush when we speak
I want to tell you as I learn
Of all the wonders we can share
I want to look pretty when you see me,
And I love seeing you!

I must be doing something wrong

Because I don't think you hear me whispering
I don't think you see me standing in front of you
I don't think you realize that you're on the wrong side of the window
Or maybe I am,
But I'm screaming for you
And you can't hear me
You keep on staring through me
And I'm slipping down the glass wall
So please break it down
And catch me before I fall
I never got to hold your hand
I still write your name on stick notes because I love the way it looks
I loved you before you left
And I don't know how to not
Because you made me
So
Freaking
Happy
So
Freaking
Happy
And I thought you were happy, too,
On the days that you weren't sad
We both had bad days but I thought we were happy together
Because when I talked to you, my mind was quiet
And I can handle the noise
But I need the quiet,
No one's ever made me feel like that
And you never told me how you could just walk away
I mean, I know life ***** sometimes
But it's easier to handle with you
All the times that you didn't get mad,
And I never forgot
The first time I cried after you left
I just told you that I hated that you were gone.
I sat up alone until midnight
Until I realized why I was crying
I count the minutes in my head and watch the paint peel off the wall
But I'll never understand
Why you left

Please
Don't
Let
Go
I can hear your hands slipping,
Slipping
I can hear your heart beat slowing down
I can feel your soul just giving up
So please
Just don't let go
Look at
All the people standing
Don't be the first one down and out

I can hear your hands
Slipping,
Slipping
I can hear your heartbeat
Slowing down
I feel your soul just
Giving up
So please know that
*I won't

I just want to smile for you to see
Every message you send makes me smile
And I wonder if you know that
I feel like I don't say it often enough
I've missed a lot of chances to tell you I love you
And you seem so sad all the time
You don't have to be sad all the time
At least,
Not alone
It seems to be hard for you to understand that you will always have me
You can't break me any worse than anyone else already has
Go ahead and kiss another girl
No matter what you do,
I'm not going anywhere
I've never had someone like you
And maybe you've never had anyone promise to stick around before
But that's me
That's what I'm going to do
I want you to be happy
And I want to see you *smile

Qualifications
I'm afraid of falling
Out of airplanes or off cliffs or into the ocean
High heels make me feel as though I'm tiptoeing on the rings around planets
I cannot promise not to step on your toes

Description
When I say "strong," I don't mean that I need you to sweep me off my feet
At some point, we grew out of the Victorian Era,
Girls aren't ornamental glass paperweights
I will not live in my flower garden
I will work late nights, too

To Apply
The exam starts the instant you walk in the room
No way to cheat, but this time, there may be second chances
Your kisses have to mean something
You have to take decisive steps as we dance

The days that we cross paths
The days that you're there when I wake up
The days when I can hear your voice in my head
The days that you say something beautiful:
Sometimes I count them.

My father used to tell my older sister and I that if we wanted to fly
All we had to do was jump and miss the ground on the way back
And we tried
We spent days at a time on that trampoline, jumping and twisting our bodies
And always having something to catch us when we realized we weren't birds

I don't remember when we gave up on flying because we didn't
She bought a car and drove so fast her mind grew wings and she disapeared into smoke stacks of cities I've never heard of
I paid $250 or two weeks of working my part time job and got to really feel it for a couple of hours
My father is waiting for us, like the mesh of that trampoline
To realize that if any kind of bird,
We are homing pigeons

I would have given anything for an ambien last night

"As many loops at possible," she whispered.
We were sitting in the waiting room at the hospital, hoping to see her sister's newborn child. She was sewing.
My hands were shaking, and the stitches came out crooked, but she said I did perfect

I was sweating.
It was late and I thought I had been dreaming, but I couldn't sleep
It was a hazy, drug induced dream
Muddled by clouds and glare from an unpresent sun

I was under water, all of a sudden, I guess
But my clothes felt as though they had been soaked forever, like I had grown up there in the lake
Or the sea, I couldn't tell
I held my breath, calm and steady, and found the surface
But I remained, until my heart beat solidified to stone,
And I breached oxygen

That bed was a prison
I couldn't imagine morning through my open blinds
All I can remember is my muscles curling in on themselves and my mind imploding
My body was a black hole I couldn't escape
2 am was eternity that I was slouching towards

She was looming over me, I must have passed out on the couch
She kissed my cheek and dragged me up
Breakfast was ready, she said
There was something across me
The blanket, she had finally finished sewing
Right in the center was the square I had sewn at the hospital
I thought she had thrown it out
As I stared hazily, trying to shake the cobwebs out,
She smiled from the kitchen
"Come on, up you get," she gestured, and disappeared into the light

I sat on the edge of the pool, heaving last Friday
"I thought this would be easy," I shouted at the lifeguard who was actually on duty in between heavy breaths
We've been mates for awhile I suppose, so I wasn't uncomfortable wearing almost no clothes in front of him
My relay partner was returning so I stood up, still breathing too hard,
Ignoring the bruises on my shins from the side of the pool
I jumped in, turning to face him (terminator style) as the water swallowed me,
Grabbed the brick, swam the fifty
Stood up on the edge right away this time, entirely focused on my body and my partner

I got lost on a mountain once
My friend and I had been climbing nearly straight up for an hour before we realized we'd lost the trail
We also realized that going down would be infinitely more challenging than coming up
Covered in scratches and bruises, with burs in our hair and the sun setting and no idea how we had lost the Appalachian, we called my dad
When I finally got home, with no help from him, he said,
"I'm glad you got lost. You learned something today."
The water I had hidden in his pickup truck may have saved our lives

A football player pushed me up onto the two foot side of the pool to do a tricep dip at the instruction of my teacher
This was the first time I realized how weak I was, pale and sickly and tired and trying to change
We have already done fifty nine pushups and sit ups and sprints on the deck
I passed out at six pm that night
And got up at six am the next day
Wrapped my wrists for English and chemistry,
And replaced the braces with grips when I got to the gym

I think disappointed was the only word I could come up with as my sister drove me to the ER the day before she left for college
She'd spent eighteen years growing up, and this was the first time I felt like she was still a child,
Scared and vulnerable, turning off the lights for me while we waited for the doctor and my dad
More CT scans,
"Lie still, don't move,"
I could swear I was in a mortuary, in my coffin, too young for my liking
This was before my second training session, and I was afraid I was going to have to quit

My girlfriend and I did our first run together, holding steady to her 11 minute-mile-pace
Except for the mandatory sprints on my training app
I took her in between trees and across the farmland I grew up on
There was no talking, we each had our own music
But she got to feel something I loved, and I got to be with her, sense her footsteps out of sync with my own
We got caught in the rain

"Excuse me, Coach, Sir," I said out of habit, when he told me to call him Coach and not Sir
It was the first time I passed my physical for a sport
He had me running three miles on the first day, and the second, and the third, and I got lost
(This became a running theme in my quest to "get better")
Suddenly, I wasn't the girl in the hospital gown anymore,
Although the one person on the team who knew me asked me if I had my medication every day
If I didn't, he stayed back with me
He was safe, for some reason
I ran my second 10k that year

Don't touch me
Don't ask me to open up
I don't want to talk to you
I just want to see you
But you're not there
You are really far away so
Don't touch me
Let me be here on my own
Instead of missing you

Booting up,
Blue screen
Press enter to accept default settings
Body; female, almost adult
The background is a picture of you holding my puppy
And the table is cluttered in the way it always was before we cleaned it so mom would have somewhere to put her feet up
I put the camera down because photos are just pixels and I can never have this moment back
My dad is singing about Caroline and the miners and the puppy sings along
He tries to chase the cat and gets a scratch on his nose
I walk through the glass door onto the porch and the shocking reality of the wood on my bare feet reminds me that I’m staring at a computer screen

Restart
Enter password, incorrect
Reset, password too weak, can’t hold onto memories for you
Every once in awhile, the white noise of the public pools plays in my head
And the smell of sunscreen sunburns and I’m not listening to my parents
It sounds like the successful login jingle
I think I know that girl over there, but I’m not sure
I mostly play alone
How has nobody noticed how cold this water is?

Error, Corrupt file
My dad sits with his computer out at the campground looking at google earth
I can’t remember anything he ever said about it but I feel the mosquito bites
I think my body is a dot to dot that someone did when they were bored at the diner
And I’m sorry if they skipped a few and I ended up piecemeal
Maybe my dad has something for it in the medical kit

Error, out of storage space
The essay needs to be saved so the pictures get deleted
I’m almost through when I see you holding my puppy
See your eyes meet mine
See my own feet on the hard ground
I’m more aware of my chipped nail polish and the space in between my toes
It think these floor stains are ours
I think this will never be my room again
I think my bed is imaginary
I think my mind is a photograph

Error, event already occurred
Cannot reconstruct file
Cannot help you fill in all the gaps
Cannot tell you what is missing
Cannot let you hold your puppy

John Green told us that “it hurt because it mattered.”
By this, I think he meant to alleviate  the pain that comes when nobody licks your scratches
I’m just going to warn you-
It doesn’t

2.
I used to fall asleep to the sound of my father turning on the shower at night
Something about the sound of the water through the plumbing Reminded me that my mother was across the hall watching TV
And my little sister was drawing in the basement
I felt my dog breathe in and out to the sound of the water, curled up behind my legs
And this all added up to family

3.
I told my therapist, “I think that’s when my heart fell through the storm drain,”
He kissed my forehead,
Made everything all better,
And then I woke up

4.
Someone went around lighting tiny fires
And suddenly, our college campus turned into California
She tried to put it out with ethanol
Nobody went to the funeral
I heard some people asking if anybody knew her, and
Nobody did

5.
Last night, it mattered.

6.
You are never supposed to reach your last resort
You are supposed to leave it on the top shelf of the top floor of a building on Mars
And I am telling you, you haven’t
You don’t even have the key to get in

7.
Your life was never supposed to fall apart
As though all of the little bits and pieces were never meant to fit together in the first place

8.
If you wanted this to be a love story,
I’m sorry, but you’ve started at the end

9.
I’m gonna save you...
God, I am so sorry!

10.
I couldn’t live with the idea that growing up took longer than move-in day
But it wasn’t just Neil Armstrong who walked on the moon
There were engineers and politicians and mothers and chemists
There were miners that dug metal out of the ground and handed us a space ship and I really do mean US
Because there were children watching that day, and it took them longer to grow up
It hurt some of the time but it mattered and some of them became astronauts
Most of them didn’t, but they did become humans

11.
If this is my last resort, why are you still opening so many doors?
Your body is a promise that I can’t keep
I can’t let go
I can’t-

12.
There were days when he crawled into bed like it was a coffin he would never escape from
I remember his voice shaking when he called me
But he was still something out of a fairytale, so his story couldn’t end here
Unfortunately, people decided to scribble all over the book
And the resale value fell through the floor

13.
When we kissed, I went home and cried
I just wanted to be part of the atmosphere
But he was a lead balloon and I couldn’t take off

14.
I have learned the very hard way that I will never take my own advice

Love is not your heart
Beating rrally really fast
It is calm and peaceful
And serene
Love is not flying,
It is knowing that you aren't going to fall.
It's not kissing under the tree,
It's climbing it!
It's not a chaotic mess
It is knowing that where you stand is stable,
Just for a little while
So you can test your footing
And shake it up again
And I assure you
It is not perfection
Because perfection isn't real.
A moment can be flawless
But then it's gone
Because right now can't last forever
But we can.
Love
Is not all those girls
In their pretty pink dresses
And the glass slipers
With their pretty pink hearts
It doesn't have to be a fairy tale ending
To be just as close to perfect
As they are.

My favourite thing to do these days
Is to measure distance using time
Because, you know, time passes.
Gaps close.
And it's a beautiful, impractical idea
It's midnight in four hours
But in one hour,
It will be midinight in three
I wonder if I'm the only one
Who counts the hours until tomorrow

I love it when he says my name
And not my middle name
I always like my middle name because it was pretty
But he makes my first name sound beautiful

Isn't it funny how we all have the same dreams
At one point or another
As children or adults
We've all wanted to fly
We've all wanted to travel the world
We've all wanted to discover something new
We weren’t born as astronauts
Or rock stars
Or doctors
We were all the same, once
We aren't anymore
But I was looking at a picture today and I realized
Someone else drew my dreams

Writing is just
Borrowed ideas
And slivers of insanity
Put into words
By someone else

Writing is just
One last chance
To tell them how much you love them,
Or to say goodbye
Just the right way

Writing is just
Dreams being given life
Ideas being given legs to stand on
People being given second chances

Writing is just
Kissing you goodnight
No matter where you are

Writing is just
People falling in live before they meet
And losing track of time before midnight

It's falling asleep with the lights on
And dreaming of yours dreams
It is personifying your imagination
And aspiring for you
Writing is backing out
Without giving up.
Writing is worth a lack of inspiration,
Or a perfect love letter
It is worth my hair in my face
And my heart where my head should be
Even when my dreams are splayed about, shattered
My spirit is unbroken

You're allowed to remember"*
I understand, she said, that forgetting feels like letting go
And you aren't ready to let go yet
You're clinging to any scrap of that feeling you had years ago
Any part of the wind that makes it feel like it's not over
Nothing is unending
I can't stop time for you
I can't hold your hand until you realize that loss is just the tide pulling something further and further away
So sit there, and remember
Write a book, paint a picture
And then shower off, wash your hair
Change your clothes
The tide hasn't pulled you away yet
I'm still staring at you from the other side of the bed
It doesn't have to be over yet

"'S hurts..." I slurred
"What hurts?"
"...hurts."
I certainly wish I could have been more coherent, but I fell kinda hard
A stranger ran his hands over me, pressed something up against my leg before he called the hospital
It was starting to drizzle
I heard it turn into a thunderstorm against the ambulance
He left our bikes and carried my body off the towpath
I'm not completely convinced I was still alive at the time
He had his shirt tied around my leg- they cut it off on the way, replaced it with something not soaked in sweat
People were asking me questions and I think I was answering but I'm not quite sure
I woke up in a hospital room, the stranger sat beside me
He put his head in his hands, breathing, "Oh thank God,"
He almost had to watch me die, a mistake in manufacturing bike chains
And a steep cliff
His clothes were covered in my blood but he wasn't
They cleaned him up and gave him a new shirt
"Thank you," I whispered. I wanted to say more
But I think I was still digging my way out of my deep grave on that bike path
I was discharged, took a taxi home, and never saw him again

I know it's you
All of the fake names and the smoke
I'm choking and maybe it's making me crazy
But I swear it's you
After all this time, you still sound just like you
Like all you've ever written is your own name in permanent marker
Over and over again
I swear it's you

She looked dangerous,
Standing there smiling over her shoulder
She had a word to herself
A word that ruined lives
Broke worlds, tore our castle down
But it could have been worth it
Sickeningly beautiful
I couldn't find it anywhere else
Only in her and her english
Relentless, she pursued this fantasy
She was getting herself killed but fireworks are stunning
I was stunned and stuck in my place
She was driving too fast and leaving without me
Just her smile left to haunt me from the mirrors of her car
Reckless.

I’m procrastinating on death
My mother tells me that grandma can barely breathe
I don’t believe her
I still call her on Sundays and just do all the talking

I’m grieving for someone who is still alive
When my mother tells me I can’t see her,
I nearly hang up the phone
She can tell I’m crying before I make a sound
In the moment I’m choking on my own vocal chords,
She knows I cannot hear her anymore

Death cannot make me a better person
I tell my mom that I wish I had been a more loving child
I’ve wasted time
I’ll waste the whole night washing the stages of grief off my bedroom floor
I will not find her in the bubbles

Death is not here
He is laughing at me with a timer I cannot see
He is waltzing around my grandmother’s home,
Some days he has a weapon,
Some days he is unarmed
Grandma tells mom that time is up
She tells me she is fine
I tell her about my day

I think about going to church
Then, I remember that asking for forgiveness is the most spiteful thing I could possibly grapple with
Forgiveness would be grieving for my own soul
And that is not why I am throwing away dead flowers
I save one, maybe it has some color left
Maybe I’m just seeing things
I press it in a book on a shelf packed too tightly
So I can forgive life for leaving its petals
And her skin

Maybe this is a prayer
Maybe it’s an epitaph
Maybe it’s my whole body trembling in little keystrokes and maybe they can hold onto her for me because I am not with her. I am alone in my bedroom wishing for a ghost to tell me instead of my mother.
When she’s gone-

My mother asks if I will want anything from her house. I tell her I want the sailboat pillow I held to my chest while throwing temper tantrums as a child. I’m stomping my feet alone in my apartment and Death says that he’ll wait for me to stop. I text her after we hang up to say that I just want my grandmother.

At any given time
Brushing my teeth with my eyes clothes
Letting your soul leak out onto my skin
"This is crazy," I thought for the first time,
Singing vintage music in your beat-up convertible

I was in a good mood
Maybe it was John Mayer
Or my second Doctor Pepper
Or the cliff to the left of us
You were behind the wheel, and for the first time, I was not afraid of falling

Maybe there was a hurricane
I've never seen one before, I wouldn't know
All I know is that we came out kicking, and dancing
Like you had carried an old record player the whole way
Nothing but your grace keeping it dry
My heartbeat perfectly in tune to your footsteps
My soul, your rhythm
"My hands, your bones"

Your car breaking down on the narrowest stretch of that road,
As it does
Laughing at the sports cars driving too carefully on the pass
Leaning against your scrap heap in the middle of the road
"Totaled?" I asked
"Nah. But I'll sell it to someone who knows how to fix it."
Knowing that axel grease would make a perfect cologne, but you preferred pine

Let me be perfectly clear: we were not in love
Love would be complicated
Splitting hairs and asking about feelings
Your soul would be afraid to touch me, and your soul made me feel vibrant
We were nothing but real

I don't feel lucky
You would have found me if I were invisible
You were looking for a girl in hiking boots with her ball gown
Dancing to the tune caused by flickering stars on and off instead of the orchestra
And I don't know how many of us there really are anymore
Girls who aren't afraid to ruin their clothes and can still use a compass

The tow truck came at the just the wrong time
When you jokingly dipped me over the side of the road, like you were going to let go
But I've already explained- I was not afraid of heights
You were a sturdy harness maintained by a practiced climber
Any sort of chaos was braided into the ropes which made them stronger
We were laughing as we both crammed into single passenger seat of the truck and inched down the mountain

I wonder if
You're waiting
For me to go to sleep
To **** yourself.

When my older sister and I were little
We used to jump off the top of my dad's truck
With umbrellas
And hoped we would fly.
We knew we couldn't do it,
But we couldn't **** the dream
Everytime we climbed back up,
There was a chance
And a glimmer of hope.
We used to flip on the tranpoline
She learned quickly to land on her feet,
But I still can't.
I didn't want to.
In all those years
In everytime I tried
I still hope that the netting would
never catch me
The air was always soft,
Even when the days were hot
This was a mindless dream
Even though I would never admit to having it.
We took down the trampoline a few years ago
But I still remember how to flip.
When I learned to twirl baton,
My sister didn't learn with me.
The leaps and jumps we do
Are as close to flying as I can get
She does trapeze in the tree out back,
But I'm not strong enough
And I was too afraid to learn.
I have been too afraid to do a lot o things
And that's ok
I don't want to fly
With out her.

Why is lack of understanding a wall?
Why can't it be a doorway?
Why can't it be an invitation
For conversation?
Why is the unknown
So widely feared?
Nothing is really "unknown"
Just momentarily not understood
Why do we try to fight that
Instead of changing it?
Un-pausing the moment?
Why can't learning be a trend?
Why am I afraid to speak freely
Because They won't understand what I want to say?
Today
Lack of understanding
Is an open door
For me.

Things were supposed to be different and that’s an understatement
At first, it was like you were guiding me across the galaxy
All I had was a backpack but you were gonna keep me safe
You held my chin up
You promised

Now,
Now that my heart hurts
Now that I’m tired
I keep forgetting to look up at you
And suddenly, even with your knees resting on my bed you are so far away
I must have been looking down at my feet
And now, you’ve run off

I promise, after this one thing, you can go back to bed