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.

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.

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!

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’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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

Every part of me pulses with my heart beat
Faster than it should be
Louder
I've been up all night
Listening to it pound
I'm so sick of not sleeping
I'm so tired

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.

"'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

You know that feeling
When you're falling asleep
And you can hear the television
You understand the words
But
They just don't exist with you
It's so peaceful
Because everybody's talking
But
You don't have to
You don't have to try anymore
You are allowed to give up on today
I'm giving up on today
I'll text you in the morning

I stood there
Because I was too late,
And watched the flame go out

I don't write you love letters anymore
Remember the back and forth between us?
I hate that that has to end:
I wonder why it had to end
But I won't write you poems
Or loves letters
I won't write for you anymore

I'm slowly building up my life around things to looks forward to
Dreams that are suddenly real
And aspirations I didn't know I had.
Days to live for
I've found so many thing to look forward to,
But why won't you be one of them?

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

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 didn't lie down that night
I sat up by the muted television
I closed my eyes and listened to nothing
I just didn't lie down

It's not that I didn't want her to be happy
I just thought that I was more interesting than a highway
I thought her furniture looked better in our apartment than her car
But she thought otherwise

I'm still listening to nothing
It's still not morning
She's still not here

I'm still not in bed

I keep imagining laying across the road
I keep forgetting that she wasn't the sun and I wasn't made for her
She left to chase down her own stars
I wasn't her star
So I didn't lie down that night
I didn't give up to become part of the pavement

I opened my eyes to the muted television
And the empty room, and my desk in the corner
It isn't much, I can't afford much, but she's living in her car right now
She's somewhere out West sitting up on the side of the road

I stayed here. My stars are here. But I'm sitting just as straight.