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

I felt like I was drowning
When I woke up at 4:15 this morning
But then I remembered
I love the feeling of water, and
I can swim
In that instant
I was weightless
Everything was so
Calm
And serene
And quiet.
There's a type of silence you can only hear
At 4:15 AM
It's not like no one is speaking
It is the complete absence of presence
And then I woke up for real
At 4:16 AM

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 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

Everyday seems condensed into a couple pages of pages of notes and that one muscles that I can'tquite seem to stretch out properly
All of the emotion is laced through the doodles in the margins that I didn't have time to draw
I'm just hoping that I'm happy enough to get out of bed in the morning
My nightstand is littered with half finished cups of tea where I made the decision to get up and live for the day
I'm just tired,
But tired is so much more complex than three consonants and a vowel
Tired is somehow supposed to explain why I haven't eaten in two days or why I keep picking the scars off my knuckles
But it doesn't
We don't address things
These are the sidelines that we have fallen to
I asked you about the weather yesterday
We didn't talk about your car crash or my dead dog
I ran five empty miles
The ground was just dry enough to sound hollow
All I knew right then was my body
We try not to talk about until it's silent and our clothes rustle together
I was thinking about the meaning of life and suddenly we were talking about Vincent Van Gogh and you cried
A sort of broad abruptness and then just grey again
We run away from parts of ourselves and each other
We build glass buildings so that men in suits can look out and see more glass buildings
And we don't throw stones
I miss the river that flowed across the street
Nobody has taken me there since I was a child and I barely remember
I barely remember doing my worklast night, but it's there on my desk, finished
I forget what flowers look like during the winter and I seriously wonder if life keeps trying while I'm asleep
I poured all of myself into your hands because I think you understand me better than I do
I don't need any of myself left over to grow up and get a job in a cubicle
They tattooed a bar code on my arm and assigned it a number
They beat the **** out of us but they never laid a hand on me
You don't blow glass to break it
Our hearts were beating so fast in your driveway
I doubt you remember the steps to that but it doesn't matter
Your hand on my vertebra is the only feeling I'll never forget
I was shivering
And our cold feet left blood on the asphalt where we were standing

I watched you leave me like you left everyone else
I think you forgot I was human
You thought you could just fade out
But when I give my speech at graduation,
I will deliberately leave holes where you should be
All the places we've been
That was us!
Together
You can't just decided to walk away
You have to say something
You have to stitch yourself shut
You shot me and left me with my hand over the bullet wound as if I could stop any bleeding
You didn't want me to die and you figured I'd figure it out
I will never admire you again
You will never be the god I though you were
You're just a wooden carving, just a story told to children to make then behave
But you aren't human

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

I just
Can't belive
It's you standing in front of me.
I just
Can't feel
Because I don't know how.
I remember loving you
But are you still the you that I loved?
I couldn't remember what your eyes looked like
Last night
When I went to sleep,
I cried because I didn't remember your voice
Your voice
Which could mov  mountains
And calm storms
Was absent from my thoughts.
I just
Want
I just want it to be you
Standing in front of me
But I just don't believe
That it is
It's time to wake up
And forgetthis memory.

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.

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 never fell asleep at night
The darkness was my respirator,
The silence was the alcohol I was drowning in
To fall asleep would be to stop fighting
I would fall asleep in the car on the way home from therapy
You would turn the radio off so that it was easier
I would fall asleep in front of movies with you
I wake up, and you're still holding me

After you left, I would fall asleep at my laptop
Therapy now came in the form of hundreds and hundreds of unfinished love songs
I would fall asleep at my kitchen table
Over one cup of tea that I had burnt myself making
My bedroom would never feel safe, I could never lock the door enough times
I wake up, and I'm alone.
I would still feel your hands on my spine,
Holding me upright,
All of the days that I walked around in a nightmare that you couldn't see

I would fall asleep by the window, waiting for you to come home
I'd always known that one of those days, you weren't going to come home
I would fall asleep on the hillside facing the sun
I liked afternoons, when it was low in the sky
I liked winter evenings when the hillside was covered in snow,
Or early spring, with dandelions
I wake up and you've left me a note
You've left me all of the spare pieces of myself and they make another person
I think you've left a little bit of you, as well
Just enough to say that you were there
It's strange that I only fill half of the bed now.
Sometimes, I don't go to bed at all
I have an entire, empty house to wander
There are so many crevices in which to hide from nightmares
There's the couch that I used to fall asleep on
I can't sleep there anymore
I can't sleep in the car that I'm driving
I've thought about crashing...
But it would be unfair for me to give up so easily
I bought a new laptop, but I still can't fall asleep there
In hazy visions built from half-closed eyes, I see your face
All of the grass on the hillside passed on
I still lay there in the afternoons, but the ground is hard and the sun is blinding
You were melatonin, brushed softly into my bloodstream
You were always drowsy,
But I will always be awake

Don't you fall asleep before the sun goes down
Just listen to my voice and stay awake

The fire barely burned you, darling
You won't feel the pain
Just listen to my voice and stay awake

I turn on the morning
Up before the sun rises
I turn on the lights
And heat up the oven
I start singing softly
And the dogs and cats wake up
My mom's alarm goes off
And I flee the scene
My mother takes over the house
Lit up like a Christmas tree

It's when you reach the bottom of the hill
That you start crying
It's when you reach the top of the hill
That you stop
It is the difference between walkig along the ridge
And sliding down it
It is the cascading ripple pulling you down
That pushes you back up
Because you are down,
Not out
And dented,
Not broken.

If this is my last resort, why are you opening so many doors?
Why are you still reaching out to me?

Lost doesn’t even begin to describe it
We’re stuck in a glass maze
Everywhere I look, I can see you,
But all I can touch is cold, and I leave fingerprints behind

You told me to be the storm, forthcoming
Just a warning, I’m coming for you
Because you left without me and you’re so ******* far
Please

You crashed into me in ways I did not give you permission to
Oh, sweet combustion
I am not a mechanic and you did not try to save me

Girl is a catastrophe, but my God is she still kicking
I’ve lost my footing, I still can’t reach your hand

You’ve taught me that I need to love someone enough to forgive them
I need to walk away with a broken heart and not apologize
But I can’t find common ground

Please rope me into the stars you promised
Show me the angels that fell and left you in their wake
Patch my spacesuit before I bleed infinity and really mean it this time

I’m sorry I’m apologizing again, but you deserve it
I wasn’t listening when you told me not to let go of the tether
I was reaching for the atmosphere
I forgot what fresh air tastes like
Please take me home, now.

You
Are
The only exception
Rules
Were
Not made to be broken
And
Time
Was
Not meant to pass
Counting the seconds till
Death do us part
Dropping those seconds for the sake of yourself

Dear Self,
Step away from the edge
Hold on to who you are
In your mind
I can see you falling
I can see your eyes fire
And flare
I urge you not to let your thoughts
Take over you
Why do you have so much trouble
Looking in the mirror?
Why do ghosts from your past
Feel so real?
Why are you so afraid
To take off your jacket,
Or wear your hair down?
I understand
That the walls came crashing in
And that you feel
Like everyone can stare right into you
And that they're staring at you
But they're not!
You're letting fear
Cloud logic
And judgement
And that's not you!
So dear Self,
Step away from the edge

We could barely see the road
In between the pouring rain and three in the morning
I didn't feel tired until I woke up a half an hour later and realized I was exhausted
And almost no closer

He drove, the whole way there and the whole way back
The rain (mostly) stopped and every once in awhile we would comment on the state of things
Everything that had happened

Home is now suspended somewhere in between

Can you just tell me you love me?
One more time
Before you leave today
Tell me you love me,
Please
Tell me you love me.

I look at the clock and always think,
"By now, you're already asleep."
Considering you go to school before I wake up,
That's not unreasonable.
I just makes timing a little bit difficult.

Let me make this very clear
This is not your pain
You cannot take this from me and ball it up into something you can wish away
God is not going to fix this
I am the sock that God forgot on the clothes line
God forgot and moved away

It takes seven pills for my brain to work like it’s supposed to
That was my Christmas wish from the hospital in fifth grade
I didn’t want to be called to the nurse every day
I didn’t want the hours of intake papers and waiting rooms
I didn’t want my dresser to be covered in pill bottles
Everyone thinks my room is a mess
It probably is

Dear Mom,
Please send ibuprofen
The off brand gel caps that don’t make me sick
I promise I am still listening to the doctors
I love you

God made miracles and God made mountains and God made mistakes
Let him rip the steroids out of my veins and make me human again
Not this half cyborg, half dead, half human
Mostly bad at math...
Let me be whole again
This is a ****** prayer

The first time I went to the hospital without my dad
My doctor told me how composed I was in the waiting room
Are you kidding me?
You can’t cry while you rattle off the pain killers you’ve taken
But you can miss your therapy dog like you miss the leg you left tangled up in your bed sheets this morning
The last time you remember your foot on the ground was last night
The last time you were an entire person, all of your nerves were working

When I moved out, I did not just leave home
I left a healthcare network
I left a system where I didn’t have to repeat myself like a list of diagnoses

Remission for me was funny where it meant almost nothing
It was a noncommittal guarantee that I was O.K right then
And the day after I finally heard it from my doctor,
I wasn’t

So as a little bit of a letter to the people who think I take too much medication
Because I don’t look sick enough
If you could give me back any of he days I spent in hospital beds or urgent care or waiting rooms
If you could repay my mother for all of the days she spent worrying about me living on my own
If you could take back all of the time my father took off work to take me to doctor’s appointments, I would let you
I have wasted so much time believing that I am tissue paper melting in the hailstorm of a mistake my body can’t stop making
You have no say.

I really messed up today
It's like that nightmare
Where I end up with no friends
Except it's real
And I am terrified
I feel like I'm in a room
And I just did a terrible thing
And everyone is just staring at me
Waiting for me to say something
But instead I just run out of the room
I ran out of a classroom crying the other day
But it wasn't the same
It wasn't this bad
I wasn't this scared
You all keep staring
Would you cut that out?
I don't eve know what I did wrong!
I'm sorry, okay?
I'm sorry!
I'M SORRY!

Everytime I say hello to you
I know that we will have to say goodbye
I know that our time together is short
Was short
I wonder if we will get anymore
Time with you
Is time with angels
You in all of your perfection.
I am not concerned
You are the calm
Of the wind in late spring
You are the ground beneath my feet
The ground which I know so well
You are every star in the sky
The stars which I hold so dear
But you are the only star
That I will get to hold in my hand
Someday
You are my someday
But some days never come
The stars are constant
But are you?

When I first met him
He told me that I had a lot to say
And that no one would listen
But he would

He pinned me so flawlessly
As if he had thrown a thumbtack at a mosquito wing
I'm not in love with him
Far from it, in fact
But he interests me.
He's the sort of person you only meet once
He doesn't fit into a type
Because he's every kind of different
And I love talking to him
Because I don't already know what he's going to say before he says it
He's got such a ******* up life
But he is one of the best people I know
It's fascinating, really
He could be incredible, if given a better chance
But he isn't
And he doesn't complain
And yet he still lets me talk

When I first met him
He told me that I had a lot to say
And that no one would listen
But he would
And he has never broken that promise.

Like holding on to clouds;
There's nothing there
Like tripping over your own feet
Like singing to an empty ampitheatre
Like talking when everyone has left the room
Like reaching for the stars
You can't touch
In my mind,
We're holding hands.

I see a little girl in a garden crying over her dead roses
She asks me how the garden can live after watching a beautiful thing die
I don’t know, I tell her
I tell her they are still beautiful somewhere in her past
That she’ll look at photographs one day and not remember when they died
But I know that she will
She tells me she doesn’t want to live when beautiful things have to die
I tell her that she is a beautiful thing
In her soft victorian dressing gown,
She is so young
I saw her framed in a museum once.
I wake up to two am in a college dorm room and start the day because I know that girl is dying somewhere
Sometime too long ago for me to be mourning
I look at her painting and don’t remember the day she died
If she’s lucky, she grew up and bloomed.

Let's see what we're made of-
Said the chemist to the architect
They built a house out of glass and stone and burned it down
Their technical achievement is of little consolation to family they installed there

You're just a little odd-ball,
Aren't you?
You like taking tests
And waking up early
And you don't divide things by two,
You multiply them by point five
So
In escence,
Divide things by two
You don't have to be the same
To succeed.

And you can do that
You are free to leave at any time, just
Don't expect me to follow you

Dad,
Remember the episode of Doctor Who where Clara is running around between him and her boyfriend? She sits in front of her mirror

I can’t do this anymore

He takes her on one last trip. He can’t save everyone. There’s a mummy on a space train.

You fell asleep. I fell in love with the bandages but I left that part out.

I wondered if the mummy would take me. It didn’t. The characters surrendered and the mummy dissolved. The oxygen was stolen.

Clara woke up on a beach. You were still pretending to be asleep. I fell in love with her body but I left that part out.

To get to the point, he saved everyone. She didn’t leave.

Father, I am sitting in front of my computer because I can’t say it in front of the mirror
I wonder if I will dissolve when you surrender
Maybe you don’t see the bandages so you don’t say the words
You can’t picture me as a mummy
But Dad,
I am dust.

Your words should echo your thoughts
Sounding only of the highlights
I think such wonderful things in the shadows
Last night,
I showed my little sister the stars
I let my unedited thoughts
Flow into her head
Everything I stand for
She could see
And maybe she didn't understand it yet
But someday,
She will be able to think wide open
Because we are not limited
To our own sky
There could be trillions of skies out there.
And she could be the one to find them.
I showed her Venus
And told her how orbits work.
And we sang songs till we had to go to
Sleep.

I fell asleep outside my first class room this morning
When my teacher arrived shortly thereafter, he quietly unlocked the door and let himself in, as he always does when I wash up like this
Which is frequently
Twenty four hours wasn't enough for one day
So I stretched it out for as long as I could

It's funny
How I haven't given up yet
I eep saying I will
But then I don't
I want you to be ok
But I can't help you
Helping you
Hurts me
I don't want to help you anymore
But there you are,
Sitting next to me
Oh gosh
Why can't you walk away?
Your voice grinds my soul
You click your tounge
And bang on the table
And it hurts me
You are the only one that hurts me.
I am screaming at you to stop
I'd grab your wrist
So that you can't hit it
But you have me in a glass tank

I am so trapped with you
So beaten
And so broken
But I want you to be ok.
I watch my words
And hold my tounge
And pray for the end of school
If it helps you to understand
the agony you put me through,
I am not religious.

I fell asleep last night pretending you were next to me
I woke up from a nightmare and was startled when I couldn't find your hand

Today,
My nightmares leaked into my daydream
I was so tired,
I don't even know if I was awake
The world was warm and welcoming
Until I could imagine a hand that wasn't there
It isn't real, it isn't real
This is what it's like to want to wake up
When you're not even asleep
Reaching out to something that isn't tangible
Feeling the ghost you saw last night
Nightmares during the day
And when it was finally over,
I sat there,
Terrified to fall asleep again

She's holding the universe in two hands as if it were cotton or maybe clouds
It just doesn't make sense to humanize her
And all of these people, they're just white noise
Little bits of static she can't hear, not really
She's sunken deep into everything,
Falling in slow motion
She's hypnotic
Oblivion is like a computer screen that she can manipulate
She seems dazed, like the entire universe is dancing with me right now
All the collapsing stars are fairy lights for the prom she's just created
And suddenly, I learned what she meant by infinity
In that one second that lasted forever-
I saw every time she's ever smiled
It made every kind of sense to hold her forever
But I lost her finger tips
She slipped away under the riptides and I can't swim out that far
But I watched her smile as she sank
I could still hear her humming.

Please don't go.

Please...

When are you coming home again?
Just remind me
That you will be coming home
sometime
Because I hate walking into school without you
And I hate knowing that that is how it will be
Every day.
I really don't mind waiting
Because I love you
But some nights,
You're all I have
And you're not here
So when are you coming home again?
When can I hear your voice
And hold your hand?
When can we be lovely together?
Just remind me that we'll be together again
*sometime