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

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

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

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.

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

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

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 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

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

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 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.

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

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 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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

Please don't go.

Please...

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.

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.

I've seen all of these people in the hallways at school
Holding hands
And even kissing
And I thought,
"Wow, that could have been us."
But now I think,
"That'll be you and some other girl."

You're still the only perfect person I know.

I don't believe in
Open dreaming or
Fairytales
I believe that
You can not escape the real world
So you shouldn't try
If I should have a child
I will tell them
"Only dream of the things yet
Unwritten"

Crazy people
With all your metaphors and such the like
I'm trying to tell you a story,
Not write you a fairytale.
Why can't dreams come out in sentences
Every beautiful thought is clichè
Why can't people just say "I love you"
In plain terms?
Is it any less special to be written like so?

We'll talk for a minute, but then you'll be gone
I'll be up for a minute, but then I'll be gone-
It's hard to exist in anything longer than a
Fragment,
Stiched together with all of the other ones

She smiled at me
As she told me
It was worth a poem
A funny sort
Of true tale
Of bright yellow cars
And favourite teachers
A three year mystery
That concludes
Shortly before the end
Making smiles
And making days
"Worth a poem,"
She said.