We told each other things like we were standing in a lighthouse
I told him what I was thinking
And he did the same
It was all very blunt and concise
But I think at some point,
We whispered to each other across a candle lit table
That everything would be alright
And maybe we were lying,
But for a second,
Just a second, everything was okay.

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

I won't compare life to a
Path
Or a roller coaster
Or a road
No,
Not quite.
My life is a bottomless pit
A straight shot down
Or a straight climb up
But you never hit the ground.

I hang on every word you say so please say something.

Her lips tasted like peaches and I couldn't understand it
How we lost track of time and ended up here
Is time still passing?
Oh my God, this girl
This twenty one year old girl who still makes wishes on dandelions and stars
This girl who I have been kissing for the last twenty three and a half seconds
This girl who is completely blowing my mind out onto the wall behind us and has absolutely no idea
I need to figure out how to smile and kiss at the same time
I'm holding onto her hair so that I don't float away
I'm not convinced that I have a world to come back to after this
It took her eleven and three quarters of a second to completely erase everything else that has ever mattered
It took me fourteen seconds just to make sense of anything that has happened since we made contact
It took me fourteen and a quarter of a second to fall madly in love with her.

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

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.

She stared at the picture
As if she wasn't
She stared at the picture
As if she couldn't see it at all
As if she had given up trying
She only saw him in photographs
Now that he was gone
She doesn't want to see his life without her
She wants to remember before he left
Let her remember

I don't understand
I watch the way they talk
And laugh
I don't fit
I won't say that I don't fit in,
Because I don't want to fit in
I don't want to become them
And I really don't like the way they act
Or talk
Or laugh
But I'd still like to be included

One of these days
You'll be settled into your new life
In your new home
You'll make new friends
I hope you're enjoying everything
I'm doing a bit of traveling myself
One of these days,
You'll reply

I will be up all night tonight.
But I will not want to talk
I will not want to think, either
But I will anyway
Because things are going to happen tomorrow,
And those things could go wrong
And the more I think it,
The more I believe
Because
Cogit ergo sum
I think therefore I am
More like
I think therefore I will be
Which is the same as
I think and stuff is going to happen
I think bad things could happen
So therefore
They will.

I didn't know I was missing anything
I thought that we had everything
Shared through wires and satellite signals
It's kind if silly to think like that in hindsight
Because I sat down with her at the same table
No computer screens, no lost connections
I could feel it when she kicked my shoe
We've lost so much time
We missed everything.

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.

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 noticed it was midnight
Funny how nothing really penetrated my thoughts until now
Funny how I almost remembered I have a test to study for
And people I should have emailed
It's like when you walk into a room and forget why you're there
Except I've been sitting here for hours, staring at the wall
I'm starting to think you won't come back
And usually, that single thought takes over me
It ruins me and all my other ideas
But today,
It unlocked the box I've been living you
I'm trying to let you be gone
And it's okay,
It's actually okay, right now.

You may have dropped your dream,
But it's still good

I love the strong wind
It feels soft on my face
It feels
Free
It doesn't hold me where I stand
It doesn't control me
It doesn't make suggestions
And it doesn't make mistakes
It's so
Fascinating
How it roles about
And you can't even see it.
It just is.

Give me ink, I will give you freedom
I will give you all the escape you could possibly want
You don't have to run away anymore
I've hidden oceans within tiny cursive scrawl
I loved watching it dry quickly on the page,
All the messiness of hand lettering
And the beauty in story-telling
I will help you be free

I am a little girl
Dreaming of a perfect world that
I assure everyone I know does not exist.
I like to believe that I understand life
Scientifically
And actually
But do I?

Old windows and old floors that aren't soundproof
Forty year old cigarette habits
And a dying town
A town full of people who hope they'll get washed away by the tides in their sleep
A town full of people who don't want to talk about how much they've spent on smoking or why they didn't just get a ******* divorce
Multimillion dollar homes and unpainted wood
It feels unfinished to me, but really
They're empty
I couldn't sleep through the ghastly silence
Of dying people who will never walk onto their five acre yards or 25 acre forests
It's too hard for their old, decaying bodies
Old lights that twinkle with effort to turn on and shut off as though they've been holding their breath
These people are holding their breath
They think they can never change and things will get better
Nature will bend to their will and they can get back to their old, dusty lives
But nature has just over grown
Sends it's condolences for the death of the woman who is still alive

We were always in a hurry, and never quite sure why
I think we were excited to go to college and "make our own decisions,"
But I really miss when my mother did the grocery shopping
When she made doctor's appointments and did at least most of the laundry
And I miss my father's pickup truck

I was never quite sure if I liked the teacher or the subject
So I had to take lots and lots of classes
By my third year of chemistry, I had some semblance of an idea that I might be on some sort of right track
(That's how we word things in statistics)
But I still eat breakfast every single day with my tenth grade history teacher

So what if we got it wrong the first time
Or the third time
Or the next time
Maybe we misunderstood the meaning of the term "guessing game," but we had nothing to lose
Or maybe we had everything, and we got that all backwards, too
Maybe we wanted to hear them sing for five more minutes before we broke the news that most of them would not grow up to be singers

The lightbulbs exploded in a groaning twinkling sound
Because of all things, I was not in college to be an electrical engineer and I really didn't understand voltage all that well
But I understood catalytic converters so my roommate gained at least some sort of respect for me
She unpacked her graph paper at the same time I unpacked my sketchbooks and we locked eyes for a minute

Our colors are going to look ridiculous at graduation
And then what?

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.

I typed it out
How upset I was
I didn't press send
I slid my hand down
And held delete

I hope you don't forgive me
I don't argue with anyone but you
It's so demeaning!
I act so baby-like with you

I hate you
For making me a child
I feel as if you beat me
You beat me with
Soft sweeping passes
That I beg you not to take

You never hit me
But you don't have to
If you're upset,
I'm on my knees
Every comment I make
Must be worded
With unbearable precision

I hate knowing you.
You let me go
To steal me back
And break me
Once again.

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.

They never told me
That the you would be nice.
They never told me
That you would barely touch me.
They never told me
That you would be my friend.
When they told me about rapists,
I never thought it would be you.
They told me
that you would take off my clothes
And touch me in ways I didn't like
But that's not what you did
You became my friend
And you made me need you
But I didn't need you.
I didn't need to hold your hand
I didn't need you to touch my hair
When I asked you not to.
I didn't need you to try and hug me
Just for laughs
When I went running down the halls
In tears.
You never saw me cry,
Did you?
I didn't need you,
But I thought I did.
I let you into my mind
I told you all my secrets
And you told everyone else
You try to make me unhappy.
I feel like such a little girl.
Because when you ***** me,
You were nice
You barely touched me
You were my friend
You never took off my clothes
You took down my walls
And ran away with my sense of security
My trust
My Mind!
When you ***** me,
You ruined all that I am
With words.

She's the silhouette leaning on the tree
She's the whisper in the dark
She's the hand you can't quite reach
She's right there
But you aren't.

And if you dissolved
If you somehow danced off into the atmosphere
If all you are now is stardust and broken promises
Please remember that I was one of them

I didn’t see you after I left that day
I didn’t give you the chance
I thought I had thought about it, but I left you on a blank page
I think of you filling it with questions but no answers

I always thought that it hurt to leave
But I wonder if it hurt to be left
When you came back looking for closure
And I turned you away, looking for ending

I’m startled by curiosity
I regret not knowing if you ever turned a page
If you read on
If you missed me
And I think it’s strange that I wanted to be missed

So I have to look back at you through photographs
There aren’t many, we were kids
I can’t understand your life now because I can’t remember it then
My parents wrote you off as some phase I needed to get over

Your heart beats somewhere now with someone else
And I hate you, because sometimes
I still wish it were me

I saw you in the sunset
Bright and happy
Like when you laugh
I see you in the moon and stars
Like they spell out your name
Your name is perfect
And I like saying it
I see you in my puppy
When she smiles at me
I remember when you smiled at me
I liked it when you smiled at me
Even when you were mad
You were adorable
You were always perfect
You still are
I just don't see you enough
Like the stars
Going behind clouds
I want to see you more.
I love to see you
Because I love you

I needed some sort of lullaby so I fell asleep with headphones in
But no music playing
The sound of my dog breathing,
Close enough

He told us to get used to it, so we did
Some odd combination of benadryl and lack of sleep
On that one occasion
Your skin felt like leather and your eyes didn't make any sense

You wanted to ask about my bruises
I saw it flash across your face for a second
You couldn't decide and I put my sweater back on and it didn't matter anymore
Out of sight, out of mind

We were smiling, and peaceful
We were happy, for ******* once, and then we woke up
Draped across your notebook
I was sideways in the chair like I always am
My calculator was out of battery

Thursday hit like very large, very loud truck

I glanced over at my long un-used bed,
Still un-made
My hair undone
I checked my phone for texts from you,
Threw my brush in my backpack already on my shoulder
Left my door open and my lights on

"Get used to it."

He asked me if talking to him about you made me feel better.
I told him that I didn't know, because I don't know what better feels like.
He told me that it would feel like a weight coming off my shoulders
I told him that I didn't know.
I told him that I think about you all the time
I told him that I write about you
I told him that everything helps a little,
I guess
And I may not know it now,
But maybe it does

I wanted you to feel something
When I walked away
Because of how much you hurt me
But you didn't

God was dead
Or maybe God took a sick day

I'm going to take this love
This love, which I have poured out into paintings of bouquets,
As if my head was fragile,
Maybe if I let too much sun in, it would melt
So I'm going to take this love
All fluid and slippery
I'm going to save it for later

We skipped invocation
Or maybe we forgot or maybe we just knew
He wasn't coming

On the incredibly biased assumption that He is alive and real in the first place,
Steadfast stubbornness and ignorance,
Failure and grief combined
Have led me to believe that he doesn't give a rat's tail
His rat's tail
His creature

Your necklace...
Reflected stage lights in a way I don't think I can picture
Created wavelengths that flow in all the right directions
Your necklace meets my eyes unlike anything I may have considered
Your voice rides its brilliance and softly balances just inside my ears

He's not with us

She didn't cry in the theater
The sound would have echoed, her mascara would have run
Most undignified
So she went to the bathroom,
Hulled up, all lonely
Undignified doesn't begin to describe it
She lost herself, among the seats and the people she couldn't see against the lights
Among the eyeliner and the uncomfortable dress and the fake nails

He wasn't fair,
Or he was looking the other way
Or he was just wrong
I wanted to believe that he makes no mistakes,
But all the anecdotes, all the crying little girls who grow up to be crying young mothers over their crying children
God wasn't there.

You make me want to break the mirror
I hate the mirror I hate you
But I need you
Why the heck do you do that?
I feel
Vulnerable
In the mirror
Like when I see myself
I can be broken
Or maybe I already am