I hold out pens like cigarettes.

I sent an old friend a "Happy Birthday" text and then deleted her number.
I like to think that she never replied because I blocked her number,
But I don't remember

I want to know if she wanted to forget me.

I never want to forget again.

I've drawn your face with words
I've drawn her's with tally marks,
Counting all of the of the times that I thought back to that mistake

Words are forever,
And I hope you are, too,
But in case you aren't,
I never want to forget

I am holding on to every second I saw your face
People try to take that from me
That's one reason I have no friends:
Your memory is a better friend than they could ever be
So I hold on to you, instead.

I need to hold your hand
And let go of her's
But yours is just out of reach
And her's faded years ago.
I have fallen in love with holding on to nothing
To no one's hand
No one can be my best friend when they have to be
I wish I didn't have to be alone

I hold out pens like cigarettes
Because I hope that my words can leave permanent marks.

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

I hated you
I hated you more than I probably understood how to hate
I hated your green eyes and I hated all of the time I wasted staring at them
I hated how you didn't believe in me
I hated how all I was to you was a story that you didn't have to read
but hate doesn't make sense
You can't tear down a tree just because it makes oxygen
If all I was was static than maybe you learned something
Maybe you learned tbat all of those colours on the TV screen were breathing
Maybe you learned the sounds of a heartbeat other than your own
Maybe you learned that somebody could love beautifully with every cell in their body,
Even if you couldn't
Things didn't have to make sense after you
I fell just as much in love with the things I didn't know as I had with your retinas
This is what stronger looks like
All of the cursive loops that make my teachers happy
I didn't understand how to hate you,
I was lost in all these memories that drifted in and out of my bloodstream
You were in there somewhere, I think
In there with all of the things love couldn't describe
Maybe you were a clot and that's why I left you
I did a lot of leaving after you
A lot of doors closed behind me
I lost a lot of good people
I didn't know that love was going to hurt me
I didn't know that love was going to tell me that I wasn't good enough
I didn't know that love could hide for so long that I thought it was dead and still come back,
Pretending to sew up all the damage in its unexpected wake
You were supposed to be beautiful

I played counting games as a child
Two people wearing blue, one old man wearing red, a little girl in white
My seconds were always faster than the seconds on the clock but the minutes matched up
I was so afraid of running out of batteries
You can only see time if you watch it
I will never forget that old man

They're different
They tell me I'm tired on days where I'm too frantic to notice
They tell me I'm sad when I'm smiling
Because they know
They dry the tears from my face before I even realize I'm crying
I don't pretend to be happy,
I just don't realize I'm sad.
They let me be angry
And kick and yell
And run myself down
Until it's safe to try and tell me it's alright
It's incredible that they know that
They know when to yell back
Sometimes,
I really need to be yelled at
Sometimes,
I just need to be detached and alone
And so they let me spin out
But they won't let me crash or burn

I don't think about it as jagged
I see little crystals, reflecting light
I see picket fences, your smile feels like coming home
I see clouds and little black holes in between
- Little galaxies I can fall into, stories I can tell later
I see you, unique, I can't imagine you any other way
I see you smiling
And now I'm smiling, too

I was the only one in the room with a calculator
The only one who wrote several pages instead of half of one
I wore pencils in my hair
And all because it was easier to face the world
Through measured steps
And calculated movements
Ready for anything that didn't involve leaving the house
Fearless,
Unless you're talking about something that could cause harm
Creative as long as it doesn't involve artistic ability
We're not depressed
We're scared
And we're not cynics
We take things as they are
We're not cynics
We're geniuses.

She was late
And I mean too late
Every single time
I wanted to hope for something
I wanted to fall in love
I tried to fall in love but
She was too late

And he had no idea what he was doing
He was lonely and probably looking for her, actually but
He didn't try very hard
He just sort of waited and waited
But he never quite gave up because he wanted all of this time to be worth something

He was exciting, all decked out in neon lights
But he reeked of alcohol
And I actually regret him,
But I can't quite remember so I try not to think about it

She wore a floral dress
Professional but positive
And finally someone was happy

He was a bit of a joke
Spilled his coffee, dropped his papers
But someone was always there to pick up the pieces
We liked having him around

He was quiet-
I didn't know him very well

She was a ballet dancer
Strong and graceful and tired
Full of long practice and habitual action
Calculated.

Please, God, give me some reason to check my phone
I was making excuses to stay awake
The adrenaline ran out and I felt every ounce of pain that had been lurking in the bruises
I screamed in the shower, feeling the water drip off of my skin
I felt it beat and roll off in too much of a rush
I couldn't get it out of my hair

Point your toe
And smile dear
Add sass to every step
Don't you dare forget to stretch out first
And always look up
Turn out
And flex
And bend
And leap

I'm so glad
That that's not *me

Day after day,
And night after night
I wait to hear your voice

I got tired of waiting for you everyday
And I'm sorry that I walked away
But you almost never come,
So why should I keep waiting?

If this is what she considers "feeling alive," I think she's got it a little mixed up
See, I understand skydiving, once or twice
But she's driving too fast just to get to work in the morning

She would have done anything to get high and not lose her job
And that is the exact reason they drug test dead-end cooperate desk jobs
So instead, she stays up late watching cooking shows
She tried painting her nails and cutting her hair but she's still exactly where she started

See, we were wrong about how many of us would grow up to be doctors
Some of us were relieved and some got bored
But almost none of us could afford med school
She goes for runs, eats too much ice cream, takes vacations
But she's never coming back

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

Deconstruct my body
Pull my shoulders out and wrap them around your body
I'll stand here, still like a barbie doll
I guess I was built for it,
I was taught to be polite and always keep my hair neat
I walked back to my apartment alone at night
So deconstruct me
Find all the lifeless, plastic pieces in excruciating detail

My fears do not define me
I can walk out where there's people and not drown
Social anxiety does not mean I can't have friends
Germaphobia does not mean I can't touch anything
(Most of the time)
I can function
As a human being
Without your assistance
So stop patronizing me
I can't control my fears
But they don't define me.
I do.

When I went to type this web address into Google, I almost typed your name.
I am so mad at you
You show up and disappear
And you don't even let me know you're gone.
I just smile like an idiot at the little green dot on Facebook that says you're online.
I just want you to talk to me
And you do,  I mean
You are there...
For five whole minutes until you're not.
I have everything to say to you
But you don't seem to understand the concept of staying. You've just gotten so good at your little disappearing act.
I'm the only one left in the audience, and

I'm not clapping

God didn't want me to hold you
He did everything in his power to take you away from me
He moved you away and made cell phone plans expensive
He made skype crash and different timezones
He cursed us with bad timing and just a couple of seconds
He cursed us with years of patience
God didn't want me to hold you, but he let me love you
He let me see photographs and your messages in the mornings
I did everything in my power to stay
God cursed me with patience and let me love you so far away
God blessed you with the ability to walk away
And I never felt your skin

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.

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?

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

Anyone could have told you she was under pressure
Not neccessarily that she wasn't handling it well, she seemed fine
Decisions were made when no one was looking

Now, I only drove by her funeral because the crowd was so large
Only friends and family sat in the front seats, people were standing on the sidewalk outside of the church
Winter was setting in

Yesterday, I walked home with her
Opaque and careless, and
Utterly ignorant. I'm sure she wanted it that way

Decades later, no one will remember her. If she's lucky, she'll become a statistic
Oxygen stolen and plant food then
Not that she doesn't matter to us now, just
'
That she won't then

Had only I known
All the time I spent with her, even the
Ventalation is asking why I didn't help her
Even the air whipping around my head as I can't sleep

Tomorrow, she won't be coming back to classes, but
Onward we must go

Before, I thought she had given up. It's
Easier to be angry than to realize that she just let go, and it was her choice, as painful as it was for us. If you're one of those saying,

Goodbye,
Only I'm actually going to do it
Only for real this time...
Don't.

Don't listen to them
When they tell you
To stand down
Or walk away
Everything is worth fighting for
And everyone deserves someone fighting for them
Don't let it go
No matter how feeble the argument
Holding grudges isn't always bad
And not everyone will like you.

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

Dream Me saw her little sister in a bright red body bag-
Familiar
Dream Me remembered the red from before
Dream Me was aware that she was thinking,
Dream Me saw the killer
Dream Me had to tell her mother her daughter was killed and she knew the killer
Real Me saved Dream Me's memories
Dream Me was real when she recognized her sister was dead
Dream Me was real while she watched the killer turn around
Dream Me was real when she thought it was her fault
Dream Me killed Real Me when Real Me fell asleep
But Dream Me was real...
Dream Me was alive,
She had memories, she was complex and self-aware
Dream Me was alive, but I killed her when I woke up.

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

"I'm sorry," I whispered
As I drove away from the rain
And the city
And the people I've always known
As I skipped practice to drink tea and drive fast
But I didn't believe it,
And nobody who might have been listening did, either

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

I haven't been asleep to dream
I want to be asleep,
But I'm not in control anymore
I can listen to the airplanes outside
Or my own heartbeat and watch the stars
Am I always this scared?
Yes.
Why do I forget that?
It's easier not to think about
It's easier not to think how I won't sleep tonight

Sometimes,
I used to feel like I was floating away
Or fading away
So I put elastics around my wrist
Even when my name is called
I can fall into a sound
Become unreachable
And get lost.
I don't like getting lost
I don't put my head in the clouds
It just floats there
Even when I hate losing touch with the ground.
I don't always do what I want to.
Change happens slowly,
Over time,
But the time flies by
I fly, too,
But in the wrong direction
I tend to think backwards,
(I'm a big fan of velociraptors)
Or outwards,
(Like jumping in a rocket,
And flying past Pluto.)
When I can't feel the elastic,
I know that I'm dreaming.
I think, therefore I am
Isn't
I think I am,
But I'm actually not.

My heartbeat is loud than the traffic on the busy street outside my window
I can't remember how to breathe
I'm scared and I miss you
Your name echoes around in my head, filling all of the empty space.

Funny how today was just a distant dream
Two years ago
I thought would never come
And here I am
Today was so impossible
Time can not pass
It is not judged in inches or meters
Or lines of a sonnet
Time as we perceive it is completely false
And impossible
You can not move in space with moving in time so
Today is my time
To fight or fly
Stand alone or together
Live in every second
Or throw them all away
Every instant is a decision to live your life right
Every instant you make a decision
To move in a direction and
**This direction is mine!

I want to love you like midnight-
Deep and beautiful
Familiar
I want to love you like the gardens I grew up in
Expansive and forever
As if we grew up together
Maybe we still will
I want to love you like warm blankets in the air conditioning
Cuddly and together
I want to love you as if glitter makes me more attractive
I want you to love me like a puppy dog
I want to be sweet for you
I want to be the perfect little girl
I want to be your sweetheart
I want to be everything for you

You are everything to me :)

When I was a child, I learned fairly quickly that, "Because everyone else is doing it,"
Was the worst possible excuse
Individualism was sewn into us like tattoos
We fed off of originality like *******
But we were never that wild
I remember my father built us each a swing
And gave us a pile of spray paint cans
I remember my mother made the cookie dough, but we had to make the cookies
The first time I told my father I wanted to move my furniture, he just nodded
The first time I told my mother I wanted to stencil, she gave me paint
When I started drawing on my walls, they asked me what colours I needed
I watched my older sister grow up and dye her hair blue
She makes her own jewelry and I make my own tshirts
We shout poetry out of the rolled down windows of my Dad's old truck, on the way to get slushies from the gas station
We wrote quotes on the back of our hands when we were angry,
Shouted when we weren't.
The hunger for emotion sometimes turned my dull nails into claws
Sometimes we exist in the wind passing through the car
Sometimes we can see paint splattered on the tree the swings used to hang from
Sometimes we are so drunk on a feeling that we embody it, soaking the thread instead of holding onto it
Individuality morphed into impossibility, because
We are everything at once
Every feeling
Every moment,
Every bug smashed onto the windshield
Every colour of paint we somehow spilled on my ceiling
Every stain that I'll never get out of my genes.

I don't expect you to come around anymore
Every morning when I wake up,
It feels like you're a little farther gone
More like a memory-
Or a daydream-
Than an actual person
Now, every night
I wish on those tiny little far-out stars
That you could just talk to me for a second,
Kiss me once
Or hold my hand for a minute
I want to hear you tell me you love me
In your real-live voice
I want to hear you breathe one more time
Once you leave, I'm all alone again
Why did you leave again?
It's getting cold back here,
But you never minded winter
I always forget that you aren't standing next to me.

I can not pour my heart onto the table
Or dream on display
I can not express what I can see
I have never written something
So deeply penned
That it breached my skin,
Reached out
And touched someone's soul
Or changed their life
I do not want to change the world
I want to change someone's life
But I don't want their life in my hands
I don't want to find meaning in life,
I want to create it
I want to create something brilliant
And express the world
That no one sees.

You were never meant to be real
I dreamed you up when I was six or seven and dismissed you as childish folly by age sixteen
Trust me, boys were the most escoteric of social constructs
Put in place to make skirts shorter and hair longer,
Eyes bluer,
Entirely alien
So when you kissed me on the bridge overlooking the waterfall we'd just climbed out of,
As my hair drenched the old, rotting wood underfoot,
We could've fallen apart
People wake up from dreams, right?
Today, I can't remember how the story goes

A farewell can be so perfect
It can give you a chance
You never thought you had
Or
It can rip
Out your heart
Or
Both.