it took a year and five months without you as mine to make me realize that i broke your heart.
and i am so sorry.
when we've tried to be friends in the time apart,
and you told me you didn't want to come see me because you were afraid your heart would still bleed for me, and mine wouldn't for you,
i should've known.
but it took until now,
when you said you still update the playlist you made me
called "hers"
and i saw that i took your love and squeezed it
juices dripping over my fingertips
and i realized that even though i had gone numb when we ended our little romance novel,
you hadn't.
how was i so blind?
how did i miss that you were missing me?
and now i feel my heart beat backwards,
i feel everything i felt in the three years i knew you come hurtling back to me
my stomach is heavy with you again.
but the miles between us are tripled now,
and i don't believe in going back,
and i can't believe that i hurt you
in that order.
but i miss you, miss you
and i can't help but feel regret weigh me down
---
i wrote this days ago and i didn't have the courage
to make my thoughts public
to admit a little bit of my heart still bursts with love for you.
and my pregnant pause has reared its ugly head,
because now i know that someone else loves you too
she is beautiful and kind and everything
everything
you deserve that i could not give back to you
and she is right there,
something i could never be for you, not for more than two days at a time and here's what hurts:
i only ever wanted your happiness
but now i watch from my phone as someone else kisses you and
laughs with you and
thinks of you and
i hate that you are happy with the life we deserved
and i broke your heart and she has fixed it and nothing in my world is fair but this
this is the worst of it all
my first love, my most tender bruise.
being absentmindedly pressed by another

it's embarrassing but it's true.
i just googled "how to fall in love".
and i googled "how to fall in love" because i am not in love right now and i really, really want to be.
my google searchings were inconclusive and i am just as unsatisfied
mind, body, and spirit
as i was when i started typing "h" into the search bar
there is nothing in my heart right now.
my mother knocked and no one was home.
it makes me anxious:
how did i go from someone so overwhelmed by the enormity and ever-presence of her emotions
to someone so void of them that i feel an echo in my chest when someone says my name?
i've also googled sociopathy,
but apparently i'm not one of those.
so here i am, somewhere on a sliding scale
between all or nothing.
and i report from the field that it is not, in fact, all or nothing.
i know i'm not alone out here,
but it sure does feel like it,
when i reach out and even shadows don't reach back.
it's not like i've already accepted dying alone but it's not looking likely that i'll be marrying my college sweetheart, either.
i just want my feelings back.
is there a link to that in the first page of google results?
i'll even pay for shipping, i guess.

i think i knew it before
but i didn't know it until now,
sun drifting through the window and the cold city smiling in:
heartbreak is not exclusive to romantic love.
and this is sad because it means the number of times my heart has been broken is even higher than i thought.
if you love someone, no matter how you love them,
they can (and most likely will) break your heart.
sometimes it's just a little splintering,
a pinch under your ribcage and a quickening in your blood.
and sometimes it is mind-altering pain down to the pit of your stomach.
lucas was the best thing that ever happened to me
and he was the worst.
he made me a better person,
but he destroyed my heart in the process.
a bull in a china shop.
i loved him so fiercely, the maternal instincts i didn't think i'd know for years coming out and devouring him
i would've (should've) protected him to my very last breath,
but i didn't and one gunshot on an early afternoon roof
shattered my sense of myself and decimated my heart.
i ache at the thought of him
dull throbbing in my lungs and toes.
i know this is heartbreak because the wound is still brand new and it has been twenty six months to the day.
maybe this anniversary is why i came to my eureka moment,
in this pale morning light, nose cold above blankets.
lucas, my constant train of thought,
you broke me.
but i have loved every minute of it because it was a minute spent loving you.

yes strings attached.
my heart is fully yours
just because you've been between my thighs
i know, i know,
it makes me weak to fall so simply
one touch
one smirk as you shadow over me
and i give up my soul--
but i don't care!
i get hurt every time, but
the look in your eyes when you speechlessly tell me to
come over
and the gentle brush of your fingers on mine when we're not alone
i live in those moments.
the dull throb of my heart when it all
inevitably
falls apart
is so worth it, just to have the time with you

i dream about reunions.
my eyes close and my mind runs there.
it will be star kissed and blooming, wet and kind.
i can already feel my cheeks, sore with smiling.
and i will be with them:

my ghosts

i've missed them so ******* much.
but all the galaxies and years and pain keeping me from those i have loved will be nothing (forgotten) when i can touch them again.

oh...
i never thought i'd say it
but
i miss heartbreak
i miss staggering love and feeling the earth change direction
below my feet
with every crush and fall-in-love
i guess my teenage days of hazy,
delirious infatuation
(with every boy who smiled at me)
the days have set and this--
this twilight time--
is it
i'll live out my life with a lethargic lack of love
oh i just want to feel
like i did when i was fourteen
my stomach lifting to my throat when he passed me
my lips tugged up and hung up in a smile
at the thought of his hands
it was a blessing and a curse
but
i'd rather drive mountains and valleys
than be a flatline