some nights,
i can feel myself
fade away
like all those words
of yours
i can scarcely remember
when i'm breathing and
alive

can you see right through me yet?

You can rip me open,
Cut me into pieces,
Until all I am is the liquid
life,
the red
you say I share with you

I am nothing like
you.

Sometimes I wonder,
If words didn't slip from dry lips onto blank lined paper
And ink didn't fall from my eyes
Swirling into something I could call
Beautiful
For you

Would I write about that boy
Who I thought stole my heart
When I was thirteen
With chocolate boxes that encased my smile
If my heart was something that anyone would ever want to
Steal

Or would I write about another girl
One with freckles and bright eyes
And reddish hair and a laugh that tinkled
In my ears long after she disappeared
The girl that fell apart and fell back together
So many times
I could never count
Only the heartbeats and the broken little sobs
As I held her in the school bathroom,
Twenty minutes into English class,
Whispering, 'God loves you' in her hair

Or another girl, something like a flower
With gentle eyes and gentle smiles and gentle whispers
And gentle little giggles
I should have known better than to
Befriend a flower
I plucked almost all her petals
Before I pricked my fingers on a thorn

Another girl, not a flower
Something of a flame that crackled
Into an inferno whenever my hands
Hit the floor and I couldn't hold it in
Anymore
The burns still hurt from when
Her fire threatened to lick at the
Rain that was long overflowing inside me

That boy though, the one whose digital
Heart I was terrified to hold for too long
Or at all
Would I write about him?
The one who carried rain with him
Toxic rain I would never touch because
The storm was three thousand four hundred and two miles
Away
But maybe I've been splashing on dark, all-consuming
Puddles
Or maybe I dropped my umbrella the minute
I held onto him instead
How can I see the lightning from so far away?
I ran out into the rain just to hold him there
For a second or for a day
Or for the eternity I promised
He was never there.
"Goodbye."
I thought the thunder would be too loud
To hear anything but my heartbeat

I can't write about them
Because weren't you the one
With the most beautiful broken smile
I would ever see
And arms that wrapped around me on
Some godforsaken February day
When my not-so-stolen heart broke itself
Into neat little pieces?

Too bad almost half of those pieces
Lost themselves in you
And I've lost the will
To ever find them again

If every word I say to you
Is like a raindrop
In the ocean of dripping
promises,
Why won't you just tell me
That I'm drowning us
Both?

We'll all die laughing
Because life is the joke we'll never
Understand