The best part of life is the
tick tick ticking up to a free fall drop.
The peaks of adrenaline and happiness
before your stomach and heart drive themselves off a cliff.
But then, I’m puking up all the cotton candy
in a dumpster somewhere way to visible.
All I can remember is the shame and embarrassment
from getting my heart broken again.

Our conversations had no context,
I felt comfortable in your arms watching Netflix
And I found myself building it up in my head.

When you spoke to me about your dreams,
You never once asked, what about me?
And I found myself grasping for the dead.

Or was it ever living,
Did your heart ever start giving,
Into the spaces I pushed aside for it.

Now I’m the only one grieving,
Lying to myself into believing,
That you are a hypocrite.

For you never claimed to love me,
Only warned, you weren’t ready,
But I pushed for what I wanted.

So am I allowed to blame you,
For the pain I can’t seem to undo.
Leaving what’s left of my heart haunted.

These pills help me sleep,
but they give me these nasty dreams,
coupled with morning headaches,
that cringe me to my core.

I had the hot sweats,
a clone concept,
what used to make my bed shake,
you lingered in my head no more.

During the waking day,
I can go less than a few hours
without you scampering across my mind.

During the waking day,
I distract myself with cold showers,
and try not to think of when you were kind.

During the waking day,
I think of begging you to stay,
So I swallow another sleeping pill,
So I don't.

I can't remember a thing I did last night,
after leapfrogging in a field drinking wine.
But, I know that it's okay, since you're here.
I know that it's okay because you're here.
You make everything feel fine.

So how embarrassing was I?
Blackout.
Did I puke before my house?
I hate not knowing but, as long as you say,
"Don't worry, you were okay."
I can relax as long as you stay.

My heart is starting to look like my converse.
***** and worn, but fully functional.
No holes.

My heart is starting to look like my notebooks.
Missing the cover and a few pages here and there,
but, still full of plenty of worthwhile content.

My heart is starting to act like my cat.
really means well and playful
but, isn't very good with strangers
or people in general, really.

I guess that it's a slow build.
Two steps forward and one step back, is still movement.
I know it's not the saying, but I'm an optimist.
I **** up less often than I get **** right.

Bad things come in threes and I think I've bought myself some time.

“I don’t know,” he said.
As I lay my head on his chest, I hold my breath to ever speak again.
And suddenly, I could feel the space between our atoms.

What should I eat?
A simple questions, but I only have one recipient in mind.
Only one person who knows me enough to know what I want when I don’t know it myself.
One person who knows what I ate yesterday, and the day before and narrows it down from there.
But, you don’t know what I ate yesterday.
Because I didn’t.
I ate my pillow and drank my tears.
The salt and cotton sat in my stomach like the butterflies used to.
But, those butterflied never died, they just got hurt.
Had their wings plucked off and bodies scorched with a magnifying glass.

I want you to like yourself as much as I do.
I want to like myself as much as I liked you.
I want to nurse you and those butterflies back to life one day.
Release them in the botanical garden and start a new holiday.

162 days until it’s all over and done with; real life starts then.
For now, I will play pretend.
Hide these feelings in the empty boxes I hoard under my bed.
Not to think about the empty spot in your heart and head,
where there was no room for me.

When I came home, everything was changed.
I found you to nurse and hold me, until love replaced the pain.
But with you, I was just hiding from it.
Like the boxes under my bed, I hide from their emptiness.
I hide from the raw meat body that used to take up half my spaces.

I have no foundation in this far too familiar nation.
Busy bodies twirling like ants from different colonies.
We will not go home to the same place tonight.