There is a part of me
In the middle of my chest
Surrounding my center of gravity
That wants to write you out of my palms
For the hundredth time
And
Tell everyone in the world but you
In a collection of sentiments and drug induced nightfalls
My exact and precise emotions

There is a part of me
In the back of my head
Next to all of my memories
That begs for the erasure of your name
For the thousandth time
That pushes me to write down how I feel for the times
I forget that I loved everything poisonous about you

That I make art and I do it for you
And I can't sleep anymore and I do it for you
That every word I drip onto paper I say it for you

There is a part of me
In my fingertips,
In my stomach
That hurts to be natural
That hurts to go this distance
That hurts to write one poem about you
Where I dont come up on the losing end
That waits for your touch
The words I know you dont say for me

There is a part of me
In the front of my brain
Behind my eyelids
That remembers your apathy
That soaks in your words and
Refuses to settle within me in fear that
This repression will spring to life
And I will spend my nights in the echo of your words
Letting it scratch into my skin
Letting you scar me

It balances
With the part of me in my ribcage
That opens and closes for you like
A white picket fence
That does everything for you
That watches me listen to you
And fade in and out of consciousness
That remembers your antidote like a phone number
That silences the rest of my ******* body
In the hum of the drunk times you've told me
This time will be different
This time I will love you

There is a part of me
That wants to eradicate the existence of you in notebooks
In sentence structures and walls of words

And it strains against something that is not a part of me at all
But surrounds my body and pushes against me like gravity
That keeps you trapped in the center my palms
Against my skin with no puncture wounds
It flashes your face every time I blink
And I havent figured out how to free myself of this heart crushing weight
Than to write that

My body agrees
Loving you is not worth
All of this pressure

you felt like a still life.
i laid next to you and held your hand
and tunnel visioned on your IV
while everyone sat around you in a circle
coloring you in without looking up from their paper
convinced they can capture the color of your lips
as if they exist in a way that isnt
completely unique to you.
scratching their pencils in an echo
that stretched across the grand-*******-canyon.
(i'm no artist
but i traced a smiley face into your palm)
i've watched your eyes fall over your pale skin
cursing your own body for making you into
a stone cut marble statue
instead of a vibrant painting on the wall.
(this poem does your portrait no justice)
if i could drown myself in a thesaurus
i would come up with words that are
synonymous to the hole you are leaving in my chest,
you felt like a still life.
you reached out and ghosted your hand over river water
you reached out and pulled budding flowers from trees
you reached out and broke pencils and snapped necks
you reached out for please do not touch signs
(you reached out and your arms fell short of distance.)
and i refuse to believe your legacy will stay in this artwork,
that your vibrant light will be caged in the chest of those who know you,
that your masterpiece will be shoveled into the storage rooms,
and pushed around and cracked at the edges,
that eventually i will forget how your voice sounds
and how you reach out and touch right through me
(and how you clung to your body and forgave it for betraying you.)
i can only imagine
that you will leave me
(with a grief that is waiting in a sickly anticipation
crawling up my legs and surrounding me like ivy)
i dont know anything about grieving
but it sounds so heavy, like a cement weight subject
a sixteen-year-old isnt supposed to teach.
(with deafening echos of people who scribble over your eyelids)
(with a calling into the earth like there are stones in my stomach and i make a home in the bottom of a riverbed)
and don't understand what it means
to watch art be nothing more than art
when your words become quotes
and your life becomes dates
and your eyes become a memorial
(i will live with you
trapped in the holes)
covering the parts of me i left at your bedside
drenched in the ironic taste of brushstrokes and immortality
you still feel like a still life
you are your own genre
you give art a new definition
(and i will spend the rest of my time
getting your details right)

i've spent hours cramped over thesaurus pages and days ignoring warnings to write about the people who make me feel the things i am supposed to feel

i've spent sentences and words and enough knowledge to fill volumes like a life-time credit debt, pouring sentiments and metaphors over people who won't even bother to read how i venerate their actions, their touch, their reactions

how i analyze each detail like ive got a four year degree and student loans to last me until im ninety in How to Make Yourself Sick With Overthinking

i've spent so much time deflecting like a broken pinball machine in the back of an old restaurant, telling anyone who listens that people make me feel human, give me emotions, make me feel real

i've never spent enough time away from instant gratification, reaction, attention, to know who i am without the people that fill gaps in my lungs and ribs, who stitch me up and send me into a field of disconcerted intentions and bad messes

i can't wite much about who i am, how i react, my actions, my touch, my reactions. my soul is based off of the fragments of other souls that have touched me.

and still, i want the words and syllables and poetry.
i want the actions and touches and reactions
i want to mean something to the people that mean so much to me
i want someone to raise me to this compulsory apotheosis
it's impossible i am the only one with emotions bursting inside of them like nightlights and meteor showers

i suppose
i haven't spent enough time thinking how
there is a vain narcissism that encompasses a person who, without people, would not be a person at all.

ive been told
many great poets relied
on mind altering drugs
opiates and pills
in order to force their hand
to the paper
in order to jumpstart their brain
like a side of the road
two degrees
junkyard car

i have nothing to write about
when I abstain from your name
and calling you my ******
gives you the power to roll my eyes
back into my head
with pleasure
it gives you the power to **** me
typical bathroom scene
slumped over your
"i miss you"
choking on the apologies
i couldn't spit out
in the middle of winter

ill never be a great
and self destructive artist
not because i light your memories up under a spoon
not because I let you infect me
not because I roll you up and set you on fire
and breathe in your sentences

ill never be a great
self destructive artist
because there's no jumpstart
or moment
of connection
ive tried
every drug i can find
and im still
sitting with the shower running
letting it burn me
begging to feel something

because really
what's the difference
between numbing me
and telling me
you don't love me anymore

there was a time
where i would've tied rope around each star
and handpicked every comet
and gift-wrapped them
if you asked me to

where i woke up in a hospital bed
with your apology still laced in my IV
begging for contact
like i was addicted
to the way every goodnight
sounded like a suicide note

i remember the first time
you told me you wanted to kiss me
like you were sharing a secret
with a part of me i can't get to anymore

the moment it exited your lips
and echoed inside of my ribcage
i could feel you reach for it through my lungs
sacrificing me to the burden you carried

there was a time
where i would have jumped off of trains
and written you poetry
about how everything you do is lethal

and my death wish is no longer imminent
and i could tell you that you were the sun and I was Icarus
and i got too close and everything i remember went up in flames
and my arm hurts from trying to capture the stars
and trying to leave the world in darkness
that i didn't care if the plants would die and the oceans would still
if it meant you told me you missed me

but ive attached new memories
to the ones you burned for me
ive made up moments for the time ive lost

and i don't listen to your favorite songs every day
like you're trying to tell me something you couldn't reach through me and take back
because you weren't
you never were

and if i could go back in time
id tell the girl stacking ladders to the sky
rearranging your name in constellations
that you're not even worth
a nightlight

You don't have to remind me to listen to three AM school-night words that come out in the soft whispers you've been waiting to share with me in an attempt to shield it from the rest of the world
I'll remember the things you didn't say like engraved textbook lessons
when my skin starts to dampen and stick to my body like a raincoat
my head hits the wood desk so loud everyone stops pretending to pay attention
and i have to write
"he doesn't love me anymore" one hundred times on the chalkboard
and bang the parts of my past i wake up forgetting together
watching the chalk dust from the day my mother told me; they almost lost you fall to the floor
Every negative hallway interaction bubbles over in an abandonment issue chemical reaction
and I had to drop chemistry because I found none of the connections and formulas could fix the imbalance I carry around with me like i shouldn't be failing Psychology 101.
Maybe I'm clueless because I can't tell you why weather changes or square roots of negatives
But I can recite the lisence plate of the car my dad has never visited me in
and my sisters contact information for the 4 minute and 57 second call i can pay $6.43 to make to sit on the floor and learn about juvenile detention while history notes offer me cold faux-sympathy
Maybe I'm clueless because id rather memorize the way your hand moves down my back than the quadratic formula
and give up on poetry mid sentence
and change "moves" to "moved" because it's all in past-tense and the difference between present and present perfect and banging erasers and not sleeping and
forgetting how to function off of autopilot mode
and
there are lessons I will remember that won't come from staring at a projector screen
when to stop talking
how to look like you weren't just sobbing in the bathroom
the unwritten "give a stranger a ****** if they ask" rule
I'll remember every word you tell me like the test is next period and I'll study every syllable and drown in iambic pentameter
and I'll still fail