i am so in love with someone
who is so in love with me
i can't write about it
because every time i look at her
a verse writes itself
i am hands-off
i am all-in
i am so completely ******.
it will hurt like hell.
i am doing it anyway.

i called to tell you that
i don't love you as much as i thought i did.
i want someone to heal me
in the permanent way
i have never been able to stick a band-aid over.
i want someone to make me real
in the way that pinching my forearm has never
accomplished.
mostly,
i want someone to teach me
that man is not inherently evil
that the good in the world sticks to your lips
after goodnight kisses
i want someone to restore
whatever childlike wonder i let go of,
to pick out the resentment in me like shards of broken glass
and make me a whole person.
i have tried to tie my loose ends together,
i come apart like a fitted bed-sheet,
like trying over and over again,
like falling just short.
i called to tell you that,
if i think hard enough,
if i make my head less cloudy,
if i stop pretending,
i do not love you.
but i want so badly, so selfishly for you to love me,
to fix me,
and i called to tell you that it's just because
i don't think i can do it all by myself.

sometimes, it feels like the bath filling up with water,
you lie there and try to relax as it
slowly inches up your thighs and past your slumped shoulders.
or like watching the clock move, watching the day turn on and off-
incoherent, stunned, you try to drown your incapability in apathy
like being strapped to a bed
like being force fed, out of your control in a way that forces you to feel it.

sometimes, it feels like breaking your bones,
a sharp snap you can hear for years when you fall asleep
shooting pain up your spine and straight to your fight-or-flight response
it feels like choking,
it is not slipping in and out, it is violent crashing waves
the tide came in while your eyes were closed
and you're being thrown headfirst against the rocks

sometimes, it feels like keeping a secret,
like holding your tongue, like shy muffled smiles
and pulling misguided threads on your years-old sweaters.
it tastes just like guilt but also a little bit like copper,
almost familiar but with a difference that keeps you up drenched in sweat
it feels like "you did this to yourself" and all you can hear is "it is your fault"

it feels like nothing, sometimes, too.
it feels like emptiness, it feels like 'scared-to-be-touched'
it feels like absolutely hollow,
like knee-**** reactions when people put their hands on you
like your fight-or-flight lever is broken and you're trapped inside of a burning building with flight on your mind against painted-shut windows
it feels a whole lot
like they took the exact definition away from you that day
like you have a bunch of "almost"s
like a puzzle that has been worn through generations, sticky fingers and gluing together corner and middle pieces

it feels like something is missing,
it feels like you do a manual reset of every feeling to try and sew yourself back together,
it feels like someone bent your needle and frayed your thread and you are trying but they took all of your chances away from you

a little bit vague, inexplicable, 'you-had-to-be-there', like everything, like nothing,

like helpless, if you had to give it a title.

I am unsatisfied in a way that feels violent, that rips through flesh and punctures lungs and coughs up blood. I am unhappy in a way that makes my hands shake and i create new letters out of the pencil marks i draw. I cannot breathe in a way that makes my lungs black with tar and my mouth hurt, i choke on spit and take four deep breaths where girls need one. I want something in a way that makes me want to occupy my time, I write needless poetry just to get it out of my skin and into someplace more permanent, it falls out of me and when I move it trails behind me. It repeats itself in my head like a mantra, I torture myself in the knowing way that things can never be as good as they are when I close my eyes and I am touching you and every rule we have is broken or did not exist in the first place, there is no good or bad space there is no mess ups or fumbling hands there is no regretting it I am absolutely desperate because I am out of options and I know you warned me not to get attached not to get conflicted not to mess it up but I am out of my mind in a way that is so over my head that I cannot even hear you I am absolutely drowning in my bad decisions I am so crazy about you I don't care how many deep breaths I take just to keep going I am not even counting anymore

you feel like bursting through hospital doors.
repeating names, rushed hands all over my body looking for signs of distress.
you feel like dialated pupils,
like throwing tequila back and standing gutter-in-the-street still until you feel every drop of poison fall down your throat and into your stomach.

you feel like waking up the neighbors,
like throwing wedding shower vases,
like turning on neighborhood streetlights and calling for backup.
you feel like the anguish that sticks onto places you cant reach in the shower;
how im not sure i will ever get your smell off of me.
you feel like chaos, like burden, like a level of wretchedness that takes two hands to control.
you feel like showing up unannounced,
heart racing so hard i feel it bounce along to a chorus of ringing in my ears.

and maybe that's why i can't get rid of you.
because you have replaced impulsivity with spontaneity,
you have taken the fear out of failure and you have made the way danger sounds so easy off of your lips
you feel like the "speak now" instead of the "forever hold your peace."
you feel like the selfish "wait," the last desperate pleading case;
you feel like the passion infecting my lungs in breaths of smoke and dancing dandelion seeds in my ridbcage like a magic show.

like an age-old story, some different form of you all strong women must endure,

you feel like the irresistible situational irony they whisper about when they say "it is not love if it is not torture."

i will write every time i miss you
i will choke out words and mix this feeling into permanence
i will listen to the blackness of the sky when it speaks to me
like it always has
before you,
after you,
this time, do not forget what he has done to you.
it is not your fault that you mistake pain for love
but untangle the wires
do not forget how this feels.

i will write every time i miss you
i will tell the world how i am feeling
i will tell them which i fear is worse-
the emptiness you have carved out of me,
feeling every bone in my ribcage expand and contract with my breathsounds,
versus the way i let you
the way i laid in place and pretended it did not hurt

i will write every time i miss you
i will exist openly and let the world understand how much i am feeling
because if i don't have a course of action every time
a wave of you washes over me
i will fall into the comfort it reminds me of
i will manipulate the skies until the stars spell out i forgive you

i will write every time i miss you
so you can read the damage you have done
and understand that with every word i write
with every second i do not come back
i almost do

i fall asleep under brilliant greens and buzzing bees
and wake under a dying tree.
red tears fall around me and land next to fingertips
ladybugs crawl over my knees and find a home in the straw.

what once was filled with life has become quiet,
the sky sends apathy in place of the sun,
i wish that the wind would
speak softly and say you are safe in the pace the earth has set up;
push away my pieces gently
in the way it taught the sea so many years ago.

while we were trying to see who could hurt worse,
the world spun in circles like a child on a playground.
the seasons changed without us,
and the wind pushes and pulls you away like the tide,
it gathers your pieces and tells you you are safe without me.

the equinox spins backwards and
i am cultivated to the place where we decided that enough was enough.
my roots spread and break through the painful words we
planted in each others ribcages

i fell asleep under brilliant greens and buzzing bees
the flashlight flickers of tiny bugs
long, dazed evenings where the sun falls in slow motion;
and woke permanent to the comatose forests.
you left,
you took the vitality of the cosmos with you,
the wind pushes past me,
scatters me,
tells me,
*look around you
it is slow; it is rusting, flushed
it is flaming.
he set the world on fire when he left you,
do what he has taught you.
create from the ashes he has left you,
and you will make yourself safe.