I
Love
You.

he once wrote on my bulletin board in animal crossing
"you're precious"

1.When you walk, don't look in the shop windows. There's nothing really to be seen except a disappointment you've been hiding from and a sense of self you're afraid to feel. Sometimes you'll get curious, you know, and that's okay. We all slip up from time to time. Just remember those deviations from the plan will knock you right back to where you were. You will remember then, and you won't slip up again for awhile. Bring music, or have a song stuck in your head. Never let you mind wander.

2. While you're shopping turn around so you don't have to watch yourself change and struggle into the new clothes. Instead, just turn around to reveal your new look. Then, while ******* turn again. Once more, you will slip from time to time and think perhaps the worst is behind you and you can handle this sort of thing now. It's just you after all; the you that you've fed bathed and breathed with for your entirety. There's no secret that lies in your skin you're presently unaware of. But this slip will cause a prolonged stare, a staggered heart beat, and a couple sniffles. You won't deviate for awhile after. Pro tip: just ignore reflective surfaces in general

3. But if you must look in the mirror, use one that only reflects the shoulders up. Sure your face has gross, brown spots and plateaus all over but that's nothing an unmatched Neutrogena foundation can't fix. You'll feel pretty good. Pretty great actually, as long as you don't let anyone touch your face, or hug anyone's white shirt. It'll begin to feel like that's what you actually look like and your confidence will exceed its greatest peak in the past, before you begin to feel you're fooling everyone around you.

4. And then you'll forget all of these things and you'll go to college and you'll believe in love still--for some reason-- even though every single moment in the past 18 years has told you otherwise about its existence, and because you believe in this thing and you love to write and you love to love you'll start to believe someone could love you and this feeling will eat you alive when it never arrives
5. Soon after you'll begin to realize how mundane you are and how much you blend in. You're not that girl that catches someone's eye and they think about it for days at a time
5. You're the girl blocking that girl


6. So you stop wearing makeup because what's the point you know
If you can't get someone to care about you in a heightened, better state it doesn't matter if you look like your worst, natural you
7. So you walk in the rain and listen to mitski and don't care about the fact that your hairs getting wet even though black girls are supposed to care about that sort of thing
8. And you look in the shop window of that café and feel a sense of self you've been trying to avoid
9. And you start the cycle over again

a swindler, sneaky yet gentle,
disguised as an island in the Mediterranean,
i think i may have left my heart there
in the pale limestone and the hissing
accents and the sun oozing into my skin

i wonder if there grows a garden of hearts,
from tourists wandering stumbling
onto late night buses on the coastlines
whose hearts have found a second home
under the limestone ribs

a botanical garden of our blood pumping organs,
what would it say on my description?
a gentle harvest, grown with 5 days
and mitski's pink in the night
and the waitress's soft smile
on the lantern lit streets of valletta

now i'm home, heartless, and yet
sickeningly longing for you,
a thief, a monster, to steal it again

i don't think i'm getting better
but i'm drinking oat milk again.
it's the stuff my parents buy,
rich and creamy, and it doesn't
have the aftertaste of thick curdle.
and, i mean, i'm still listening to mitski,
but it's strawberry blond, not nobody,
which is equally sad when you read into it –
except i'm trying not to read into things any more.

i got a degree in reading into things
from the same university wherein i walked
the unfamiliar city streets at three in the morning,
looking for a suitable canal to drown myself in.
it was all dropping rocks to test the depth,
hands stuffed in my bright yellow raincoat pockets,
van gogh quotes and 11am seminars
and "i don't really want to die thirsty, maybe i should just

go home, you know?"

but i did that. three years of it, and i went home
to a not-quite home. that's what my parents say.
"what time are you home?" and "aren't you glad to be home?"
except for me, home isn't a four bedroom in warrington.
it's not even a seven bedroom (or, as we had it, six-bedroom-and-one-unusued-gym-room) in lancaster. it's...

well, that's the thing, isn't it?
what is home?
it's certainly not a dairy substitute.
although, i suppose, i'd rather drown in swirls of oat
than swirls of lactose. my parents say i've always been quirky like that.

me. quirky little girl from warrington.

today i woke up to a spirit.
i opened my eyes to nothingness, but i could feel the warmth radiating off of the dip in the bed.
at first i was dumbfounded
where were you? could you be the spirit?
and so i fell in l-o-v-e with it.

       wherever i go the spirit follows.
i feel it hold my hand
i feel it massage my shoulders
i feel its l-o-v-e giving me subtle back hugs through my days
seeing its blank pages and crestfallen words in a misted silhouette
dripping invisible ink and cloudless skies
it is not tall or short, nor boisterous or timid
its l-o-v-e lives in hushed sighs
thriving in times of need and want
licking at insecurity and toeing the line between warm and unwelcome

       the spirit’s words fill the stillness
replacing anything that was missing with a brand, NOT-MISSING, in bold red font
sorting emotions into definitions and not feelings
it plays lorde on tuesdays and falls asleep at three a.m.
organizing my books alphabetically because everything must make sense
things always needs to make sense
       It listens.

       the day you left i fell in l-o-v-e with a spirit.
the embodiment of your memory
the sweetness of its silence
the comfort of an embrace

       i, reality, woke up today
       you, abstract, seep into crevices where you do not belong

turning everything into meaningless greyscale
poking out of my head and into my business
into my life
into my spirit that reeks of ink and dust
as i choke and gag on the imaginary memories
slurring on sour, dingy and desperate hidden behind my teeth.
my spirit and i play mitski on fridays

it doesn’t speak
and it dare not sing along
prodding at delusion, the spirit wipes my tears
mouths that it will be here forever
smiles that you are a future tense
that the bed was always empty, and the warmth was my own heartbeat
that my soul would not let me down so easily
you left in a future tense
where the bed is not empty, and i do not wonder of nothing
where you will speak, and you will laugh, and you will play christmas songs in the middle of july
rebranding everything missing NOT-MISSING to memories

       and once the spirit leaves me, too?
at least i'll be prepared for the emptiness

thank you for buying me that bottle of *****
that i left in my drawer and forgot about,
because we were going out that night for cocktails
and i like to dress up and pretend
that i’m the man. do they still say that?
you the man!
or is that another thing i missed out on?

thank you for reminding me, when it’s 2am
and i’m faded out, listening to mitski,
that i still have that bottle of *****
and there’s nothing to remember
so i may as well black out.

god, i must sound like such a lost cause,
but i suppose i am, i suppose i’m
a rescue dog sent back after christmas,
cycling through lost and found
like a jumper with holes in or a love
letter to someone called sally. (i’m not sally.)

god, i must seem like something to be taken
care of, or taken violently, just taken
so i’m not left behind. you know. you know?
do you know? i mean, i’m asking -
begging - you to do all these bad things
to me because i don’t know what i deserve.

thank you for making fun of my therapist
and for driving me to get ice cream
when you knew i had to be across town
in an hour. that ice cream tasted so good.
you got cookies and cream and i don’t remember
what mine was, but you licked it off my lips
and i thanked you because it was the first time
in a long time
that i’d been touched like that.

My heart is filled with sadness,
My fear of the unknown paralyzed me,
I was hoping to write a happy one,
I'm still new to that so I struggle with it.

Sadness for me has my second skin,
I've been wearing it inside and out,
It's calloused into everything I said and do,
So that's easier for me to write on it.

It only sheds when her eyes look at me,
The moon remains a symbol of hope,
My moon; I'm reborn every time
She calls me her own
and I grow anew in her light.

Mitski wrote 'I don't think I could stand to be where you don't see me'

Lana wrote 'But there’s no you, except in my dreams tonight'

Taylor wrote 'Sometimes I wonder, when you sleep,
are you ever dreaming of me?'

Tame Impala wrote ''If only there could be another way to do this, cause it feels like ****** to put your heart through this'

The Weeknd wrote 'when it's time, it won't matter'

I don't ever want to relate any of that ever
in my whole life ahead, I've started
preserving myself as much I can
to spend every second I need, can and want with her.

So I'll write against all the artists I hold dear,
her sweet sunshine believes in he writes ahead :)

''I can stand a world where you see me and see that I tried my best;

You're now here in my arms, my dreams are just stupid silly things, I can't wait to tell you about in the morning and laugh about;

I won't have to wonder if you dream about me because we'll sleep and wake up to each other;

There will be only one way to do it, it's to love you and it will feel like a new life everyday

When it's time, we will matter the most like we always have''

Thoughts are oozing out of sunshine
In some nerdy way
Trying to die heavenly
In a blinding golden way
Watching by the very distance
Of my pretty anxiousness
Sinking in that brief smile
Of my Pink Floyd bliss
There is some cold and distant air
Over this ugly day
Its hits me like a single mother
Digging her babies grave
All i see is peaches
In a sharp and heavy fall
Elliott Smith whispering
"man mitski makes me tall"
The sirens of the bridges
And those soldiers over bay
Dying of bombs less louder
Than the men they slay
Once i had a beautiful dress
Soaked in victory wine
Resembling that tempting feeling
To tear you apart and make mine
But that dress was torn from the town
Town torched by those men
Elliott Smith whispered again
"why are here? For some plan?"
Now i see the younger door
Hanging from a mine
Skinny and anxious waiting for someone
Hinting that brief smile
Never before has he smiled