a message to every person who's name still echos in my mind and makes me shiver.

1. you were the first to give me a purpose. my body was small and your hands fit me almost as tight as your sheets. you were lost, and found home in the curve of my neck and the touch of my tongue and every story I dreaded to tell. you were a headache that throbbed in my teeth and crept down my throat. but I had a taste for a different type of pain.

2. you were nights without sleep for fear of the dark. you were the monsters in the closet and the dust along my bookshelf. you were The Calm Before The Storm that made me wish I was landlocked. you were venom in my veins and rope burns glowing along my throat. I've never believed in God but I pray for your victims when I watch you play life like a vicious game, and I still hope for your salvation.

3. you were a test I knew all the answers to but still proceeded to fail. you taught me to crave everything that was wrong. adrenaline has become the new form of oxygen. you are speed and I am the streets and everything inside of us aches to be free of the roles we are still forced to play. the lines in your palms are more familiar to me than my own, but you never let me hold your hand.

4. you were red in a world of black and white. I watched you fall like waves at my feet and I felt you pull back over time. you were the tides, you were the new moon covering me with shallow darkness, silent as I stumbled in the sand. you were the whistling wind pushing my hair over my eyes just so you could have the chance to pull it back behind my ears. you were salty kisses and warm skin, but you were too hot to touch.

5. you were a fairytale I so desperately needed. you gave me purpose like 1, sleepless nights like 2, had the same name as 3, and held thoughts as loud as 4 but a mouth just as silent. you were a thunderstorm in a four year drought, a fire in my mind, a force I could feel and never see. you held flashing lights and warning signs but I only squeezed my eyes closed even tighter. you are the scars along my wrists that show me I am so, so fragile. you are the suicide note waiting so patiently to be read, a reminder that I am not the only one who doesn't want to breathe anymore. but I would die for you.

to the first boy I ever loved.
you had tan skin and black hair,
and the hum of your voice
was a tight life jacket
as I struggled
to float in the current,
two years ago.
you were in love from the start.
I gave you my heart,
and you made me believe
that Forever was still real.
I almost died with your hands
around my throat.
and your name is written on my heart, fading.
you left, and things are not the same as you've come back.

to the second boy I ever loved.
you had tan skin and black hair,
and the slur in your speech
made me question my tone
as I whispered
in the dead of night,
one year ago.
we were in love from the start.
I gave you my hands,
and you made me believe
that Hope was still real.
I almost died with your lips
on my pale thighs.
and your name is written on my insides, burning.
you left, and things are just the same as you've come back.

to the third boy I ever loved.
you had tan skin and black hair,
and the beauty in your words
made my mind spin even harder
as I washed down
wine and whiskey,
one month ago.
I was in love from the start.
I gave you my mind,
and you made me believe
that Love was still real.
I almost died with your love
just out of reach.
and your name is written in my skull, screaming.
you left, and things will never be the same. you won't come back.

sheets bind your legs
you're covered in white.
I watched you in battle,
and you lost the fight.

your skin's now a canvas.
scars. tubes in your arms.
the ache to be free will not
stop those alarms.

so you break from the bed,
trace lines on the wall.
eyes scan the room blankly,
on me, they don't fall.

my arms long to hold you,
I stick by the door.
I don't even flinch when
you fall to the floor.

the nurses are gone now,
but I couldn't yell,
when you slipped from the window
and laughed as you fell.

it wasn't the drugs.
dope, coke, or crack.
all you needed to live
was for me to come back.

you never think the voices could scream
any louder than they do,
until your fingers trace the sides
of your dads loaded gun.
people told me to look up,
but your face always grinned below me.
so I laid with broken bones,
and I never learned how to stand.

there are more crumpled poems
mocking me at my desk
than there are thoughts in your head.
and there are more bullets in the gun,
than tears on my cheek.
tired hands cradled my face, and sad lips
told me that I was precious. strong.
but lonely eyes never peeked
at the stitches holding me together,
the ones you pulled to see if maybe
I could crack a little more, before I shatter.

you never think the voices could scream
any louder than they do,
until your brain is climbing up the wall,
and your blood leaks into carpet.
people told me to look up, but
my face was twisted in the water below.
so the waves swallowed my frame,
and I never learned how to swim.