there are heaps of clothes on my bedroom floor

but none of them are yours

and my mind is traveling horrifying distances

to a place here you stretch yourself over me

like skin does to our bones

i want you to crawl inside of me and live in my ribcage

i want you to taste the daylight in me

to take all of my darkness away

until we reach a hot, incandescent point of no return

the astronomy of our bodies contains supernovas when we collide

touch me and i'll burn

without you my fragmented and lifeless heart resembles dying stars

i will be as beautiful in my own descent

so you can make a wish on me

i don't care about the story you have carved into me

or about the shape of your fingers that leave tiny oval bruises around my hips

i can't see your heart, but i see your ribs through your shirt

and i see the bits of skin that stretch over the bumps of your spine

and it makes me think of how the sea looks ripples over the surface before it pounds to the shore

looking at you reminds me that we are made of water and dust

i don't care to bring you back to life

but the white of your flesh reminds me of piano keys

so maybe i will write a melody onto you

that will turn your eyes into skeleton keys

and they will open someone else's heart

never tell a sad girl that she is an artist

or she will spend the rest of her life crying out for the moon

and pressing flowers into books

she will hide stashes of poems under the mattress like a ******

and she will try to start fires with her tongue

her fingertips stained blue from the sadness in her spine

her eyes will become maps of new cities

but when she closes them

she will be like that girl in the old photographs again

with the floral dresses and tragically fair hair

who held hands and cried

and felt no need to write about it

Yesterday my friend told me that she fell in love with a stranger on the bus. I think it’s funny how it’s so simple for some people, but I suppose it’s that simple for me too. I loved you first. I loved you second. I love you last. I love the ugly parts of you and the parts that remind me of rain and how my eyes are foggy in the morning.  

I never used to think about dying. And now I love you and I think about it all the time. Will I die and never hold your hand?

I feel like someone pulled my life out from under me like a rug and all that’s left is you and you and you.  

Today I sat next to a man in the library. He was reading Fitzgerald and told me his name was Adam. I keep telling myself I need to meet people and hear their stories and learn that there is more to this city than you. But the more I listen to them, the more I realize that you are the thing that holds my body in this place.

People tell me that they are in love, but I don’t believe them. All I know is that it’s possible to be.

I look at you and I keep thinking that you already know.

I’ve told you so many times in my mind, but in reality I still ache and I wait.

I am writing poems for you that are as long as Russian novels, but you’ve never read a word.

I build my heart up with bricks, one for every piece of you that makes me feel less like a ghost.

Do you see what you’ve done to me?

Even my vital organs are made of you.

words pulsed through my body but stayed deep inside me

because loving someone is not an easy thing

i keep trying to put a rhythm to everything

but it makes it all hurt even worse

i see ghosts and they look like you

and these broken pieces make up your shape

i’m trying to find my place without you

but the truth is cutting me open and i’m bleeding out

i swallow down your misery like i would cough syrup

but it only makes me sicker than before

they tell me i love too much for someone so young

i would rather be the paper i write these poems on

or the limbs of a tree

than to have to stay in this body as my lungs cave in

because i can’t breathe when you look at me

if only i could just exhale you to get you to leave

i wrap up my cuts and bruises

but there are still hot ashes around all the places you stood with me

i am still tasting you on the corners of my mouth as my feet burn up

and i fall asleep into fitful fever dreams

drowning and needing your air

i used to dream of having open heart surgery

and the surgeons would almost always find you inside me

deep in my veins and devouring me

and like the flowers they’ll put next to my hospital bed

i’ll be dead in less than a week