what does it mean
what is the world forcing itself to tell me as my heart cracks into trillions of little pieces of muscle
and where is the meaning?
what does it mean to feel like where you really belong is not in this world, not in this body, what does it mean when you feel like your entire existence is something someone created out of acting on destructive intentions
i cant find it
i cant find where i am supposed to be
i cant find what i am supposed to feel
i cant understand why someone would have to be this way
tell me where it is that i can find
what it all means?

here i am, three months later still perpetually oxygenating the suffocated fantasy that one day i will see you again and my heart will remember how to pulse, my hands will remember how to hold, and you will somehow love me again

here i am, three months later spoon-feeding lies to my hungry brain, telling it "he will come back" spilling fraudulent words into my impressionable mind
"maybe he misses you too"
"it will all make sense in time"
"keep your head up, and remember you're strong enough to get through this"

here i am with a mind that fully believes you came into my life for a reason yet somewhere beneath those strongly wired thoughts, though i have no control over it, is the lingering pessimist that whispers in my ear when i'm sleeping at night, dreaming about the grace of your skin against mine
"he never loved you"
but it wasn't until this moment right now that, that pessimist has been truly heard

because i'm still here
after three, exhausting months, arms weak from reaching out for your grasp, lungs collapsed from all the dry heaving and half-breaths of missing you, and i'm finally looking at you
but you don't even
see me.

I thought you were watching me all this time
Secretly devoting your minutes to me, dying to know how I felt about you, dying in general
Able to feel the skin physically peel upwards off your nimble fingers, as you try to scrape my name off your phone screen, analyzing every word my shattered mind had exerted through cold plastic keys
I thought your drunk thoughts were always spinning towards untouched feelings for me and unreleased emotions
I thought I was everything to you all because you were everything
to me
But I'm not anything
And this world isn't existent
If it doesn't exist with you

you remind me of the poem i wrote before i became confident in my writing, the one traced in smudged black-inked scribbles, soaked in tears, lathered in self-doubt that i crumpled up and threw away
and just like that paper lying in a state of disarray, no matter how many stanzas i write that outcompete that one i still see you hiding in the corner reminding me of my mistakes and naivety
i see you and i remember i can pick you up and try to fix you to make you into something that it meaningful to me again but it would be no use because your substance is still there and i cannot make a miracle out of a disaster
i wish i could pick you up and light the words you spoke on fire
i wish you were as temporary as a piece of paper
but you're a million sentences i've written that i'll never understand
you are the words i have not learned
you are the poem i started to write but never finished
you are the mistake i will never forget

I swear to god I have been digging a tunnel inside my body since my very first day on earth searching for things like personal interests and self-love, things like happiness and creativity, the few things in which separate humans from each other, things that make it known that we are ourselves and no one else, but I’ve been searching for my
whole
life
looking for what makes me who I am
looking for what separates me from every other teenager figuring themselves out as well
but what if there’s nothing to find
what if it’s all for nothing
because I have no idea who I am
and I think I’ll I feel this way for the rest of my life

escaping through his body fantasizing about the touch of your skin through his scratchy tissue
closing my eyes tighter as I'm kissing him to somehow force his lips to morph into yours
running my fingers through his tangly knots that sprawl across his skull while falsely believing the tighter I pull the more his locks will begin to feel like they belong on your head
brought back to reality as I notice the greenish grey light given out through his eyes that just don't match up with your brown beauty
I pull away remembering I can not find you in someone else and while I may feel like this is the only way I can go on happily knowing you're not mine he does not even compare to your soft touch and it was unfair of me to think I could ever replace someone still stitched into my heart
flowing through my brainwaves and constantly being reflected somewhere behind the chambers of my eye

i dont understand why im changing, why everything else seems to mean nothing to me, but at the same time i know exactly why
i know its you
its you its you its you its always been
you
i want to get better, oh god how i long to recover from falling so hard and creating a compound wound within the vessels of my already broken heart
at the same time, feeling suffocated by false hope is almost comforting
what else could i possibly keep hope for?
and i know you dont feel the same or at least youll never feel it like i do
but i will always feel the same
no matter how hard it hurts to constantly an relentlessly feel the same
i can't help but hold you captive in my heart
forever

When most people saw her they
thought of her as a strong
put together individual.
What she saw was an unfinished puzzle
A few pieces are lost, some broken
She fears that the pieces will never be found,
and she will never be perfect
In fact, she's far from it
And the puzzle lies undone
wondering who will find her missing pieces

If only I could somehow erase your name that's permanently tattooed to my forehead because whenever I walk around everyone can see it and how I wear you around like a souvenir but I've already departed from the country of you I don't need your souvenir anymore I want to let go but you're still with me everywhere and when I look in the mirror I still see your aching name written across my flesh and I hate that it won't go away no matter how hard I try and I just wish my heart would stop resting on my sleeve for everyone to come and easily obtain because I'm delicate and fragile and I'm trying to extract you from my body and my mind but you just linger on even tighter every time I try

i see the world through welded steel bars that fence around my body, masking armor, but realistically locking my free spirit inside the walls of flesh that make up my being
i walk around, bewildered to see other miraculous women of all ages, races, and orientations trapped behind the same impenetrable incarceration, trudging along sidewalks, tendons diminishing in their knees as the metal jail cells they live in is a weight incapable of being lifted with ease
i clang on the bars with a metal can, i am soothed by the sound of my own imprisonment, i am lulled to sleep by vibrations of the vague oppression encrusted into the cell of my cells
i have not thought to cry, i have not thought to fight, for i have no idea where tears could possibly find their way down from, their inexistence is almost certain to me
i see the world through welded steel bars, that close in tighter with every aortic pulse, with every respiratory heave
you may be thinking at least you can still see, which is true, yes, i am so glad to be able to see
i only wish, i could see more

filled with life or torn down with despair
  
    it all feels the same

losing you wasn't like anything I've ever lost before. I can't rifle through bags and search through piles of clothes in hopes to find you laying discreetly under something and I can not retrace my steps wishing I could find the exact spot that I dropped you, finding a human being isn't as easy as finding my favorite sweater or my house keys, because you aren't looking to be found and you're not waiting for me to finally reach you once again, losing a human being is like losing a body part or a limb, because you can never ever get that same piece of you back, it's gone forever, and so are you.

and if you are still the way you have always been, you're the lucky ones because most of us have taken ourselves apart down to the very molecules we are made up of and rearranged them to someone else's liking

and if you are still happy then you're the lucky ones, because most of us are so depressed we are willing to lather our stomachs in alcohol and burn our throats with smoke for fun, or to forget that person who made us feel like we were sitting in a haystack of needles, stabbing and wounding every inch of our skin

and if you still strive for your highest hopes and dreams, then you're the luckiest ones, because most of us settle for less, and only climb the ladder until we think we have reached the top

and if you're in love, you really are the luckiest of all, because we are all mostly bitter over those we have lost, thinking we are unable to find someone that will bring us the same happiness that the other person used to bring

I look over at you trying to fathom the thought that the one thing I've wanted all my life, you never even asked for
he fell into your arms with his heart already pulsing in your chest, his veins tangled in your fingers, his eyes secured on you infinitely
staring at your lips I remember how easy it is for them to touch his, how his entire body in a way already belongs to you while I'm just internally wishing it was mine instead
my whole life I've never been one to get the things I want, even if I try achingly hard to obtain them
but you, you never tried
and somehow
you have all I want

I swear looking in your eyes gives me a surreal power to see into the future because when we are face to face I can see us twenty years later curled up in scruffy blankets on a queen sized bed laughing about what we did when we were kids and I swear that the raspy way you say my name makes me envision you fifteen years from now calling me the exact same way from our kitchen

but on some days when I look into those chocolate brown eyes I see you thirty years from now kissing her cheek and whispering soft compliments in her ears

and on some days, our eyes don't meet at all, because they're secured like a padlock in hers, painfully reminding me

of what will never
ever
be

i know you are far
and that's okay
because like the moon, i can see your light from galaxies away
i know you're vibrantly glowing, even though it isn't while you're by my side
too often i find myself seeking possession, yearning to hold you, watch you blossom in between my fingers like a flower
but flowers need to grow on their own, only held by the tender soil that surrounds them
you'll know when they're ready to be held
so i'll be here
comforted by thoughts of you growing into the beautiful flower that i already know you are
i'll let you light up the sky for everyone, i'll let you mingle with the stars and the night skies
and if you ever catch me looking up at you,
it's because i'll remember how blessed i am to be able to just see you
even if i'm not with you in the sky anymore
i am with you
i am far, too

the world is full of too many things that I’ve lost control of, like the feeling I get in my stomach when I’ve let myself down completely, like the way my body relentlessly shivers in the icy winds of the frigid earth
and it’s filled with you
I swear on my life that the world has become full of just one person and nobody else and my mind can not control overwhelming thoughts of you or the way your eyes tear apart my muscles and ligaments down to the very fibers they’re made up of
I’ve never in my entire existence met a human being capable of breaking me apart
I’ve never in my entire existence met a human capable of stealing all the stability in my body
the electrical pulses in my brain are intensifying and my heart is being constantly burned by these sadistic waves of shock
I don’t even know you
how is it possible for you to be destroying me?

i held your hand, felt the indentations in your skin, traced along veins and thumbed the bristled hairs on your forearms
i never noticed how soft your skin was by nature,
how you exist numb to the universe around you,
hairs aligning conveniently to guard your irreparable tissue,
eyes hollowing toward your skull, sinking in deeper with every interrupted breath

b r e a t h i    n      g
you let the air escape your lungs as our hands grasp hold of each other
inhale, exhale,
r e l e    a      s          e
as your hand embraces gravity and lies lifeless and cold,
i was the only one holding us together
how long have you been gone?

it's not my fault
i had to let go
i had to let go
i had to
i had to
i had to

i saw a beautiful red rose that sat in a field of wilted weeds
and as time went on
and the weeds grew more and more plentiful
the rose remained the same
just as cheery and red as before

and i was brought to the realization
that it's possible for a something so beautiful to be surrounded by
such insignificance
something with so much life
can exist in the middle of emptiness
although it may seem like everything is dead,
there's always a little hope
always

as i lye on the wrinkled sheets that hug your plushy mattress and your fibrous tissue, i watch as the purple-blue veins vertically lining your forearms branch out, connecting with the arteries in my fingertips, tying in bonded knots and transporting the honey-sweetness of your essence entrancingly with the music in mine

i can feel the soft vibrations from the pulsing of your heart sounding to a beat as delicate as my exhalations that spill out onto your sleeping skin

your lips hold the pitches to my favourite melodies
your eyes have the taste of the most nectarous flower that saturates my stomach with petals and leaves me so full and in my most natural form
i watch as the voice i hear and the skin i touch transforms me into a new being
one unafraid of having a new favourite song
unafraid of the uncertainties of the universe
unafraid of being new
fresh, and new

with every word you spoke it felt as if I was falling for you deeper,
and deeper
I had fallen so hard that I had almost forgotten what is was like to stand up on my own two feet again

you seemed not perfect, but just like you had minimal flaws
and I didn't understand how a person could be so beautiful,
everywhere
beautiful in the way they speak, in the way they love, in the way they subconsciously carry themselves
but you're not so beautiful anymore
and I'm shivering and trembling at the fact that I hadn't fallen in love with you as a whole
I had only fallen in love with
a small,
discreet,
part

looking at you feels like I am being brutally bludgeoned to death because all I want is for you to look back at me and instantly feel weak in the knees
I want you to look at me and have your heart physically drop to your stomach and I want you to look at me while praying quietly to yourself that one day I will be yours
I want all these things because it isn't fair for you to make me feel such strong things when you don't feel them yourself
I want it so very badly but I guess the thing I want from you the most is for you to at least
just
look at me

looking dead into my eyes you told me how beautiful i was
you leaned over as if you were going to whisper into my ear but instead you shouted and ruptured my eardrums
i cannot hear
like a naive, excited little puppy you held a treat out in front of my patient eyes filled with life and you threw it into my mouth but before i could even taste the essence of your flavour you pulled it from between my wet, hungry lips
because you realized you wanted it all for yourself
i am so happy you finally know what you want
but you knew what i wanted
and you took it all away from me

blue irises bruise my lungs and I’m suffocated by the fact that they have a right to their separateness and have no obligation to exist for me

they were so beautiful that day at the beach and were orchestrated with the sun pouring down onto your cheekbones, illuminating your smile and I just remember feeling so lucky that they shine for me, and only me

it started storming and you held your cotton t-shirt over my head to shield my head from the rain, protecting me from the universe
you looked up at the black sky and I watched you fall in love with the stars and the way they validated your sense of belonging in the universe

the way you held my head in your palms and kissed my damp forehead, blue irises turning black, like the sky, right before you told me goodbye

I look back at that day and think about how strongly I believed that you belonged to me
how the blue effervescence of your eyes, the purple in your veins, the oxygen in your lungs all belonged to
me

how another human being, somehow, was mine to own

but when I felt the pain you left clinging to my soul like a leech, combusting my neuro-pathways, altering my mind like a degenerative psychedelic drug, leaving me battered and worn out

i realized that the only thing I bring into this universe that is mine to keep, that will stay with me until the day I die,
is me
and I don’t know what hurts more

the state of mind you trapped me in when you locked me inside my own body, confining me to perceive the natural motions of life as if I’m falling from a twenty-story building and perpetually climbing back up the stairs

I have fallen on this same pavement so many times before that I can mutter every name of its  frequent passerby’s, i can mentally trace every skid-mark, every link to your DNA from your musky scent to your bristled hair follicles

How you’ve managed to follow me everywhere I go though I haven’t laid eyes on you in two years,
how those around me sigh with hopeless exhaust when they countlessly attempt to rescue me from another inevitable fall onto the cold concrete,
How you breathe fresh air that holds your feet up from the ground, saving you the trouble of having to empathize with Mother Earth’s raw flesh beneath  you

Yet, I am still heaving through corrupted lungs, still swelling the epithelial tissue lining my throat,
still expectorating old memories just to swallow them again and again, each time forcing me to upchuck ****** acid from a place inside of me that implies no medical explanation

I have become so sick and fractured that i can no longer see,
I cannot hear, I cannot speak
But somehow when I touch, all of my delusional senses return as a shadowy figure that resembles the monster of whom I fear most

My vision funnels in, and out
until I feel nothing but the same cold pavement cushioning my bones like a disjunct lullaby

And as my mind melts into a dissociative puddle of nothingness,
I plant my feet on Mother Earth’s raw flesh, and her magnetic waves of energy wrap around my nimble toes, bringing me back to the staircase upward

everyday i wake up, stare at the inside of my eyelids and search for a feeble reason to scrape open my tired eyes, get out of bed, and start yet another day, alive.
i always find myself searching for reasons of why i am alive, and why i should continue to be, trying to numb the stinging in my chest from the ***** that fails to pump blood through my arteries at times, battered and worn out
im looking im looking i've spent my entire existence looking for something that doesnt even ******* exist
and i hate searching for these meaningless answers because i am so disgustingly aware we are all trying to find them and i hate the idea that i am living my life just as every other human being is
even my pain is unoriginal
i sit in my room and i write poetry on my laptop, not trying to make sense of the world but just trying to unfold my tangled mind that does not seem to understand any information being inputted inside of it on a day to day basis
i sit in my room writing about a world that doesn't even deserve to be written about
the world is a mess and the world is selfish and i don't know how things used to be but i know as of right now the sun doesn't shine, it burns with hellfire and seems to radiate waves of hate down upon the biosphere, burning and scathing the flesh of worthless creatures attempting to live undominated, "happy" and "successful" lives
the wind doesn't blow beautifully through my hair, the wind blows in an attempt to push me off a cliff, to guide me towards my own self-destruction and to remind me of how easily things can fall apart
see the world is not beautiful
the world just exists
any kind of meaning i am trying to establish in my writing is just a lie, there isn't a single aspect to this life that naturally means something and after all this time i continue to spill empty words onto a blank screen hoping it will fill the area in my chest that lacks substance, but my heart continues to bleed
my brain is deteriorating and i can't feel anything anymore

and I didn't realize it until I had stared out my bedroom window until the storm had blown over, watching countless raindrops begin and end their journey

I noticed the way something so gloomy had its own beauty

and I noticed that just because everything has been painted in melancholy blues and grays, doesn't mean it can't be breathtakingly beautiful

even though those same blues have been painted in my heart, I am still a work of art

and I know that I am just a storm waiting to
blow
over

You were like a drug that I swallowed and let drown my arteries in while you twirled and twisted around making me feel like I was on top of the world and I was so unaware that you were so bad for me, you were killing me softly and had every intention to make me feel like I needed you to be happy, but the truth is I don't need you at all in fact my life has prospered since I stopped overdosing on you and although the temptation may linger every now and then to return to that weak, broken girl in need of your euphoria to keep me on track, I don't need you and I never did.

when i think of us together

i used to picture us standing side by side, fingers interlocked as the train approaches forcing us to let go but only for a second to allow you to step on but just as i am about to follow you up, the door closes, and you look at me through a foggy, fingerprint encrusted window mouthing the word "goodbye" over and over until the train is no longer in sight as i watch your pink lips and fair skin disappear

but now when i think of us i see you standing on a solid white line, fifty or so feet away from me whilst progressively getting further and I'm trying to run towards you but the line just keeps extending and no matter how fast i try to run you're still too far to reach
you're fading and it terrifies me because now i'm standing on that white line completely still, in place and intact, turned the complete opposite direction from you and now that i'm looking forward, no longer dwelling on the past, i can see someone else approaching
i don't want to get hurt again
but time goes on and doesn't stop even for the pauses in my heart rate and the frozen mess of my mind
it's been so much time
and i've wasted so much time that i think somewhere inside the streams of saltwater staining the books by my nightstand,
i've forgotten you

(the next time i try to convince myself that i miss you, maybe i'll start asking why?)

And I wanted revenge
something to make you feel
every ounce of pain you put me
through
and now here we are
you're falling apart
and that's when I realized
this isn't
what I wanted

But they told me it'll all be okay
they said it gets better
but they forgot to mention
to reach the surface
I'd have to drown first

I’ve too long engaged in the detrimental habit of searching for a man to complete me. though not completely uprisen to consciousness, it seemed as though i had this illogical desire to have a man who could hold me, as if the contents of my being were too much for myself to handle, as if i were in need of my preferred *** to grasp my supple skin fragments in their hands in efforts of assuring that the parts of me that i could not support would not fall to the ground and shatter like crystallized water droplets
i am immersed in a sexuo-economic society that constantly perpetuates the myth that a woman is a product of a man, woman has what the man can give to her and is nothing without the nurture and tender care a man is able to provide for her. man is happiness for the woman, man is prosperity for the woman, man is a woman’s confidence, man is her beauty, man is her life, for woman has none for her own
it is now that i have realized after searching for so long for someone to “love” me, for someone to look into my eye and drop to their knees in pure adoration, it is now that i realize when man is gone, who am i? i am my own. i am no one’s possession.
the thought itself was liberating to know that my existence depends on no other being but my own so i said it over and over, i am my own, i am my own, ****** i am mine an nobody else’s
i began to yell at the sky telling it that it lied when it was raining that night and tried to convince me that i was miserable and trapped in a world that did not appreciate me, just because it was melancholy and gloomy itself
an epiphany in that moment ; he did not matter to me. it was his very touch, the softness to his lips, the scratch of the hair on his chin, the desperation in his voice, that ran through my veins like a narcotic
once he was gone, i was alone, i thought i was losing my identity but it was in that moment that i started to become who i really was
i realized how many other women go through the same things i do, ignorantly believing that their life is dependent upon a man
how horrible it is to live in a constant state of delusion, believing ***-attraction could provide happiness for myself eternally, as if happiness was not able to reached within me already but rather hidden in the palms of the opposite ***
but you couldn’t understand that
no one could understand
so i told you, goodbye

Apparently everything heals with time
But each passing day
I fall further out of line

For I am sick and tired of this life
That seems to feel the same about me
And I am sick of drowning
In your painful memory

The darkness just never seems to find light
And I repeatedly give up
As my mind and I are having an endless fight

I am sick and tired of trying
I want to escape my mind
These endless thoughts taunt me
And the meaning of my life remains undefined

i remember watching the people around me, fascinated by their stillness

no matter how loud and vast my thoughts were
everyone would remain unchanged
my thoughts would swirl around the room like a snowstorm, getting tangled in hair and caught upon eyelashes in intricate tiny crystals
my thoughts would make the hair on their arms stand like a nostalgic ghost, like a deadly spirit
my thoughts would rain down on others, soaking them in unidentifiable feelings of uneasiness
my thoughts would nudge their shoulders like invisible children

my thoughts would never solidify
and no one could see
they could only feel the density of the air thicken as my head would swell to the size of the room, trapping all bystanders in my engorged mind
stuck in a nameless world of confusion
an endless orb of fantasy and illusion
unsure of the conclusion
i watched, as my thoughts filled the room full of oblivious people
bouncing off the walls and flying over heads, staining the carpets
but who was watching me?

kiss the blood off of my lips, describe to me what my humanity tastes like
when your hands are around my neck, can you feel that i am human?
after you look me in the eyes, i watch you turn away
you are searching for the soul those eyes were made for, you recognize my soul is a restless wanderer
you will not find me
you cannot taste me
you cannot feel me
but i am still here
i will let you know where i am
when i'm finished looking

don't tell me I'm loved
because all you've ever known about me is what I allow you to know, you're assuming people love me because you can't comprehend the fact that a person could very we'll be unloved since you yourself have only known the state of adoration and enamoredness
don't call me pretty
because you have never dwelled within this rib cage, your home isn't in my heart, and you still haven't gone for a walk through my mind you have never even stared into the depths of my eyes for longer than a tenth of a second
it isn't pretty in there
so it isn't pretty out here
don't call me anything
for that matter

does life ever feel so desperate that you find yourself relentlessly convincing yourself that you're made of something the world needs, that the sun burns in attempt to let you shine, that oxygen flows in molecules through the air just to keep you breathing
but the convincing is so inauthentic that you can feel the hours passing by and the skin peeling off your cold body in an effort to escape the inner self-destruction going on
  my organs are afraid and my stomach turns, my eyes droop, my lungs deflate, my heart falls to the ground and shatters
    everything around me is trying so desperately hard to remind me of how much i don't matter, and how easily my life can be simply taken away
            you win
               because now
                    nothing matters
                        and in soon enough time,
             my heart wont have to pulse in fear
my lungs won't have to heave
    and my eyes won't have to swing down so low
because i won't matter either.

Trapped
Under the beaten up tiles
of this house
that once used to be so familiar
Now all of the windows have shut
and all the doors have locked
and I stand in the immense
suffocation
of these painful memories
and regret from the choices I once made
and I wonder if one day
the blinds will open
and beaming sunlight will be released
into this home,
but I've been in darkness for far too long
that there is little hope and much hatred
towards this house I used to know so well
Now tell me, how does one keep hope towards something they've been waiting an eternity for?

i dreamt that I tasted honey on your lips and encompassed your veins with my fingertips
an eyelash fell entrancingly down on your flushed pink cheek
"Make a wish"
I kissed it off your face as you closed your eyes, inhaling the universe into your lungs
your eyelids like pillows providing comfort for your gentle visceral organs
I didn't ask what it was you wished for
you held my body so tenderly and soft
your imaginary touch put me into such a deeper realm of sleep
I woke up with the color of your eyes  staining my carpets, my sheets, the glass of water by my nightstand
the way the sun was shining that morning, I had to smile to myself
It made me wonder
If maybe that was what you wished for

You couldn't even catch the color of his eyes because they were always centered at the ground, like he was searching for something he'd lost years ago and when he looked up at me to smile I could feel the emptiness dwelling deep within him as it appeared hopelessly broken and I don't think he wanted it to be that way. He looked like the absence of a human, like a walking corpse as his under eyes seemed to be permanently tattooed purple, and I didn't know if he ever noticed his laugh that seemed fractured and hollow like it took every ounce of energy from his body to produce. He was the kind of person you wanted to hold to keep all of the pieces together. The kind of person you couldn't let go

on an ordinary day,
i would gaze into the mirror and watch sunlight radiate from my skin's inner essence
all the little ridges and curves kissing my spine seemed to have transcended from the stars themselves
and every scar seemed to display my life’s most earth-shattering moments,
moments so powerful that they broke through the rooted filaments of my flesh
i remembered what i have been through and have an overwhelming sense of my own inherent magic.
  
every day i've ever had that was like this one, you’d see me holding my head up high, with my shoulders ***** and my lungs full of the purest laughter
you'd think of me as the walking embodiment of strength..

and I loved those days, to my core.

but today,

i seem to be looking at a mangled body
bludgeoned by passersby that manipulated their way past the sunlight and the stardust
i see strangers kicking through the door to my infinite touch

and I fear that the sun-kissed glow of strength that my skin habitually lathers itself in, just masks the battered body of a woman whom wishes that she were strong enough to let her scars heal before letting someone else trace over them with blades

i kissed the reflection of my own lips upon glass, and placed my hand gracefully in my hair, grooming and relaxing my restless, scathed body
i grabbed a lock of hair from the mid-section, watching the hundreds of stragglers begin and end their hopeless journey towards the tiled floor, and collected the strands between my fingers to place them in their designated abyss of uselessness

i looked back into the mirror, acknowledging my own image

today, i said

i pulled my heart off the hanger in my closet, grabbed my lungs from the shelf, and retaught my body the process of living

living, i said, you're still living, whether you like it, or not

my eyes became distracted, inverted, and regressing to a time when i couldn't look pain right in the face, and pain couldn't bare to look at me either.
my lips go cold, void of the warmth provided to them by copious amounts of unconditional self-love. my lips curl, my heart palpitates.

i always used to wonder how someone could swear they loved a person so much that it could **** them, and how it could be possible for a feeling so strong, and so real, to abruptly reach extinction, as if it never even existed in the first place
but as i finally had the strength to look pain in the face,
and pain gathered enough might to do so too,
i realized she's the one i kissed today
in fact,
she's the one i've been kissing and inviting in to recieve my love
everyday

there is so much shame in my entanglement with you. there is shame in how quickly my ears perk up at your lukewarm remarks. shame in the way i incessantly trace back steps i took to heal myself from your initial scrutiny. shame in the way i bleed for you, whilst you pretend not to notice.
my mind is scattered with hundreds of differing perspectives, flooding my thoughts with plans of escaping you, while still keeping my pride. I refuse to acknowledge how i give you the softness that i need to be giving myself. i think i do this all because you aren't available to receive love from another human being. my ego likes to think your indifference is an attack at my self-worth, but I've seen my mangled toes, and i know the injuries are a direct result of walking down my own unique path of self-sabotage. the pain i seek from you  validates the self-hate i hold in my heart. i want to think that your presence in my life is a wake up call, making it abundantly clear the mileage of self-love i need to run before i can ever accept what i deserve. and i deserve way better than you, i know that. i really do. but at the same time, waiting for you to put in the work towards being what i deserve, is something i feel i could wait for forever.

I can't seem to scrub your blood off my skin as its essence never seems to rub off, my hands are forever guilty of hurting you, I am forever guilty of hurting you and I tried to bandage you countless times but your bones are still broken and your body still aches and I am so sorry for making you feel weak but the truth is when those bones heal you will be ten times stronger than I will ever be

You pump through my veins like nicotine and your voice echoes through my head like a sad lullaby because I know I will never hear that voice again and I can't find a way to get you out of my mind because you still dwell inside my heart so I try so hard to get rid of you but you're trapped and the only way to release you is to release myself, too.

I live in perpetual circumstances of fear, guided by the palpitation in my heart and the heaviness of my breath
It’s as if the whole world exists around me and within me, as if I am separate and yet anxiously connected
I wish I could call it beautiful

there is so much beauty in the world, yet I hold hands with the ugly
I am held by the tentative and cradled by the impermanent
my mind is a filing cabinet of negative possibilities and tragic happenings,
tucked away in the abyss

there is so much to see and yet my sight is clouded
so much to learn and yet my judgment is tainted
it’s like I am walking with fractures, and no one can see the casts wrapped around my ankles

all I want is to feel like my limbs are healing themselves, my heart is relearning how to pulse love through my veins, and my lungs are slowly expelling the toxins that have been making it so hard to breathe

but all I feel is my body rejecting health,
choosing to remain uncured
the pain magnifies, my senses weaken
and all that keeps me connected with those around me
is a force that presents myself to the world in such a way that the bruises painted on my skin
appear as a testament to the  journey I went through to smile again when indeed I am still being beaten

"you're so, innocent"*, he said to me, eyes widening, soul opening, gritting his teeth letting this word take over my entire body, my body that would now belong to him, withholding his fingerprints like scratches on a penny
i absorbed his sentence and deflected it back out into the universe, for i never really considered myself as such, innocent.
what does it mean to be innocent, why did it excite him so much? was it my lack of experience? was it because he had never encountered someone with such purity in their heart? had he never touched the soul of someone who was comprised of mostly good intentions?
i realized his excitement really was just masking fear. he was afraid of me. if i wasn't using him, i was good. if i was good, i mattered. i don't think he had every considered the fact that a woman he was investing time with could matter. i don't think he was the type of person who wanted to care. so to fold up the fear like origami, and shape it into a facade, he began to express aggression. he was mean. i could not understand this. if i was so innocent, why was he trying to take this away from me? was the concept of my good character making him angry? i remember looking into his greenish eyes and feeling smoke in my lungs. my body polluted by his piercing stare, and i watched as his soul arose out of his shell, like fumes and dissipated into the air around me. the anger then turned to tiredness. i watched him sleep and i wondered if it could even be called that. i had never in my life seen someone in such deep, emotional pain that even when their body is resting their face is stiff and fragile as if he had been resting their his entire life, accumulating dust, hardening the cracks of his smile, cementing his ligaments until the possibilities of him standing again were not even questionable.
watching him, i thought about this innocence he described, and about how he was almost envious of it, how he wanted that for himself and somehow knew that he once owned that quality but somewhere along the lines of a wrong left turn or a path not chosen he had lost it. what he didn't know was that it was still there.
don't get me wrong, i had never met such a cold person in my entire life, but at the same time, he was like fire.
i rolled over next to him, holding his arms, comforting his sleeping body in hopes of him somehow regaining consciousness and becoming aware that he does not have to be so guarded, so cold, and so afraid of being vulnerable. i hoped he'd find the warmth he already has, but i too was tired, so i closed my eyes, and fell asleep.

i am not that girl
what i mean is i am not that girl for you
i am not the girl that has to continuously giggle into her palms instead of telling you how she really feels, leading you on and fully engaging into the game you play so disturbingly well
i am not the girl who could willingly grasp your hand on a beach in the summer, reminding everyone, including you of how much i genuinely love you, knowing oh so subconsciously that the love i feel is completely unrequited
and i am not the girl who could roll over next to you in bed on a groggy Sunday morning just to look into your stone-cold eyes and say

'i will love you forever'

i am not that girl
what i mean is i am not that girl for you, and i can never be
because in ten years
when you reach your everlasting adult arms towards the blue sky wondering why i am no longer in your life i want you know that everything we had was never real
and i was never truly capable of whole-heardedly loving you

and i am not that girl
at least not anymore

Dear one,
you were exactly what i thought i needed in order to survive happily. You even had me so convinced that you were the only person i will ever have loved, but now i think you were just some feeble 14 year-old-girl distraction. That's all you really were, a distraction, nothing more, nothing less, and just like any other distraction it was incredibly hard to snap out of, but you were exactly what i needed to guide me back to reality again. You taught me the painful meaning to the word almost. I almost loved you, i really did.
Dear two,
you  were what made my mind go mad and i still have so much trouble comprehending why you tried so hard to act like you loved me when you really never did, or maybe i just can not comprehend why i believed you ever could in the first place. you are a psychopath hidden behind soft smiles and infectious giggles and i almost hated myself to falling for your little tricks. If there is one person in the world who was able to make me feel sickeningly vulnerable, you'd win that award, two. You never believed me when i said i genuinely wanted to be with you and maybe i didn't, but i sure as hell wouldn't have spent so much time on you if i knew you'd destroy every living part of me like you did. perhaps you were just a distraction as well. i still suffocate looking into your menacing green eyes and even the thought of you brings my body temperature to arctic degrees. if you were wondering, the blizzard you caused in my heart still swirls and whirls the exact same.
Dear three,
you are what overturned the snow storm in my heart that he caused into a gentle spring and then back into a rejuvenating fall. three, you have somehow woven the broken fragments of my trust in humanity back together into a perfect whole once again. i swear to god we are so powerful together and although i wish i could be lucky enough to call you mine, maybe that day will come in soon enough time but for now it is such a pleasure to just simply know you. you are so much more than you think you are, three. after all, three is my favorite number.