the first time you broke my heart felt like every molecule in my body had been shaken like a carbonated drink inside a plastic bottle, containing the catastrophe and sheltering the insanity as if it were a home. i could not let anyone know how close i was to exploding, i could not be weak.
i walked around daily, replaying memories we had against the backs of my eyelids like a projector against a cement wall
i played it over and over until my stomach overflowed with churning bile, wanting to eject the inauthenticity of nostalgia
while watching i would try to make meaning of the dialogue, and you, being it’s main featured character
i made you out to be the hero but you were the villain, you destroyed the plot, you slaughtered the character’s lives, yet you were such a deceivingly good actor
have you ever heard something so many times that you started to go insane?
words can hit you so hard they start to feel like they’ve been carved into your brain, able to be sounded like keys on an everlasting piano, one note insisting for another to play along with it
but you’re not a song that i want to listen to anymore

the second time you broke my heart, i had it coming
i told myself this was it
every time i watched you blink i watched the doors to your soul close
have you ever let anyone in?
every kiss enabled another voice in my head telling me goodbye
but the best part about me letting you into my heart for a second time was that it didn’t really break
what i thought was my chest ripping open, withdrawing blood vessels and vitals, was really the nerves in my body connecting again, i can feel again
i can feel again
i am healing and here months later,
stitched up and intact
you can’t hurt me anymore

tell me about what infuriates you until the point that your palms shake and your jaw clenches
tell me about your everyday monotony and what you do in order to escape it
don't tell me something feeble and impermanent like your favorite color
and please don't bother telling me where you are from, instead tell me where you want to go
tell me what you laugh at uncontrollably until your sides ache, tell me everything about yourself until you've reached the very bottom of your being
i want to know what fills your coppery-brown eyes with life when you are having an off day and something was able to paint a smile across your once melancholy, sadness-drenched face
i want to know you
i want to listen to your voice as you talk until there is absolutely nothing else left to say
i want to know you so very badly it's almost destroying me
please let me know you

why don't i believe it
why don't i understand
when you tell me how much i mean to you
it just doesn't make sense

how can someone love me
most importantly, how can someone like you love me

all my life i'd believed no one ever could
so when you tell me that you do,
my head spins like a tornado
i just don't believe it
and i still don't believe someone as beautiful as you
could ever love someone as inferior as me.

I am always told
the present is a gift
yet I always see people planning ahead
so anxiously waiting for something exciting to happen
People spend so much time
waiting for the future
they forget to live
for right now
and I'm just wondering if they were ever given
the same advice I was

I guess it hurts the most to know
as the days pass faster
and the minutes stroll by,
our paths are spreading farther and
farther apart
and limb by limb we tear
remembering nothing but the times when we laughed,
and cried together
And now our paths are separate
and lead in two parallel directions
into a life of different experiences
we now have become what we were in the beginning,
strangers
I guess it hurts the most to know,
I wasn't anything worth holding on to.

You gave me the title
but forgot to fill the pages
so how am I supposed to use
evidence from the text to explain my answer
if all I was given was a short
fragment
to barely satisfy my crave for answers
and if all you told me was a vague,
lifeless group of words
Then how am I supposed to know if the answer I chose,
is the right one?

January: I watched you slick back your hair when nobody was watching, and smile at the ground as she walked by. I wonder if you do that for every pretty face you see

February: You looked at me today and I don't know if it was on purpose but I thought about you that entire day

March: I want to know you, but I don't think you feel the same. So I'll just sit quietly over here echoing your name, maybe this time you'll listen

April: they told me you said you love me, I don't know if I believe them. You look at me like I'm thousands of miles away when I'm standing right next to you, do you mean to do that?

May: You told me you felt like you've known me for an eternity, is that why it was so easy for you to leave me without warning?

June: you remind me of blood loss, and it looks like you like to hurt, I don't understand you.

July:

August: I still feel your presence in my house but I know you're not there and you never will be.

September: I met someone new today and I think I like him but it might just be because i saw you in his eyes.

October: he told me I'm his everything and I told him I feel the same way

November: he held my hand and whispered sweet lies into my ear, and I pretended they were coming from you.

December: the weather is cold and bitter and it reminds me of how it felt when you left me. Do you remember when you left me? Do you even think of me?

auras swirling, igniting like a chemical reaction
our bodies fill the entire room, yet they stand so far apart
our eyes lock, and there is nothing but the potent sense of remembrance
I almost see myself behind the coppery hues

feeling your skin against mine reminds me of flowing water, sending waves over each other’s  inner essence
I long to get closer, to know if it was ever really me that I saw behind your eyes
or if you’ve been choosing to keep your distance because of the way mine stare back at you

i was trying to make you love me but i was afraid of trying too hard, and as you disregarded my presence every time we met i realized how pointless your love would actually be to me
you proved yourself unworthy of me the second i discovered your true identity and while the fact that i thought i really did know you at one point may terrify me beyond belief, i am so proud to finally release you from my heart, and bleed you out of my fleeting body
you taught me to not completely give myself away to anyone, and you taught me that while someone may wear a genuinely kind facade, they may be hiding the most cynical, sadist to ever exist
and as i woke up this morning, the sunshine leaked through my blinds, the spring breeze whistled in-between the cracks of the walls, and for the first time in a while,
you were not the first thing on my mind

I don't understand you and how you've managed to scoop up every last bit of my being and sign it with your name in permanent ink, it's like I'm your property, like I'm something you bought years ago and used to love but now you just leave me to rest on a your shelf of forgotten toys and treasures. I still love you and I shouldn't but I do because at the end of the day you're the only one I think I ever did love. I loathe you for making me love you because it isn't fair for you to make me feel like I'm all you've ever dreamed about and then as dawn fades to dust I'm a huge mound of nothingness to you. I wish I could stop feeling this way but I still want to be yours like I was back then

the truth is I don't find comfort in looking into your eyes and not feeling weak in the knees, it feels so good to finally feel something other than pain and regret. although my mind and my heart may be in a constant quarrel between " I can't love you" and "I can't not love you" i believe that loving you is inevitable. it can't possibly be my fault that your chocolatey eyes pierce my soul and there's no way I can help the fact that your happiness alone is enough to make my day. maybe this is just my role in society to play, maybe right now I just happen to be the girl who loved a little too much, and im not sure that I know exactly what that means for me or how it will devolve, but there's one thing I am sure of. I am sure that your ghost will live within the depths of my heart for a long time. maybe one day I will be more than just the girl who loves too much, maybe I'll be the girl who was loved just a little too much, by you.

you've got those eyes that consume me whole like a river swallowing and drowning my body, extracting the air from my lungs

oh god they're like an everlasting jungle that I have gotten lost in countless times and can't remember how to find my way out of, and I don't know if I want to return home out of this jungle, because it is exhilarating and impeccable, and I've become infatuated with the atmosphere

but sadly I am not the only visitor in your jungle and it isn't only me who has been picked up by your breathtaking waves, she feels the same as I do

your rivers make an ocean and her trees are a part of your jungle, you are one

now the jungle in your eyes is burning down and I'm trapped, I cannot get out, and I am going to die in here because it's not me who has been lighting a fire in your eyes

there are tidal waves crashing out from the oceans in my eyes, but they aren't beautiful, like yours.

"I love you"
the words came out of your mouth so very effortlessly like water trickling down a window during a storm and I wondered if you've said those words a million times before
I was questioning if you just said them because you felt you had to or if you really truly meant them because we all know you were never good at expressing the way you feel
and if you really did mean it then why do you look at me as if I'm two thousand miles away when I'm standing inches from you and why do you stutter every time you try to formulate sentences on your thoughts of me
I know it's been a while but I still wonder if you feel anything and i wonder if you wonder
I thought you loved me but you never looked at me the way you look at her
"I love you"
you said to her, so very effortlessly like water trickling down a window during a storm

you told me you aren't capable of loving me
you aren't capable of loving anyone
but then you go off and provide her with your own beating heart, you tear out your lungs and diffuse your blood of oxygen in order to let her breathe
then to revive yourself from the torture your body endures in order to keep her up and running you beat my tender skin mercilessly, unaware that it is human skin you're destroying and a child's mind your instilling with harsh memories of pain and desertion
a child's mind who will grow up to be seventeen **** years old, accepting herself as a lower rank on the scale of human worth than those who are prettier than her,
always second priority to those who are worthy of your love
you killed me in a seventeen year long mission to destroy something you destroyed a long time ago
i saw you look at her while she cried, and you could almost feel her pain
a tear actually slid from your eyes, your eyes that you swore to me were never capable of doing such, because it's just "not who you are"
but i know who you are
you're a weak, spineless, emotional wreck, desperate to fulfill prophecies that you were never capable of fulfilling on your own
turns out you are capable of loving someone
but you were right about it not being able to be me

look at her crying
now look at me dying
are you proud of your work?

Here's to you
and the days when it feels as though
the whole world is against you.
Here's to the times when they told you, you couldn't do it,
and you proved them wrong.
Here's to the nights where you collapsed and cried,
because you needed an emotional release.
Here's to that test you pulled an all-nighter for, and aced
To the days you would do anything to not go to school, but took all of your existing energy and did anyway.
Here's to all of those things, because they are what make you as
strong as you are now
Don't give up
Ever

Dear future me,

Please tell me you're happy, because that is all I want to know and please tell me the sound of his name does not still cause your heart to skip a beat, tell me you have finally dug yourself out of the gaping hole you fell into the first time you looked into his eyes, you're strong enough to climb out, even though you might not think so. Remember you're important too, because you always seem to forget that. and if your hands are still painting his phone number across your ribcage, wondering what the first signs of trouble are, then you need to understand that every tattoo is capable of being removed at some point and while it may hurt like hell to breathe sometimes, I believe that you are so much stronger than you think. who cares if it feels like it was all for nothing and who cares if you're starting to hurt more than you thought was humanly possible, you can not let one person ruin you, you will not let this ruin you, and although it may seem unbearable, this too will pass.

WHY DID I EVER THINK YOU COULD BE MINE WHEN WE ARE LIKE THE OCEAN AND THE SHORE, CONSTANTLY CRASHING ON EACHOTHER BUT NEVER HARMONIOUSLY FLOWING THROUGH THE SAME WAVES AND WHY DID I LET YOU LET ME FEEL SPECIAL WHEN I KNEW YOU WOULD SLASH MY HEART AND CHAR MY INSIDES WITH YOUR SWEET LIES AND SOFT HELLOS THAT WOULD EVENTUALLY LEAD ME TO MY DEATH

I think sometimes it becomes extremely difficult to live in this world, in this body, standing on these two specific feet, completely aware of what i am and what I used to be
I think it's hard, because we all try so hard to be significant, to escape oblivion, to overcome and win the obstacle of life
we try to live as much as we can, while sometimes along the way getting tangled in time, so knotted up that we have to cut the ends off just to get ourselves back in line
we try to love as hard as we can, sometimes disregarding the wall we've built up around our bodies, forgetting others can't come in if we don't allow them to
we search for life's true meaning, and become impervious to the fact that we do in fact all cease to exist at one point, as we look for the bigger purpose we serve
and I think once we come to the realization that this all could be for nothing, the love we give will eventually be lost, the times we had, disintegrated into thin air, floating around as particles of dust, once we come to the reality that nothing will ever truly make sense, maybe then it will become easier
maybe when life is seen more as a gift, rather than a timer counting down to our final days, that's when it will all make sense
as even when our bodies no longer exist, it's important to remember our souls carry on forever, the essence of our footprints lye on the ground for eternity, and even when the earth eventually comes to an end, the collaboration of all souls will shine bright, leaving behind nothing but hope, and beautiful memories for what once was