R emember when we were in love?
E ven just a little?
B ecause I'll never forget.
E specially the bad moments.
C ause the worst moments with you,
C hanged me for the better. So I'll
A lways thank you for that year point 5

let's fall tragically in love
drink too much
and then fall tragically in lust
because I would like to stop and take a break
from destiny- I would like to pause and stop
who I must be, for just a moment,
let it go, forget it all, make this night
like it never happened, no rewinds
marked from the record,
just kiss me, for now;
I'm tired of being dependable
***** filling expectations and following the path
moral obligations and saying the right thing at the right time
I'm tired of being looked up to
'oh, maddie, with the good morals'
**** being respectable
**** being responsible
**** having a reputation
**** it all- just **** me.

Dear Talia,

I don't want to be a tortured artist.
I don't want to be depressed and I don't want to be anxious.
Competitive sadness and disorders treated like accessories disgust me.

The world glamorizes mental illness, and I don't understand why. There is nothing romantic about being mentally ill just like how there's nothing glamorous about a broken wrist or a torn medial collateral ligament. There's nothing romantic about constantly being afraid that the world will fold in itself and **** you with it. There's nothing romantic about feeling like you could break down and cry at any moment.

This is the first piece I've written while being medicated.

I want it to be Christmas already.

The world dreams itself a halo, but can only attain horns. The halo is an illusion and the horns are an idea.

I'm due to take another Lorazepam. Would I look cool to the kids who idolize dysfunction and misinterpret pain as style, if I were to take one of these, with water and a distant glance, in front of them? Geez, to have their approval would to have everything and nothing at all.

I'm not sure why I've written as much about this as I have.

You.

It is 2:48 am and all I can think about, in this moment, is you.

I can't wait to spend Christmas with you. I can't wait to wear bad Christmas sweaters, and be the couple everyone hates, as we sing Christmas carols and spread holiday cheer.

I wrote this poem a few minutes ago. Sometime around 2:30 am. I'm not sure. I'm exhausted:

I sat on the edge of my bed, and on the edge of my life,
medicated to the point of pointlessness. Soft.
It was the nineteenth, not the twentieth,
and I wished I saw the fireworks with her fifteen days earlier.

My gasps tore the shingles off of the house.
And they hung suspended above the hole in the roof.
And God stared down into my room, as the shingles swirled skyward.
"I see you," I said, "but I don't believe in you."

I left home and ran until I was a dream that had passed itself.


I hope that was okay.

I love you.


Yours,

Joshua Haines

You pull on my lip like an aircraft emergency oxygen system.
Our engines catch fire
as our tongues flutter like the wing's peeling metal,
and as our eyes peek at one another
between each plane crash of lips.

We've lost cabin pressure
as we can no longer control our bodies.
We gasp for each other's breath
as our shimmering structures
roll around on the sky of my bed.

We kiss like we've only got seconds left,
when in reality,
these moments will never die
even if we do.

There was an army of ants in the plastic plants
So I poured light through a magnifying glass
And I created a fire on the artificial grass

They scurried and hurried
with flames on their backs
Like soldiers on a hopeless plain,
searching for invisible barracks

And I sighed as they died,
because we are all the same:
Scurrying and hurrying from invisible pain