and if one day
you decide to stop calling
i’ll still be leaving my phone
with the sound on
for the night

The man I loved didn't love me                                                               ­                                               He told me I was unworthy                                                         ­                                      Called me names, that I won't say                                                              ­                                          
Made my life hell everyday                                                         ­                                               His whole goal was to break me down                                                             ­                                        Make insults with others around                                                           ­         I took it & swallowed my pride                                                            ­                                                     Went along on a hell of a ride                                                             ­                                       
Telling myself If still loved you                                                              ­ 
 You would really love me too                                                              ­                                              Now I know there's nothing I can do                                                               ­                                             There is no fixing you

"Oh"
that is the sound I made when you told me you liked me
the sound I made when you asked me out
when you said "I love you"
when you touched me
when you said you felt i was distant
when you left me
when you ripped my heart into a million pieces and left me for dead
when you told me you were getting back with him
when you told me he was so much better
when he left you
when you stopped talking
when you left

you didnt like me. you liked the idea of being liked, loved.
you knew i was a rebound.
You said "I hate you" and meant it, but "I love you" felt fake
you felt like him. i hate you for that.
i was closer to you than anyone. i left everyone for you.
you chose to leave
you hurt me
god it hurt.
i told you i was proud of you and him.
he finally realized how awful you were.
your silence filled my ears
and then you were gone.

Through monochrome skies
I watch the
stippled
Leaves of auburn
rot.
as time turns back
to that one autumn,
We parted through cooling ashes
leaving my heart's blood
to fall as red leaves

I kept waiting for someone to say my name
like it mattered —
like it meant something more
than the smoke curling from their mouth
or the pause before their next thought.

I kept practicing how I’d answer,
as if the right inflection
could make me worth remembering.
I kept hanging around
like a seat at a table no one was saving —
elbows off the surface, back straight,
trying not to look desperate —
taking notes in the margins of other people’s lives,
highlighting the parts I thought I belonged to.

I filled my pockets with reasons to stay
and still got left behind.
I burned through summers,
cut my teeth on promises made in passing cars.
I stood on porches barefoot, whispering,
Say it back. Please say it back.
But they never did.

I should’ve known better —
should’ve stopped twisting my ribs into ribbon,
threading my spine through the eye of a needle.
I kept breaking myself down into fractions —
a fifth of my pride, a sixth of my spine —
like if I whittled myself thin enough,
I could slip through your keyhole
and rise up like incense burning in your room.

But you were always somewhere else —
feet planted in some other city,
hands too full to catch what I kept throwing.
I was all green lights and loose laces,
always running to meet you halfway —
never noticing you weren’t moving.

I feasted on Adderall
and kept my phone on loud.
I swallowed nights whole
and called it hunger.
Or else I slept for days —
stumbled downstairs with breath like battery acid,
ate three bowls of raisin bran and no water.
My bones went soft as rotting fruit.
My dreams felt like something I could stream —
pause, rewind, resume —
binge-watching my pleading in real time,
begging the screen to glitch out a better ending.

I chewed the quiet until my teeth ached —
gnawed on the hours like stale bread.
Nights stretched thin,
a damp washcloth wrung out too many times.
I stayed up rewriting the last thing you said,
like if I shifted the punctuation
I could make it kinder.
Turned your ellipses into commas,
your cold period into a question mark.
I swore if I curved the words just right,
they’d fold into something softer —
something I could survive.

I spent that week pulling myself apart —
scrubbing my skin until it blushed raw,
stripping it like wallpaper,
scrapping your name out of my throat
like a fish hook.
I kept your words in a jar under my bed —
tight-lidded and hissing like a hornet’s nest.

I kissed the air where you should’ve been
and tasted copper and sweat.
Pressed my tongue to the place it stung
and thought,
This is what love leaves you with —
a mouth full of blood
and a story no one believes.

I kept the lights low for weeks after.
And one morning, I woke up,
swallowed the silence like a dare.
I cut my name out of the air with my teeth.
I let the hurt stick under my nails —
dark and jagged —
and I kept writing anyway.

I spit the silence out like a pit —
sharp, bitter, black.
It hit the floor and rolled,
and for the first time,
I didn’t follow it.

I let it rot where it landed.
Let the flies have their fill.
Let the maggots move in.
Let the earth swallow it whole.
Let it die twice.
Let the ground forget it ever lived.

She poetically talks about how we are two asymptotes
As we got infinitely closer
We got infinitely farther away

Or maybe we are parallel—
Maybe we never really met
But forever are bound going the same way

“If only I could make you forget.”
As if forgetting would do anything
But have me make the same mistake again

Maybe we are a tangent line
Only meeting once
Then disappearing forever

Or maybe I am i,
Imaginary, irrational, impossible—
A unicorn in the margins of your notes,
A number that doesn’t exist,
Except when the equation demands it.

You called me that once,
A unicorn,
Something too rare to be real,
Too strange to hold onto.

But even imaginary numbers have value,
So tell me, if I was never real—
Why does the math still haunt you?