I got myself heartbroken,
by that boy
who I only got to see until decisions were
made for me.

Everyone talks about the heartbeat that goes still,
silent,
rippling waves of fire melting skin,
the stony sickness riding inside,
the absent stumbles as you will yourself to sleep
through tears and the stolen ability to breathe.

Everyone talks about being vulnerable,
the power behind allowing yourself to feel things,
as they are
seconds to minutes, days to weeks and dreams to dusty
cracks in open eyes,
letting in the glare of things gone wrong,
horrid failures and cut glass pieces lodged in broken wings.

Everyone talks about the necessity, the fundamental
break to start the healing.
It’s the sticky glue and ***** hands of being and not being,
at once rocking inside, feeling the edge, protective,
at once sitting on the edge letting the empty air hold you.
It’s the trust you place to let yourself be free in wrapped arms
and watch it get ripped out if it fails.
But it’s also the calm warnings,
like sharp pebbles making cliffs to climb on bare feet,
not getting out of the surf when the waves get to beastly,
to never let yourself feel fear and pleasure and
true, complicated, I-don’t-know-how-to-say-this
love and hurt.

I got myself heartbroken,
by that boy
who held me more
than any other boy did.

Everyone wants something they find so easy to
keep.
The lightness, the unburdening burden of
loving someone to love you back.
Nothing sweeter than water on a parched throat,
nothing more kinder than a respite for a heart beating too fast and too hard;
we talk about feelings like raiding lands and gaining empires,
scars and tears and blood spattering the terrains of our chests
when we open siege
and fight to own something we have never been blessed to keep
for more than an extended moment;
fight to keep you wanting more,
flames and sparks and agony
when we give you the open ground to
lay waste to us.

Everyone wants to understand what it is,
that makes each attempt so much harder than the last.
Did we damage something vital the first time round?
Did we develop a fever, an ongoing sickness that we breathe around
for weeks?
Did we shut down a vital event of trauma, so hard to close away we completely
forget to try, to damaged to take note of scarred skin?
Let it run and rampage and leave us losers defeated,
walking the same tracks to collect things we left behind,
hoping no one stole them from the dying grass while we slept.

Everyone wants to push aside the worst of things.
I do,
feeling broken and sad looking at my insides
on the floor, a little heaped mound of beautiful knives,
you coveted and hurled back to me, after a simple cut.
You were afraid to bleed out and watch me patch you up,
when I let all my cuts bleed open in front of you,
knowing you would finally be the one to heal them.

I got myself heartbroken,
by a boy
I desperately want to have back again.
I’d fall and cut myself all over again,
to reopen all those empty notches
just for a little piece in the chaos I walk head-straight that
brings me all that warmth and brightness and security and peace
again.
Just please, once all over again.

Not a doubt in my mind we could be so happy,
if you didn’t step in it. And leave me alone in the woods
hearing the howls and screeches and feeling the
feel of claws trace down my spine…