1/ there was a time when you didn’t know my name, or my story, or my birthday, and we sat around thinking about high school and everything grand that was about to happen to us, and how excited we were. and then we went to high school, but nothing really grand ever quite happened, except for meeting each other, and that’s what started it all, i think – when i heard your voice on the very first day of freshman year and knew that i was going to love you someday. i think that’s how it all started. i don’t know how i knew it, but I did – in the pit of my stomach, i knew somewhere that one day, we would spend our whole lives loving each other. our entire lives. in one moment, i saw them, clear as anything, and i knew.

2/ we were fifteen and it was dark. we were inside an empty house, sam’s house, and it was dark, and you were sitting at the piano, and you were playing music that you had written. and something moved inside me, something deep and old and warm, like the very core of the earth was shaping itself to fit inside your pocket.

3/ you forgot my sixteenth birthday. i cried, and you apologized, but then you forgot about that, too.

4/ last september we went to a football game but we decided to explore the woods by the field instead. we were off the trail and hopelessly lost so we laid down then and there and looked up at the sky, and the stars were out. i could feel your breath on my cheek. you saw a shooting star, but i missed it.

5/ you asked me what book i was reading. you smiled and we talked about it, but then the next day, you asked me what book i was reading. and the next day, and the day after that. and you will tomorrow, too, and you'll smile.

6/ it was new years eve and i was sitting next to you on your couch, and my insides were trembling, shaking so violently i knew that you noticed. my heart was pounding, in time with the count-down, the people all around us shouting numbers. five, four, three, two, one – and i turned around and kissed you, for the first time, the minute the old year slid into the new. i kissed you, and that was my resolution – to love you, every day.

7/ last summer, we were outside at a party, and you told me that you couldn’t date anybody because there wasn't time. we went back to the party and we danced, my arms around your neck. i saw a shooting star, but you missed it.

8/ one time, you saw my left wrist, my left forearm, and asked me what had happened. i told you it was my cat, and you said, no, that cats’ claws aren’t so close together. you looked at me, i looked at you, and we never spoke of it again.

9/ there was a time when we were lying on your basement floor, and i was curled up into your side, and you turned me around and you kissed me. and then we were sitting up, a tangle of legs, and you kissed me, the place where my neck joins my shoulder, and you kept kissing me. we went upstairs, to your room, and the house was empty, and you kept kissing me. the house was empty, you were kissing me, and we sank onto your bed, onto the sheets you had slept in since before you had ever known me, or her, or anyone, and we kept kissing, and i kept opening my eyes to look at you because I thought I was asleep.

10/ a time before, i was sitting on the bathroom floor of my parents' house, and i was crying. you called me, words tumbling over words, and my left forearm, my left wrist, was lying on the toilet seat, and your words were climbing down ladders to get to me, and i had to sneak downstairs for the first aid kit, and your words just laid there, useless, as i ripped the wrapper off the gauze.

11/ there are moments. there are moments when you are sitting alone in your room, and the perfect song is playing, and he whispers in your ear: you’ve made me fall for you, that’s what you’ve done. i’ve fallen for you…you and your beautiful mind, body, and soul. there are moments when you know in the pit of your stomach that you'll want nothing but to spend your whole life loving him, your entire life. in one moment, i saw it, clear as anything, and i knew.

.

No one wanted to talk to the girl who's arms were covered by sleeves,
ashamed of what she had done; she wished not to be seen.
Instead of seeking help, she continued to cut;
after all her life was going down and seemed to have no possibility of going up.
Starving herself daily: she thought she would never be good enough.
She knew life was hard but never thought it would be this tough.
Everyday she was a victim to the same
"oi you! you really let yourself go, you're insane!"
"you're crazy" they said as she was pushed to the ground.
For she was the queen of helplessness; she had just been crowned.
Growing ever so slowly timid as she lay in the rain;
this wasn't the first time and she knew it would happen again.
So she rolled up her sleeves and cut deeper than ever before:
the pain grew more and more.
Damaging herself as she grew weaker than weak,
as her existence grew evermore bleak.
She counted down the days until she choose to go.
She would leave before anyone would stop her, no one cared, no one would know.
She wrote a note, it didn't say much
other than how she hated herself and to help: they couldn't do as such.
She disappeared the next day into oblivion;
gone was her life and no one was there to stop it.

I can't stop the hurting by hurting.
at least,
not with cuts nor burns these days.
because I will pay if there are scars that stay.
but at least no one notices
just how much I weigh.

So little, so simple,
Yet they have so much meaning;
So minor, yet inside her,
Her consciousness is teeming.
With anger, with hatred,
For they treated her wrongly,
Her heartache, her heartbreak,
Her agonizing longing.

So much wrong for so long,
She almost wants to leave it,
Yet hope is beneath it,
She almost can't believe it.
That some form of hope lurks,
In something deep inside her,
A fire that rises,
In he who walks beside her.

She's holding on so fervently,
She's staying strong because she believes,
Discordant cacophonies,
Give way to perfect melodies.

Of her shame or her strength,
Are those lines indication?
For all of them are hollow,
Another step she's taken.
Yet somehow she's here now,
Still after all that pain,
So maybe she's saying,
"There is sunshine after rain".

She shivers but glimmers,
With some degree of life,
She knows she's not over,
And that is why she fights.

She's holding on so fervently,
She's staying strong because she believes,
Discordant cacophonies-
Give way to perfect melodies.

How sweet are the lilies she grips in her hands
As white as her dress in the moonlight
Yet she inhales harshly through her withering lungs
She gazes towards the sky with tearing eyes
The cold emptiness burning inside her chest
She whispers the words under her breath
"One day I will be the lucky one"
"One day I will be the lucky one"
"One day I will be the lucky one"
The words float to the sky
The lilies turn red
She has no control over her head
She drops to the ground and the grass becomes her bed
Staring at the moon she crys once more
"One day I will be the lucky one"
Hoping with all her might that it will come true
And her life was taken too soon
By the knife they call depression
The bullet they call sorrow
The rope they call lonliness
And if your heart is beating
Then you are the lucky one
Because most of us are bleeding from self-destruction

I don't know how it came to be
To have so many holes in me
But here I cry
By and by
Bleeding from the heart
Where so many rivers start.

I cannot explain
This inexorable pain
As I cross this river Styx
Wondering how I'd come to this
But here I am
****** and Dammed
Crying cold tears
Wondering what fate nears.

I remain here with the ferryman
Wondering how I was ever a merry man.
Crying my tears of blood
Just as any man would.
Touched so high in grace
****** for all my race.
So burning is this torment
Yet cold, silent, and dormant.

But I am no betrayer.         No, Not yet
No sin increases my fare

Charon does not bring me to that gate
But rather back home to finish my fate.
For I am not dead
And it is not living that I dread.
I have only been shown this torture
So I may avoid it in future.
I have no place in that weeping forest
Just as Dante, I was but a tourist.
But so my sorrow deep and cold
Should not permeate into my old
But rather it shall remain
a past pain.

O I shall remember
these such foul members
But it is that which makes me
Not breaks me.
These are that which become me
For I shall not succumb to these.
And so these folds shall make me
stronger
Till I feels these holes,
These rivers in my heart,
These tears of blood,
This passing of the laurel,
These faults within my ore,
No longer.

"What are you doing?" She asked with a hint of fear.
When she saw me,
all alone,
on my bed,
with tears in my eyes.

"Are you okay?" "Do you need a doctor?" She asked,
as the blood dripped down my arm,
and onto my white towel,
staining it red.

My bony thighs with the words,
'fat' engraved onto my skin.
My ribs were poking out of my stomach,
I haven't eaten in days.

"Can't you see,
see what you have done to me!" I yelled.
One move and I'll be gone-
I began to shake,
more like shivering.

Shivering from fear,
shivering from coldness,
hitting my tiny fragile bones.
One move and I'll be gone-

I push my mother out of my room,
and latch the door.
She is pounding,
pounding harder and harder,
screaming for me to let her in,
as she sobs and sobs.

Everything goes silent,
my thoughts begin to race,
and all I can hear is the beating of my heart.
I take the blade in one hand,
with a handful of pills in the other
One move and I'll be gone-

Slowly I press down,
harder and harder,
and the blood starts to pour out.
I swallow the pills,
and soon fall into a deep deep sleep.
Never to feel the pain,
ever again.

One move and I was gone.
All from a fight.
My mom finally gets the door open,
and falls to her knees.

Nothing will ever ever take back,
what she just saw.
Her daughter just laying there.
Still-
lifeless-

Cutting yourself
to feel something
something inside
like you're not empty

as you see the blood
pour out the emptiness
remains and the pain
doesn't disappeared

it stays
heavy
weighing down
it stays

unable to leave

you drain yourself
emptying yourself
into the sink
but the pain

remains and
nothing changes
you can't go back
the cuts are there

the scars a reminder
of the emptiness
the meaningless
the nothingness

you once had, a reminder
of a feeling you couldn't
be rid of

I feel myself falling asleep on the staircase we sat on when you told me for the first time, out loud, that you wanted to die. I can feel the dead breath of winter. I can feel the slow drifting of snow onto my trembling hands and the unforgiving stillness of the concrete beneath me. I can feel your shaking and nonexistent forgiveness towards your own knotting fingers.

I can feel myself dozing off on the carpet you opened your veins and popped the seams of your skin on. I can feel the warm wetness of iron that once flowed through your arteries envelop my eyelids. I can feel your knife saw through my untouched hair. I can feel the soft edge of your cheek turn salty with tears. I can feel the cloth you gag yourself fill my mouth with cotton and the grooves of my teeth with formaldehyde.

I can feel myself awakening in the pill bottle that used to be full. I can feel the milligrams come in doctors note waves. I can feel the ***** climb from the back of my throat. I can feel the dizzy relief of holding back poison. I can feel your sinking regret and all 25 pills of its predecessors wringing your brain out.

I can feel myself opening my eyes in your casket. It is not empty. I can feel the burden of your body beneath me. I can feel the tough leather of your rope burned neck and the dull heat of my skin desperately trying to awaken yours.

Gone is sometimes not an adjective. He is a noun. And he is haunting my dreams.