trying to remind myself that i don't need you.

I always hear it and think "our song" and I think of your face and I just think of you. I think of the time we put it on our friends radio in her basement during her party, before everyone had arrived. I think of us sprawled out on the floor, of you holding my hand and my head on your stomach. I think of how I threw the necklace my newest ex had given me somewhere on the floor and kissed you, because I'd wanted you the whole time and now you were mine. I think of your arm around me and how it felt to kiss you and keep you. I thought of us going under her table and being crouched there together with you, laughing at how people thought we were ******* when we were just holding hands under a table. How you ran your hands down my sides while we were dancing in the darkness of her basement like a couple of idiots because it was pitch black and it felt like privacy, felt like us alone. I think of how it's our song. Except, it isn't our song anymore.

i.  am. not. strong.* i am paper-thin skin, ripped and torn, floating in the ocean with salt scorching the wounds. red ink pours into the water, and i am trapped in a circle of great whites, smelling the innocent blood and ready to feast.

i'm not strong. i'm scared.

And now you're telling me that you aren't going to marry her any longer. You're actually saying that you want to run away with me now that you're done playing house with her, and I have to remind myself every day that you're a liar, just so that I don't get my hopes up.

i am not strong.*

i smell like strange girls and strange places
and a strange boys lips brand my cut thighs.

i know not who i am, and i have lost all control.

i open my mouth to scream, but not a sound comes out.

*my only way to shout is through poetry.

incapable of breathing once again.

Please. Please call me. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.

today is the last chance i have to say good bye.

i don't care if you're just commenting on the weather *don't talk to me.

i am giving up on you.

and now, she is trying to eat whatever small bits of happiness i have left.

i am just another dead thing beneath your boot.

i'm tallying up your broken promises on my flesh, darling.

I do not want to hold your hand anymore.

Just hug me. Please. I don't even care that you get nervous and hug really awkwardly, like you don't know what to do with those long arms and you hold on either too tight or too loose. I don't mind.

and now, you've come back.

with nothing but a ****** apology, and an invitation to your bedroom.

and i have a million problems to drink away this weekend.

*a family history of alcoholism is one.

and that's the thing. you saw me as this angel, this person who could make anything better. you put me so high up with all your belief and trust and thinking i have this sweet, tender heart yet still somehow fought all my demons down and became whole again. i'm sorry, but i didn't. i never changed, i just wished i could. you were this great girl who beat back her own darkness and thought you could hold me up high, proof it was going to be worth it, proof relief and healing came. it doesn't.

trying to pretend that i can't feel my heart *dying.

I really thought we could be. But your lips don't give me butterflies, don't make me fly. And though your eyes are beautiful, they don't captivate me. And even when your arms hold me close, they don't feel like home.

remember when you asked me to marry you?

and i want you to look me in the eyes, read every line, and see exactly what you've done to me.

I want to strip us of our skins, the things keeping our hearts apart, and hold you so close the spaces between our ribs are filled by one another's.

and someone else has come and painted happiness on the land you had **scorched.

you looked like a young god in black.

you made the near-constant chatter in my head stop, but now you are gone and all i hear is *screaming.

trying to reach for death in the dark, but even the reaper has abandoned me.

you are what makes me want to die, and what i live for at the same time.

you said you weren't going to be around anymore so why are you everywhere?

True love is holding their hand and committing a double suicide when you realize that you can't do it anymore.

and i find that i have been thinking about death a lot as of late.

and i hate her with almost the same passion that i hate you with.

*but not quite. For i hate you with a lovers passion, and i hate her as the usurper.

And i can't breathe again.

I love you and I can honestly say that I want you forever. I want to sleep next to you every night and wake up to you every morning, to hold your hand and kiss the lips that make me feel invincible. I want to trace my fingertips over your cheekbones and down your jawline, to run my fingers through your hair and hold you so close I can feel your heart beating with mine. I want to tangle our bodies together and get lost in the sound of your breathing. I want to make you laugh and I want to feel your smile when we kiss, to curl up on your chest and tell you that you are my sea, my sky, my solar system. I just want you to stay, please. Please stay.

my tears refuse to fall again.

sitting here terrified of you because everyone who came before left

it's been over 27 days since you last touched me.

my skin cells are all new now,
like you were never here at all.

telling you how you wrecked my heart hurts almost as much as when you trampled on it.

I just want to hold everyone so tight that all the broken pieces come back together, held by my quiet love for all people who fought their demons and survived.

But I can't catch myself. I can't hold every broken person in the world in my arms, and each one flays my skin with those shattered edges. I cannot keep myself together and I cannot hold your dreams up because my never-really-dreams are crushing me as it is. I cannot help you. I've given my blood and air and skin and every beat of my heart to someone who couldn't survive. And now they're living in my rib cage and the quiet parts of my head, and I don't know if I like it or not.

i'm just another dead butterfly at your feet.

just so you know, i spent two days in bed after we gave up on us.

my throat is tight and aching with every word i never said.

i remember how you actually helped this insomniac sleep at night.

(now the hole you left in my chest keeps me awake, burning and aching in a way that makes me afraid to close my tear-misty eyes.)

i have seen what believing has done and i am no longer sure i want any part of it.

i understand. i'm sorry i didn't know you.

i'm waiting for my fingers to forget how they felt laced with yours, and my palms to forget the warmth of you against them.

the anger is starting to burn through.

you are not the boy i fell in love with.

*you are just a stranger wearing his face.

why don't you realize that it doesn't matter to me how much light is in this world? it doesn't matter that stars dance in the sky or that the sun shines down or that there are a million different colors here. it doesn't matter that the moon reflects off the water, rippling along the surface and softening everything. none of it matters because you are not here to share it with me. it doesn't matter what all the world has in it if you aren't here to hold my hand and walk with me.