I only ever wanted to kiss the emptiness from your eyes.

Thinking of the first time you slapped me and how I was stunned, too stunned to react

And how it escalated from there, into scratching and biting and cutting and burning

And how the light in your eyes made me numb to the pain

And how the taste of my blood in your mouth suddenly became heaven

And how you ran your fingers through my hair and told me you knew you could do anything and I'd still be right there

And how you were ******* right, you're still ******* right because the second you call me love, I accept all of the poison just to have you back.

**** shame. I miss your stupid face.

You've got outer-space eyes when you hate me.

You probably shouldn't love me.

I will write about every detail I adore, paint you with brilliant vocabulary words that you will never hear come out of anyone's mouth, and idolize every breath you take.

I will romanticize your eyelashes and hands and the way your lips curve into a smile, slip you into every simile and metaphor, and my work will have you in every beat.

And when you inevitably crush me and let me down, (like everyone else), I will write our ending like some beautiful tragedy, and every so often, a nostalgia-inspired piece about you will arise.

So darling, darling, please. Do not bring me up just to crush me beneath my own glass dreams.

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.

You left me with ears full of lies and a shattered heart. You told me you'd never leave, and now you're gone. You said you loved me. You said she was just a friend. That she wasn't even attractive. I knew you liked her before you knew, and you tried to hide the fact that you took her to every schoool dance this year that you went to. I tried to pretend like I didn't notice. You pressed me into walls and couches and fences and kissed me till I couldn't stand, sunk your teeth into my lip during our fights, and swore at me for being stupid before swearing you'd never leave me alone again, because I really do need you and I do a lot of stupid things without you. I know I wasn't good enough. You took her to the place you said you would propose to me at. She wears your jacket everywhere, either because she really likes it or because she breaks the heart of every guy she dates and got ****** in the practice room at school and you really don't want to end up like the guy you stole her from. I hate her face and I don't mean to, but she knew about us and she still ripped you from my chest. I know I said a lot of venomous things to you. I believed you when you said you wanted to marry me. When you got on one knee and asked, I said yes. Clearly, you've forgotten that. I wonder if you're going to marry her now. Yes, it probably seems I moved on fast. I was kissing girls and boys and swapping love notes with saliva and telling someone new I loved her within weeks, but we both know how she is and neither of us meant it. I'm with a new boy now, one that's happy with me and doesn't constantly talk about his first love and lie to me about some other girl. He's mine and I'm his. But you hurt me a million times. You hold her hand inches from my face or put your arm around her like you used to do with me. You shoved me aside, literally, to run to her and throw your arms around her. You are a senior and you graduated yesterday. Well, good. I hope I never see your face again. And within a month of school starting, she'll have replaced you with some other guy.

I'll laugh.

Struggling to deal with parts of this relationship I cannot stand- you, off high or drunk, leaving me alone for months at a time. The way a door for infidelity opens, far too warm. While you're off in your own world, doing I-will-never-know what, a golden lion boy holds his hand out, purring words of pure honey.

Do you ever just feel your energy under your skin?
Like lightening and it's like eating your veins or some **** but it isn't, it's like zapping you and crawling in your bone marrow and and growing in your stomach and your head is full of sky and your throat, the back of it feels kinda like battery acid and kind of like rainwater and it tastes like burn. And it's like you don't have skin anymore you've just got pure ******* magic, and little people are building homes in my ribs and I can feel them crawling on my bones and stealing blood from my heart to drink, lighting up my lungs and making me glow from the inside out- the death of a star, in a breathing girl.

And I sincerely hope,
that you cannot forget,
my cloud nine eyes and sugared lips.

My thin fingers on your chest, eyes flashing under neon lights.

I hope you cannot forget me and every sweet nothing spoken with damp hair and starry lashes.

And I hope everytime you touch her hair, you feel mine under your fingertips.

I am finally finished with you and everything you are.

(So why do I feel like my heart has been ripped from my chest?)

I dreamed of you last night. You sat in my house and said you missed me. You said you had missed me for the past several months, that I hadn't left your mind. You haven't left my mind. I will spend the next 24 hours wishing and hoping it was real. That in some way, I'm running through your mind. I miss you. Please call me.

Have you forgotten me?

It's okay.

I think I would, too.

i just watched forever slip into fifteen minutes. and then i watched fifteen minutes turn into nothing at all.

Sometimes I wonder what would happen if turned my alarm off and just slept until my parents woke me up, panicked because I slept late and will be late for school. I wonder what would happen if I told them I just wasn't going and refused to move. They can't physically make me go. They can't pick me up and carry me across ice to the car and drive me. They can't carry me into the building and set me down in a class. Let the police come. Arrest me for giving up and not following the rules of life anymore. Arrest me for quitting everything. Send me to jail. Beat me. I won't move a muscle. **** me. I just want the strength to quit entirely and just stop doing everything I don't want to do anymore, to stop feeling so the consequences don't matter. I just want to give up and stop.

I still feel like I'm suffocating beneath the weight of your memories

And I hate you and I hate her and I hate the empty cavity in my chest where my heart used to be

And my own insecurities are eating me

God please help me.

i know that i'm all wrong for you but i can't help but miss you like hell.

I really should stay away from boys like you.

Who take me to their rooms and don't go anywhere near the bed, just put their arm around me and tell me about themselves. Who touch my cheek and look at me for a moment when they talk about things they love.

The beautiful, innocent ones with stars in their eyes. Who introduce me to their parents and hold my hand and hold me and don't try anything in the dark.

Boys who I really, really don't deserve, who eventually see that for themselves and leave, taking a piece of my heart with them.

Boys like you, honey.

i do not like the way you look at my boyfriend.

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.

so if you could stop trying to treat my body like your own personal antidepressant, i would really appreciate it.

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

*my only way to shout is through poetry.

and i will never understand people wanting a clean slate, to meet someone else all over again.

because if we met again, i would never have had you at all.

and i would rather sit alone and let our memories **** me,
rather then lose them,
like we never loved at all.

And maybe once you're finally gone, I'll start feeling better.

Or maybe your absence will **** me.

And I am sorry that you are taking us so seriously, and I am looking at you as a placeholder- a boy who wanted the empty space next to the burning doll that I am so badly that my charred fingers crumbled, and I let you stand by my side.

And I'm not even a legal adult yet.

But I've already given up. Death drives me. And I can barely write anymore, because my fingers feel like lead, like they're broken. All my bones are crushed beneath everything I gave up on. I feel like gravity weighs millions of pounds, like I've got dead galaxies on my shoulders, made up of all the dreams that died before they ever lived at all.

I just want to fly away.

Hey, galaxy boy. I've got a girlfriend now, and she's more beautiful than anyone else I've ever seen. She smiles and her eyes glow and she just lights me up. She looks great in my jacket, you know, the oversized dark blue one with lime green stripes that you hated. My friends don't approve. Neither does my family. Everyone says she's nothing but trouble. But now, she's my trouble. So I don't wanna hear a **** word about it from anyone. You always hated her, anyways. So it's none of your business if she writes the date we got together on notes with hearts and gives them to me, or if she draws me Pon and Zi. And if she spams my phone with cute quotes, well, I'm happy about it. And if she gives me a necklace and kisses me in front of everyone, well, at least everyone knows she's mine.

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 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.

and sometimes, i think about how i'm not very good at loving without the sting.

because my love is a tiger, a thornbush. my love is ****** teeth in the dark and hungry marks all across your skin, lovebites.

my love makes you ache and swallows you, searches for the most vulnerable, broken parts and occupies them.

so please understand, that i do want you to happy. and i really don't want to see you hurt. (but in the very same breath that i tell you that i hold your joy above all else, my poison mouth drips with possession, with making you mine.)

All you ever did was believe in me and all I ever did was this. I am so ******* sorry. You thought I had changed and healed and you thought that I could keep getting better, but I can't, I'm sorry, I just can't. Jesus ******* hell, girl. Why did I ever let you believe in me....why did I ever let you like me?

Blood is the color of my love....paint your world in the crimson shades of my affection, and replace every drop of red with your sweet nothings.

You are now torturing me on purpose, i swear it.

Because now you are with her around every corner that i ever occupy, every hallway that neither of you ever walked down until now.

i was never one to become bitter over something like this, but you bring out the worst in me for a laugh.

I don't remember what I did wrong anymore but I take it back. I'm sorry for it. I don't even care who was wrong and who was right ever anymore. You mean more.

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.

i am dreading the ride home.

it feels as though my heart is being ripped apart while it is still inside my chest.

*please, just rip it out already.

now, i have lost sight of myself completely.

*i no longer remember the days past as anything but blurs of pain and kissing the unfamiliar.

I want to fall in love and write about it on their back and thighs and collarbones and ribcage and hip bones. I want to make a list of every reason I love them and hide each reason on a different part of their body and I want to draw a heart on the back of their neck. I want to write a ten word poem on the small of their back about how beautiful their eyes are. I want to fall in love and I want to mean it, no regrets.

Sometimes I think about the last time I saw you alive and almost told you I loved you. But when I almost said it and you looked at me and said "what is it, babe?" I lost my nerve and squeezed your hand tighter and said "you have beautiful eyes." Instead, and I just stared at you and hoped to convey what I couldn't say. But real life is not a romance novel, "you have beautiful eyes" was not heard as the "I love you" that it was, and even if you had heard it, I guess it wasn't enough, because you killed yourself anyways.

Please just pack your ****, take the gifts back, and ******* leave.

I'll swallow my pride. I'll learn to trust you. I'll ask you to come back. I'll tell you I'm sorry. I'll try not to **** up. I won't flirt with anyone else, not even when we fight. I'll cry in front of you instead of pushing you away...I'll ******* change.

adjustment is hard when it comes to you.

i'm thinking of the galaxies in his eyes and the stars in his lashes and the dark silk that's his hair and how soft it looked, how soft it was and how the fringe was up just a little bit and how for some odd reason, it made me think of feathers. and of how soft his hands were, how uncertain and when his arm was around me and he bent and kissed me but moved back like he'd been burned and how his laugh sounded over the phone and how his lips danced around my name...how huge and dead his pupils were, how lost when he looked at me-but not really at me, past me, through me-for the last time..

I think my disgust for the human race started in the 5th grade. My best friend and I were not popular girls, but girls bullied by everyone. Eventually it took a toll on my fragile friend, combined with her parents divorce and already being rather sensitive, and she tried to take her own life. Her mother found her hanging and got her down in time to be taken to a hospital and saved. She came back to school months later, a lot quieter and sadder than before. She began to cut. And eventually, someway or another, the other kids noticed. Noticed the cuts, discovered she had tried to take her life. And they targeted her more and more for it, bullying and harassing her nonstop. Making her wish she hadn't survived even more, until eventually she tried to **** herself once again. But she was caught in the act this time, closely observed as she was, and taken out for many months once again. When she returned, she was a zombie. She stopped cleaning herself. Stopped trying to eat. She quit taking care of herself and that was another thing for the kids to pick on her about. I tried to keep her head above the water, but as the "suicidal freaks" best friend, I was being attacked too. Soon our fellow students were drowning us both in cruel words and brutal actions and snide rumors. I was sinking down with her, but my descent was silent. Self harm in secret places. Crying myself to sleep into my pillow so nobody could hear me. Writing suicide notes in my notebook to calm myself down and remind myself death could save me from all the torture at any time. I came to realize my classmates were not children, but monsters in human skin. They had tried to **** my friend, were still killing her. And now they were killing me. Ripping away my hope for the future and any love I held for the world, pulling away my idea that people were inherently good and replacing it with the concept that people were beasts who wanted to destroy me because they could. Because the one who made us so sad we killed ourselves would be the winner of the twisted game, because our deaths would be something to laugh at, just like her attempted suicide was. It's been six years now, and some part of me is still drowning in that ocean of sadness. I haven't heard from her since her last attempted suicide, a few years ago. Because she never got better either. She's still drowning too. And the monsters? I still walk among them every day. Their eyes slide past me like I'm not even there, like they don't even remember the child they ripped out of me. Like destroying a part of me was the simplest, most meaningless thing in the world.

It's scary. Getting too familiar with another person. Knowing just the right way to kiss them and when you've become so familiar with someone's ****** structure that your noses no longer bump and you just fit together. When you know their favorite places to be touched and favorite ways and how to elicit the best sounds. Slipping into their favorite position and simply knowing they like it the best without ever having to say it. It's ******* terrifying, mapping out the geography of their body with your hands and knowing the feel of their skin and every mark on it. Memorizing their body instinctively and naturally going to the things you know they like. Being able to tell, with your eyes closed, the feel of something as simple as the back of a hand or the expanse of a back and knowing it is them, that is their skin. Being used to their smell on you. Tracing over their face with your fingertips and being able to feel it beneath your fingers even when you're apart. Makes it feel like they're a part of you, knowing your body knows their body and some primitive or maybe too advanced part of your brain knows every inch of them, can remember the feel of them in the slightest moment. It's got me scared as ****. You've got me scared as ****.

I am addicted to rain, to the sunset, to the sound of water over rocks.

To the crackling of the fire, to the breeze on my cheeks. To the feeling of someone else's fingers running through my hair.

I am addicted to the way he smiled, to the way she kissed, to the feeling of my fingers laced with someone else's.

I am addicted to the quiet pain in my heart, to obsessing over my fears, to apologizing for things beyond my control.

I am addicted to this boy who has eyes like the sky, to this boy who makes my heart jump into my throat and my cheeks burn and my legs go numb and who makes it hard to breath. I am addicted to this boy who doesn't really know who I am, who just knows who I want him to know, who has a smile like perfection and probably doesn't even know it.

I am addicted to writing. About my heart, about my dreams, about my sins and agonies. About how other people view me and how I view other people and how I view myself.

I am addicted to cuddling, to thick blankets and fluffy pillows, to lazy mornings.

I am addicted to wishing I could share all the things I love most with that boy, the one who I wish I could look at all day.

I am addicted to turning things into him without ever intending to.

My parents tell me to stop bringing misfits home.

Stray cats, lost dogs, lonely people.

Anything sad in the neighborhood, sad in my sight, I bring home with me.

The poor teenagers up the hill, the stoners dazed by the lake, the girls with broken souls and the boys with broken minds. Survivors of all kinds of abuse find refuge with me.

I carried an orange cat home one day, I found him walking around a construction site. He was fed and given something to drink, and we found his owner.

A puppy only a few weeks old, eyes still closed, deathly ill. We bottle fed it and took it to the vet, but it was too late. She said she had a damaged spine and wouldn't make it. I stroked her head as she stopped breathing.

I brought a schizophrenic boy home and helped him through an attack in our living room, while my parents sat horrified in the kitchen.

No less than three girls have cried on my shoulder in the safety of my bedroom, traumatized by rapes they didn't know how to talk about.

These strays, these wounded souls....These are my people. I love them all.

So when they say "stop bringing such damaged things home" it breaks my heart.

And I do it anyways.

All I can think of is us holding hands, a gun in each free one, and my tarot cards scattered all around us.