I do not know how to get lost in you.

You trail your frozen fingertips across my arms and curl me close to you and smile, making jokes and creating your own nonsense words and phrases, drawing me in to your almost-black eyes.

I laugh at your imagination and rub your wrists as you draw circles on the back of my hands and lean on me, letting me relax into you.

Yet, I do not know how to deal with a boy who doesn't constantly try to touch more intimate places, who doesn't constantly talk about *** and isn't always asking for more.

I do not know how to deal with your tender compliments and small smiles and how you always say being cute is a personality trait, too.

All in all, I do not know how to deal with you, my only place to rest besides in words.

But I can try.

"This will be the last time that we see each other. And someday, 'i love you' will be as friends from a million miles away.

Good-bye Taylor. It's time to let go."

everyone asks what's wrong, but *what do you say when the answer is nearly everything?

thinking that flowers, roses especially, are true symbols of love.

they wither and die within days...just like love.

and roses are covered in thorns that cut when you hold them too *tight.

And when you kiss her at the end of the aisle, I hope you think of me.

I realized that she looked up to me about fifteen seconds too late.

And now you're leaving to go fly planes and I don't know what to do anymore

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

You are the walking parasite that made my story into a tragedy.

You may have noticed, that words come less freely now.

That's because the pain has reached a level beyond them.

You said you didn't want to be alone.

You did not want to lose your chance at being safe and content for a whirlwind romance with a girl you'd danced with in the dark.

You said we were like Romeo and Juliet, only I was Romeo and she was Paris.

And instead of throwing it all away in the fires of passion for a chance at romance, a chance to make our story end better, you chose the safe route.

You chose Paris.

go to hell and take your ***** with you.

that this violent person is not me, and you have turned me into a beast.

I'm thinking I'd take all the bad back, just to have the good with it. But I know that's not the right line of thinking. But I want to. You've returned to my life for two days, and I'd already prefer waking up stuck to my sheets with the blood leaking from the wounds you made to waking up with just a text from you. ****, ****. You're poison but you know I won't go anywhere.

The people building their lives in my bones are polluting my body. I am the atmosphere, and they are putting holes in me.

You died, and I'm still here.

I wonder if you're judging every breath I take as breaking our promise.

dancing in the dark, a mass of bodies becoming one.

*nobody knows me and i have never felt so close with strangers before.

And I didn't know.

How could I have?

How was I to know that my ocean eyed, long haired raver boy was her fiancee?

How was I to know that when he was kissing me in the dark, neon lights all around us, that she was waiting for him?

Yes, he is marrying her.

And no, she will never know my name.

Like I never happened.

dear S.

I hate you. I really, really hate you. Every time I see you, I want to break all the bones you have and light your paper flesh on fire. I want to shatter your dreams like you shattered my happiness. I want to take away anything you have ever loved and will ever love, because you took away the only person who ever had my heart. You cracked three ribs ripping him out of my chest, and it seems you bruised my lungs as well. I am left with broken-glass memories, puncture wounds from snapped bones, and scars beneath my skin. So *******. ******* for being the springtime girl he always deserved. ******* for being the lamb he always wanted to protect. ******* and your big blue doe eyes and your fluffy blond hair. ******* for being the innocent little ***** he always deserved. ******* for being my complete opposite. For being a daisy while I'm just a thorn. For not having devious, hazel, almond-shaped eyes and long, wild brown hair and pale, fragile skin. ******* for offering him something I never could.

******* for pretending to be a friend when all you wanted was to steal the only person who ever made me feel.

And I especially hate you for making me into an angry, bitter harpy. Because I was never a violent person. Never this vicious. But you've shown me a jealous, furious side of myself that I never knew existed.

Someday, I hope some pretty girl who is nothing like you rips him out of your chest and breaks everything you try to hang on with. I hope she flaunts him in front of your face and leaves you with destruction and ghosts of things you didn't know you could miss so much. Then, you'll be just like me.

Another broken, beautiful thing, dead at his feet.

I'm still thinking of you. Of wide blue eyes and the long brown hair that falls in those eyes. Of beautiful lips and strong, shy hands and a soft voice. Of the way you love to sing and the way you smiled at me. I'm thinking of your collarbones and how I love the way you dress and how I could literally sleep next to you, hand and hand, body to body forever. How I don't typically like boys, you are the fifth ever, but I want you anyways. I've wanted girls, lusted and desired, but never lusted after a guy until I caught myself staring at your lips like they were made of sugar. I want to kiss you. I want to touch you. Please help me.

i have lost the will to move from this empty bed.

all i want to do is sleep, but my mind quietly begs you to come lay next to me.

i know you won't, so i torture myself with thoughts of you with her instead.

you had the nerve to tell me to smile, even though you are the one who took it away to begin with.

i wish i could break every bone in your body,
just to show you what you did to my heart.

every good boy leaves because in the end, i
am not what they wanted at all.

they wanted white-picket-fence springtime girls, who wear dresses and smile like innocence and blush when you hold their hand in public, shy.

not me. not rose-thorn walls and ****** teeth. not a girl who cusses and fights and claws at anything that lashes out at her. not a girl who won't let them fight her battles and stands on her own, lacing her fingers with yours because you are hers and she will fight tooth-and-nail for you, and she wants everyone to see that.

they want someone they can settle down with and have a nice, cute house and a pretty cherry tree and pretty little kids and have homemade breakfasts and listen to the birds sing in the morning.

they do not want a girl who sleeps till noon and drags them off on wild adventures and wants to go everywhere. who hates the shrill chirping of birds and uses black curtains to hide from the sunlight daring to slide through her windows. Who can't cook to save her life and holds on far too tight.

no, i am not what you wanted. but i can't be anyone else.

and they call me spectrum, like the colors flashing through the crowded room and the different spectrum of souls found inside.

I'm completely stricken by you. You've got these sky eyes and this velvety hair and this cute snub nose. And you've got sweet looking lips and you're so, so endearingly shy. God ******.

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.

You're hiding all your sins in me. All your urges and twisted thoughts and deviance. You're trying to unleash it all on me, stain me with the filthiest parts of your mind, and blow off the steam and anger you try to keep so far inside yourself. You're taking all the scary, *****, unnatural parts of yourself and forcing them all on me, so you can keep yourself clean for her. So you can be her guardian angel, her knight in shining armor. Without blackened wings, or being covered in blood and oil. Stay the **** away from me. I don't need this. I don't, I really don't. You're trying to push all your darkness off on me, all the taints of lust and violence and anger and sadism that you don't want her to see. You can't do this forever. So keep adding to your own suffering. Have your shining little princess and your throne of ****. It'll all come down someday.

And when I finally let my broken dreams fall from my too-thin fingers, you were not there to catch them.

And when you finally stopped saying you were sorry, eyes like a stormy sea, you smiled like the sunrise.

And then you forgot me, like I was the clouds making your world gray, finally blowing away.

I think I'm going to be a recluse. Write novels in a shack with cats until I get arrested or evicted for not paying taxes or something. Then get arrested for vagrancy and go to jail and write more about how messed up the world is. If I get out, I'll go back to being a vagrant. I'll let my hair get long and matted and I'll let my nails grow long and black and I'll dig my own grave with them and I'll smell like dust and decay and death. I'll give up. I'll resign from humanity.

I rub my skin raw because of the way your desire scarred its way across my unwilling flesh. You were selfish, you are selfish. You are greed in a human body, and I am paying for it. Triggered by another man the same as you, who put his hands around my neck and seemed confused by the concept of a woman not wanting him. Who quickly decided he didn't care either way, and that I could get him off "willingly" by my own method or be forced in ways I would not survive. There is no such thing as yes when no is taken from you, when you have a choice between two evils and you choose the one you think you can live through. When silence answers questions and "I don't want to do this" is ignored because his **** means more than the choices of the person he's trying to force himself on. That is no man, that is a monster dressed as a high school student pretending consent can be forced. Because you made me decide between you ****** me unprotected or getting you off with something else, and I chose the one I thought I could live with, that wouldn't result in an unwanted life growing inside an unwilling body, a body that wasn't willing at conception and who would probably make the choice to end its budding inside of her before having her rapists child. Because you triggered memories of coercion with your threats, because you made it happen again and afterwards had the ******* nerve to get me some ******* grape juice and hand it to me ******* ******* pouting because I "looked like I hated every minute of that" and you "didn't even get to **** so it wasn't even worth it." Because coercing me into ****** activities under threat of unprotected **** apparently wasn't worth it because you didn't get to **** me, because me telling you no and saying I didn't want to until you got so fed up you wrapped your hands around my neck and squeezed annoyed you. Because you put your **** over my free will, over me as a human being. And I get to suffer because of it. You made me a survivor twice over and you smile at me in the hallways like you're somehow still my friend.

I want to hold your hand as badly as ever. But I'm sad and aching and my fingers won't forget how yours felt between them and my hand won't forget how tightly you held it and my brain won't forget your smile, it's kind of like you burned it on the inside of my eyelids. I can taste your voice in the back of my throat and your gaze is like butterflies on my skin. I wish you'd hug me again. I miss smelling you on my skin all day.

Was because my fingers have become lead, and my tongue is glued to the top of my mouth.

yes, i have other things to hold me together.

like poems that are dripping with you, and a small, shy cat who was once a stray like myself.

along with a ghostly stoner boy, who renames the colors of the rainbow and who speaks nonsense phrases, even when he's sober.

and a candle-flame girl who is covered in scars and who hides her pain in too-big hoodies, who hugs too tight and bleeds too easily and who doesn't know what a mistake falling for me will turn out to be, who draws me pictures and writes me love notes and cries into the night because she can tell that i ache for you still.

yes, you smartmouthed fool, i have other things to hold me together. but none of them are you.

But when you think about it as often as I do, wouldn't it become normal for you, too?

I miss you.
2. You've got beautiful eyes. Such beautiful eyes. Honestly.
3. You have stardust in your eyelashes.
4. I'm not going to hurt you. I don't know if I ever did but if I did I'm sorry.
5. I'm so sorry I didn't just tell you how I felt. I should have done more to make you see it.
6. You called me really often. I really liked that.
7. When we'd talk at night and I'd start to get drowsy, it wasn't because you were boring me. It was because you relaxed me enough to sleep.
8. I think about you all the time.
9. I write about you all the time.
10. God, ****...I miss you. So ******* much.
11. Please come back. ******* please. **please.

i want to write about her bones, his bones. anyone's bones, really. i especially love to write about rib cages and collarbones, because those are either very prominent or they are not. they are either delicate and protruding like a baby birds budding wings, or they are not. the delicate bones in fingers fascinate me just as much, but there are many different types of fingers and bone structures of fingers, so i do have a type. i prefer long, delicate fingers. artist fingers, pianist fingers. they look so fragile and they're always so cold, but they create such wonderful things. and while rib cages hold people and collarbones are for bruises, fingers are for creation and their bone structure is beautiful.

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 do not want to hold your hand anymore.

1. Make sure you are not dating him just because he is a sad boy. Make sure you are not dating him out of pity either. Date him because you like him, sadness and all.

#2. Do not expect yourself to be able to fix or save him. Be prepared to love him as he his. He may not ever become less of a sad boy. Make him smile when you can, keep him from being alone. But don't try to be his rescuer, or his savior. Help him keep it together when you can, and let him break on you when you can't. Do not try to change him.

#3. If he has physical scars, kiss them. Run your fingers across them. Tell him you love him and his scars. Not for them, not despite them. You love his scars because they are a part of him, and you love him as a whole.

#4. Do not feel guilty if you can't stay with him anymore. If it becomes too much, if you just fall out of love. If you just can't see yourself with him. Do not blame yourself, do not hate yourself. Just let him go as kindly and cleanly as possible.

#5. Do not hate him if he leaves you. Remember sometimes things end. Do not try to convince yourself that he needs you, do not hate the next girl he dates. Do not go to her and try to tell her how sad he is, how he will destroy her with his pain. Because we both know that isn't true, not really. And it isn't for you to decide.

#6. A warning. Relationships with sad boys rarely last, even if you think they will. He isn't your patient. You aren't his angel. This isn't a story book where you'll put him back together and he'll love you forever. If, by some miracle, you do manage to change him. If he becomes happy and "sad boy" becomes a thing of the past. Do not be surprised when he leaves you, because chances are, if he's truly changed, he will.

1. Don't get angry when you dream about him smiling in slow motion. Do not awaken and sob, because you love his smile more than anything and it will not do for you to bawl when he was just trying to make you happy.

#2. Forgive him when he slips into your bed at night and holds your hand while you're trying to sleep. Don't resent him for leaving his smell all over your sheets, all over your room. You love the way he smells, and it gets cold in the grave. He just misses your warmth.

#3. Breath him in like smoke and let him rest in your lungs. Let him feel the way they expand and contract, because his never will again and he wants to feel it again.

#4. Everytime you close your eyes and see his, smile. Because he's looking at you, watching you. He had beautiful eyes and they were only for you and death, and now he has death but he only needs you.

#5. Do not commit suicide to follow him to the grave. He loves you and he would like to be with you, but he doesn't really want you to die like that, even if he says he does sometimes. He's just thinking out loud. People aren't good at seeing consequences once they have died.

#6. Do not regret not eating a piece of his flesh. It would have made you hate yourself. People would have called you sick. It's okay to have thought about it, they don't understand your grief, the need you have to own a piece of him. But he taps your special knock on the window nightly using the wind. You do not need to consume him to keep him.

#7. Do not resent him for dying. Even if he killed himself. Even if you loved him and he knew it and he did it anyways. Look at the sky and know he's in your rib cage, feeling your breathing and the listening to the beat of your heart. Do not resent him. He doesn't resent you for living.

1. Don't look at her like she's a victim, like she's weak. Don't look at her like she's incapable of living a normal life again.

#2. Go easy with her. Don't treat her like she's some destroyed thing, but handle physical contact with caution. Watch very carefully for signs that she's feeling anxious, or that her head has turned off and made her numb. Watch for reactions, for a look in her eyes. If she has blanked out, stop. How well do you know your girl? Does she want to be held and have her hair stroked and hand held while you both remind her that she is safe with you, that you would never violate her? Does she need you to sit back and make sure she can see you clearly? What she needs defines physical moments.

#3. Don't force her to talk about it. She will tell you what she is ready to tell you, when she is ready to tell you. It is hard to tell your partner that you've been made into a survivor. Do not ask for details before she is ready, and do not look at her like she has been tainted because hands made of greed and hatred touched her, scarred her. She is still herself.

#4. Listen. Listen well. Do not do anything without a yes. An absolute yes. She must say it and mean it and look like she means it. Do not coerce her. She has been coerced before. And taking no away makes yes meaningless. Coercing is begging, pleading, pestering, threatening, intimidating. Coercing is holding her captive and not letting her go until she gives you what you want. Do not coerce her, because you have then assaulted her.

#5. Being coerced into ****** activity can be as violating as being held down and *****. Because they made her go along with it to avoid greater pain, because they made her feel like she had no other choices. Because they pressured her until she broke, until she stopped resisting and just remained passive and silent as they did what they wished. Please, do not ever make her say no twice.

#6. Do not belittle her pain, do not compare it to another survivors. Do not call one survivors pain worse than the other, because you are hurting and silencing them with your own, ignorant opinion. You do not feel her pain, the pain all survivors feel. You are not making her feel better by reminding her it could have been "worse." You are minimalizing her own battle.

#7. Love her. Love her however she needs to be loved.

#8. Be patient. Healing takes time. Be her support beam, her hand to hold. Be there when she is having flashbacks. Be there when she is screaming and crying and scrubbing herself ****** in the shower. Be there with a soft blanket and open ears and an open heart. Be there to remind her she is not *****, she is not filthy or disgusting. Remind her she isn't less in your eyes.

#9. Sometimes, you will need to explain to her that she is perfect to you. Because she will stare at her body in the mirror and remember it was touched by filthy hands and feel unworthy of you. Remind her she is worthy, she is worth it. Remind her that those hands were not controlled by her, that she was not at fault. That she does not bear the sins of another person.

#10. Do not try to make her report it. Because she will have to face him that way, in front of a jury of people who has been given the job of judging them. She will be torn down by his lawyer, painted to sound like a **** and a liar, and the **** will be painted into something consensual and enjoyed by both parties, instead of just one. If she was coerced they will try to make her lack of no a valid yes, or worse. They will make her sound like she is asking for it. If her ****** succeeds, he will make her feel violated all over again in court. He may not go to prison. He may be found not guilty, because there wasn't enough evidence to prove he did it or because the jury decided a lack of a no was a yes or that she was at fault for not standing her ground under hours of pressure and intimidation and being held a captive against her will. The **** will cease to happen in the eyes of the law and she will be left raw and aching, a girl deemed crazy because a man committed a crime against her body, her mind, her soul. She is afraid to testify for a reason, but if she does, hold her up. Because the world will feel as though it is collapsing around her as she does it.

To the men who have hurt me, both physically and emotionally. To the men who have sexually harassed me. To the men who have tried to coerce and guilt trip me. To the men who tried to take advantage of me when I was 15, the lowest point in my life. When I was weak. Destroyed from depression, from bullying, from the transition of middle school to high school, from anxiety, from blind parents and others ignorance. To those of you who knew I was in a ****** up state of mind, who pretended to support me when I was crying, only to run your hand up my thigh and whisper "I can make you forget about it." To the boys who abused me, insulted me, struck me, brought a suicidal teenage girl to the point of destruction. To the guy who didn't quite **** me, but who came close. Who grabbed all over me while I shoved and smacked and told him to stop. Who tried to get inside me without my permission and who tried to guilt trip me, calling me a tease and telling me to lay down and pretend nothing was happening if it really bothered me so much. Who tried to teach me to retreat inside of myself at human contact so I wouldn't resist. To every guy who approached a mentally destroyed teenage girl who was drowning in herself to try to get ****** favors, to try to get me to trade my body for drugs, to try to bring me down even further so I wouldn't say no. Because I did say no. I always said no and fought and nearly vomited every time a guy started groping, started making lewd commentary in what started out to be small talk, every guy that grabbed at me without my permission and leered and tried to grind on me without any context other than you had a ******* and I looked weak enough to force yourself on. I hope someday someone rips you all apart. I hope someone tortures you, tries to blackmail you, coerce you, makes you feel like garbage when you're at your weakest. Because as much as all of you tried, even this fragile, broken teenager rejected you. Fought her hardest to get away from attempted assaults and made it, clawing and screaming away from you. Cried silently as angry, mocking messages came in but didn't dignify them with responses. Ignored angry phone calls from multiple numbers and continued to live, even when you all tried to break me into a *** slave. **** every last one of you up the *** with a flaming *****. I hope you all go through hell. I was going through hell and you all tried to destroy me, to incinerate my spirit in the name of getting someone to touch your *****. I hope you go through worse. I hope somebody castrates you. If there is an almighty deity, I hope they curse you for eternity. I hope you all know that the girl you tried to destroy for your own sadistic pleasure is stronger than ever before.

You are my ex-boyfriend. You fell out of love with me and into her arms, but when she smashed you against the pavement, I put you back together. Best friends forever. But still I wonder, is this really it for us? We stare into each others eyes and I can't help but feel something is incomplete. We have both gone on to see other people. I wish us both every happiness and all the luck in the world with out partners. But when I'm staring into your eyes, all I feel is that there's something I missed.

i have seen scarred wrists and burns and bruises marring the bodies of beautiful girls, countable ribs and thigh gaps and jutting hip bones.

boys destroying themselves in puffs of smoke and empty pill bottles, dry coughs coming from ruined lungs.

but nothing triggers me like you do.

Talk to me when you know how it feels to stop caring about rather or not you live or *die.

Inevitably returning so the sickness inside of me doesn't spill out into his ears and sneak into his brain. Poison from the wounds festering in my sad soul needs to be released, and I won't have it staining the person who has become heaven in a physical body.

Pardon my silence. I've been gifting my words to one soul, and one soul alone. I'm incapable of the same magic for any other, and won't curse you all with failed attempts.

I'm 17.

I suffer from daily anxiety attacks. Sometimes up to six of them in one day. Thoughts of ending my life, of ending the constant torment, are what I have to think about to calm me down.

I have to convince myself that I'm going to **** myself almost nightly to save my life.

Tell me again how these are the best years of my life?

It doesn't matter what I do.

To the world around me, I am always going to be "his Taylor."

My ex-turned-best-friend. I've been referred to as "his turf." "His Taylor." And just "oh, she's his."

No matter how hard we try to show the world we're just friends.

I'm always "his."