painting my nails seems so unproductive
when i could be studying for math or german or history
but i'm thinking about you.

i don't know your favorite color, or i would have painted them that shade.
though, unless your favorite color is
pink
purple
silver
crusty blue or
clear
then i guess i couldn't anyway because those are the only colors i have.

I will always wait for you.
I will be sitting on the off-white wooden chair in my off-yellow painted room staring at my off-color smartphone screen while I wait for your reply to a message I sent you fifteen minutes ago.


I will always wait for you.
I will still be standing by the table we sit at with all our friends at lunch 
twenty seconds after the bell has rung while you zip up your backpack
then walk with me towards class.


I will always wait for you.
I will be bending over the road, craning my neck to look for the garish yellow bus 
and your silhouette trudging up the hill but if I don’t see you in the next two minutes
slowly meandering down to look for you will be my next job.


I will always wait for you.
I will run over when I see your face all ******, body barely moving
lying on the road, then all of a sudden taken away I’ll completely forget today’s science test and 
run as hard as I can towards the hospital.


I will always wait for you.
I will remember that it has been ten years today and the feel tall grass tickling my ankles as I walk,
bowing their heads in sorrow. I’ll bring you a sunflower, the first one grown at the new house, then
sit beside your weather-worn stone 
and wait.

there’s most likely a certain feeling within the world, sweet…and bitter.
soft footfalls gently approaching you, almost silent against the chatter of the city
making your blood rush faster, your heart beat louder than you thought it ever could
the adrenaline goes up and twists your surroundings, making them so very colorful
all of a sudden a fantasia too good to be true materializes right before your eyes
so perfect, so beautiful, almost a bite of awestrucking sticky-sweet bliss, of heaven—

yet then

it all falls down, a gleaming castle of visions crumbling into worn brick and cracked stone
crashing, shattering into millions of thin, crystalline shards of broken glass, clear as day yet cold as night
grappling on, plunging into your flesh and twisting your heart, knifelike pain searing into your skin
with ashen, burnt, blackened vines, branching out and ripping you into shreds of a being.
it’s so ****, so bittersweet, so soothing yet so stoic, so overly melodramatic
you wonder why you believed this flawed, traitorous fantasy in the first place.
it lets ripples of pain strain through you in cascades, tormenting you
with waves of sobriety you wish you didn’t feel.
enveloping with perfection, and crashing with hurt
this perfectly imperfect unfolding drama
feels a lot like reality.

how long can one both
wish to love everyone
and yet want to see the world burn at the same time?

to watch it be lit ablaze, consuming, ravaging everything
watching you
watching you scream

it pains me too, sure,
but i've been waiting for this day for so long that what else is there to do but bite my own tongue to keep from laughing. at you.

for all the things you've done to wrong me, obsessing furiously over your collective ideals you share with the rest of them. The Rest Of Them. i refuse to even acknowledge their names at the end of the world. i refuse to believe that somewhere, somehow, in some other world, we could've agreed.

yet
i want to tend to your burns
and make everything okay again
and solve all our problems with love, that's the way it should be

but for now i'll look out at the vast field of flames
too gloriously bright, and red, and orange, and blue for their own good
then i'll look at you
and the world will end.