i know there have been moments where you pulled yourself down the stairs just to collapse onto the kitchen floor
i know there have been moments where you repeated,
"i will most certainly not make it out of this alive"
and you wake up the next morning and make it an inch further
my dear dramatic girl
there is no fault in loving with all of your heart
you will grow up and know what each word he presses to your chest means
you will have an Oxfords Dictionary for every time he tells you he was just out late
but if you keep putting pieces of you into everyone who runs their finger over your lips
or tells you "forever" as if it hasn't already lost its meaning
you will lose yourself
do not let the world desensitize you to its contents
theres nothing more tragic than watching a romantic become a cynic
you are full of a quality you cannot let every boy that stops loving you when it's convenient take from you
you are truthful and forgiving
you are trusting
and whats left of your heart is safety-pinned onto your sleeve
your heart belongs to you alone and i know its been a while since you heard this, but
you are full without people miles away telling you that they think you'd look pretty without your clothes on
dust it off,
lie on the kitchen floor and remember what it felt like when you said
"i will most certainly not make it out of this alive"
for when you wake up one morning and forget how it sounds
to be despondent in love
do not let the world take you and spread you over people who push you to fill pieces of them they have lost in others
you are prevailing every time you whisper
"i love you, too"

seven months ago:

i. i will fall asleep and let it infect me like a virus and if i die before i wake up my obituary will explain to you how i felt tonight so i never have to

ii. it’s cosmic, i’m telling you. you’d miss me if i wasn’t here.

iii. it’s all quiet. i am here but no one can see me. they can feel me. it’s easy and unpleasant. i just exist, past their realms and in their blind spots.

iv. i want to go back in time and pick you instead

six months ago:

i. i have a lot of pent up resentment towards people i used to love that are successfully existing without me in their lives while i am struggling without them

ii. cant stand you. cant stand being away from you. thank you for calling me beautiful, even if you didnt mean it. i don't feel that anymore, but i did. even for a moment, it was there. we were there.

iii. of all the things you did to me, the worst was making me believe they were in my best interest.

iv. if i could sit in a puddle of nostalgia and let every memory with you hit me like a rain shower id probably contract pneumonia or something.

five months ago:

i. it’s comforting for me to know that you can miss someone and love them without wanting them in your life.

ii. ive spent too much time treating myself as if my love is not sacred, as if it can’t stop time and heal people and create magic. everyone i love is lucky to have me, whether they know it or not.

iii. i’ve always had vivid dreams but last night made me feel something very weird and unexpected.

iv. it’s exhausting falling in love with and getting your heart broken by every soul you meet but i am strong

four months ago:

i. i surround myself with nice and beautiful people and in turn feel disgusting and destructive and ******.

ii. i know people can see me but i feel entirely translucent and invisible

iii. i can’t wait to be 18 so i can check myself into a psych ward

iv. i have stood where you stand and felt what you feel and it’s tortuous and inhumane but you exist outside of the boundaries it sets for you

three months ago:

i. i feel like my life is balanced between the moment where you realize you are falling and you are going to hit the ground and the second after you feel it beneath you

ii. i am not a savior, i am not an angel. my words will not heal you. don’t put the pressure of your will to live on my shoulders, i am tired and i have a lot to balance.

iii. today i am a raincloud and not even just a raincloud i am a cloud that is full and dark and waiting and it won’t rain it will pour it will storm there will be sirens and lightning bolts and thunder and people will cower in safety and i will stay here and be destructive

iv. i woke up safe yesterday, today none of it is real and i hurt when people touch me

two months ago:

i. i think i am in love and it’s inconvenient it’s pestering, i am trying i am trying i am trying.

ii. i want to feel love but i feel so unattainable like i am so out of touch with my genuine emotions that i wouldn’t even know how to feel it (if i even could?)

iii. you have no ties to the people you have been. every day you grow- every day you leave your mistakes behind you and shed all of your previous versions. keep going.

iv. nothing has changed. dont mistake my compliance for forgiveness.


one month ago:

i. i wish the things i care about in my life were concrete instead of the distorted abstract i deal with everyday like a chore

ii. i think about what being dead would feel like a lot and every time i am done i feel like i have to apologize to my mother.

iii. you are not an antidote, i do not need you to survive, you are not sunlight, i do not need you to grow

iv. i am afraid i will never get better.

v. i have always had a hard time with holding grudges but today i climbed onto the other side of the railroad bridge and sat above the water, in line with the trees, and i felt so high and real i whispered into my own palms “i forgive you.”

share your favorite things with the temporary people in your life
staple your favorite songs to the foreheads of people you've known for two weeks
dance around in artificial lightning and touch them for as long as you can
take pictures with disposable cameras, pin them to cork-boards and write down their dates
scrawl their names in sharpie ink on your wall, ignore when your mother gets mad at you for it
watch your favorite movies with them
kiss them during your favorite part
write down the taste
write down what you hear
fill notebooks with their sentences
take their hand and lead them to your favorite places
count the blades of grass under you
record the rocks
the tree leaves
the sand
the hardwood floor
read them your favorite books
tell them your theories
match them to main characters and laugh when they try to imitate their dialect
read them your poetry
whisper your favorite words in their ear
pass them notes with your favorite lyrics
give them tastes of your favorite ice cream flavor
promise yourself not to forget their disgusted face
at your favorite weird food
smear the color yellow into their palms
because it has always been your favorite
trace the lines that crack the paint
give them your favorite sweatshirt
let them make it their home
smell them on you the next time you wear it
let them enter your world and include them in your list of favorites
and
then

when they break your heart,
you will be forced to conform to the sadness you feel
you will have to turn off the radio when that song comes on and you see their smile in the melody
you will have to pay for a new camera
burn pictures and blame the smoke for your teary eyes
stock up on white-out and erase those dates
when they pass the next year you will stay inside all day and your hands will shake
you will have to paint a new color on your wall just to quit staring at their name while you try to fall asleep
you will paint three, four, five coats atop their handwriting and
at night you will still be able to see it
you will have to go to the movies and categorize new favorite scenes
when that movie plays on sunday morning you will taste them and it will taste like cold coffee and
eventually you will be strong enough to change the channel
you will tear pages out,
buy new notebooks
drive by your favorite places and don't stop
you will have to read new pages
find new characters
its okay if you catch yourself running over the spine of the book you woke them up to read at four AM
buy a dictionary and find new favorite words
make up new favorite words and drop them into casual conversation
eat new icecream,
try more weird foods at restaurants you can't pronounce
look at colors more closely and determine a new favorite
buy new clothes
ones that smell like mass production and the local mall
you will leave the world you gave to them
and you will create a new world
with new favorites
with new songs, words, memories, places, books, movies, foods
with new pieces of you
and you will let someone new enter that world
they will tear chips of paint off of your wall
and ask you what your favorite color is
its okay to hesitate
say blue.

it took 4 full moons
2 bottles of something stronger than you ever were
and a salty waterfall from my eyes that **** near drowned me
to finally realize
you were not
and never planned to be
someone who loved me

in·ti·ma·cy
i. the catch they refuse to put down in books forgotten in church pews is as follows; heaven only exists in your memories. you create heaven in moments that have already happened, without the pearly gates or judgement. it is why you always reminded me that i am not aware of what i'm missing until i've immortalized it into something i will never be able to experience again.
ii. you do not, cannot, exist in the emptiness of one person. the brutal truth is that no one is worth it. everyone lies on their back and sees the same world in different shades, everyone is making mistakes that keep them up at night, they have no room to contain your multitudes.
iii. you are only subjected to understanding how selfish this notion is when you become too much for yourself, when you wish more than anything to stuff your runoff emotions and times you've stayed up singing to the sunrise into the cracks of someone who'd rather get drunk late and leave the bed cold in the morning than tell you that you are not as important as you like to think you are
iv. i am not as important as i like to think i am

ab·sence
i. i can't bring myself to say sorry for leaving, i am chasing sunsets and even though i hope you are sitting in one dimension or another, i refuse to be tethered to these actions. i love the noise of your boots on the asphalt but i will keep you in a moment that has now already happened and make you heaven after i stop hearing that sound like my favorite song when i wake up at three AM and forget that i am alone
ii. i have always had intense eyes and you used to tell me that the way my hair falls in front of my face was your favorite thing in the whole universe but you stopped brushing it away to see all of me and i can't help but be worried that maybe i stuffed all of my anger into the parts of you that were still grasping for air and i smothered your flames like a child holding onto a bird so tight it dies in her palms
iii. i remember waking you up in the middle of the night and saying, "do you think that love is just timing how long it takes you to get the other person to hate you?" i don't remember your exact reply but you started sleeping in a different bed after that

in·sol·u·ble
i. one time my mom told me that the definition of insanity was doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result so even though there is no medicine that will numb my senses and make it hard to wake up early but keep you foggy in my memory, we should stop trying to mean it when we mumble out "i love you" all the times we are both bored and too lazy to find someone new
ii. like most people who choose writing over therapy, i am a liar. i have always been a self-centered liar that only cares about myself  but for the sake of inspiration on my fingertips i can pretend we were in love at one point or another.
iii. i talk too fast and you told me that you hated that about me before i threw something in your direction aiming to miss and hitting your shoulder (i'm sorry) that was our worst fight and you stopped looking me in the eyes until i packed up all of my things and tiptoed around your temper and out of the house
iv. i didnt exactly keep count but i think it took around seven months and twelve days for me to make you hate me and you've never said it but the whole world feels like it has shut me out and gone cold and if recounting all of this is what heaven is supposed to be like, i would rather fall backwards into hell because at least it is warm there

rep·e·ti·tion
i. i've exhausted all of my apologies because i have been conditioned to feel bad about not fulfilling peoples expectations and you made the word sorry sound sharp, i am far away from my ambitions and if you were still here youd call me lazy but youd kiss me after
ii. when it is very late, i start to believe that maybe i have the capacity of multitudes inside of me and thats why all i do is feel sorry for myself, because i am the only one in the world capable of carrying the hearts of the people that don't love me anymore
iii. when morning comes, i am always able to convince myself that i am not as important as i like to think that i am.

my hands are shaky
my eyes are the kind of dry that only happens when you wake up after crying
my breath catches in my throat like there is a roadblock in my lungs
i regret every word i write and stick into permanence
but i don't know how else to explain the whirlwind feeling in my stomach
i want to go back and mute our conversations
push my future self to stop before staining my favorite songs with memories that hurt my chest
i want to go back and tell myself,
"darling girl,
take a break
sleep early
watch the sunrise a different day"
but you were magnetic, baby
and i could help myself but that was no fun
ive always struggled with emotional permanence
i grew up being told i was trouble
the absence of feeling is the absence of memory
in a repeated cycle that sets flame to the things we created together
i watch it burn with tools to smother the fire
but my arms are paralyzed
i want to go back
and tell myself that
sitting on the kitchen floor
scratching poetry into the floorboards
was not a valuable consumption of my time
feeling cold in june was a waste of hot days and
we could have been so good
if i had let us
if you had let us
here is my promise;
july will be sun kissed and sweet
my mistakes will fall off of me like water
weightless and improving
i will find new music
i will create more
there is nothing wrong with putting your heart into the wrong thing
there is nothing wrong with being naive,
i can't keep falling apart when june refuses to bend to my expectations
july will be without you
sun kissed and sweet
i will not fall asleep trying not to cry
no morning headaches and sad poetry
it will be new
i will make it new

a list of the things my soul forgot:

i am still brave
i am free
i am beautiful
i have hope
i am redeemed
i am alive
and my story is still being written
i am worth more than the words i write
and i have worth even when i cannot write
and i am also worth more than the sun
and the moon
and the stars
i can dream
i am not perfect and it is okay to struggle
because even though i don’t deserve grace
it is mine
i am lovely
and i am loved
and even if i forget the truth
that doesn’t change that
it is still true.

If I had a better memory
I would let those conversations lull me to sleep
And play that vocabulary in my mind like
A handwritten song
And there are a lot of things that make up a human mind
Components that reach all the way down into your ribcage
Through trembling hands and empty stomaches
But I intend to feel them all
One time,
A long time ago,
Someone used the word "frightening"
To describe the uncertainty
And burden
That comes with having complex emotions
That word is used as a scapegoat
To expunge yourself of the shadow of vulnerability
It takes hours to reach the tips of my fingers
With everything I feel
And maybe I write so much
Because I never remember exactly what people say
Or maybe it's because
I would like to remember it through rose tinted glasses
Either way
It stretches across miles
And I would use that scapegoat word
To describe what it feels like to be vulnerable
When you realize all of these pretend walls you've put in place
Can be destroyed with the right knock
And I think poetry
Isn't about that frightening feeling
It is about
Feeling it
Being frightened
Having emotion
And continuing
Where others would not