Her hair may smell like sweet summer rain and her smile always settles weirdly in your stomach, but she is poison. She is a toxic cocktail garnished with cigarette smoke that reminds you of the night you came too close to kissing her. She is unattainable, she is right beside you and yet your fingertips cannot ever quiver hard enough to close the gap between you and her.

You crave her so desperately. You would be humbled to fall apart for her. At her feet, you’d make your bed, and there you would stay all alone through the night, dreaming of how she swore she’d come back for you. There you will stay while the dawn filters in through the drapes, while the sharp rays of early morning light are all that is there for you to blame for your tears. She will not come back because boys will be boys, with their tousled hair and heavy brows and all of their hard edges, and she will love them for that. No matter how hard she bleeds before he gives way for her, she will melt into him.

She wears your sorrows like a dress gown. You tell her past the knot in your throat that she looks gorgeous. Your palms itch; it takes everything in you to not smooth down the ripples in the fabric around her hips. Her night skin’s being shed by calloused hands within her first hour out at the bar. And in a few hours’ time, she’s battling her hangover with her head in your lap while you comb through the mess of her hair and tell her that she still deserves better. She says she knows that already.

What she doesn’t know is that you do, too.

You say I'm running from myself
I guess you're right
Maybe I am
All I know is that the reason
I hear my heartbeat so clearly
Is because my chest is hollow

I am made up of layers
Too many layers
As if my skin
Was preparing to survive
Out in dead winter at the South Pole

I'm annoying
  I'm distrustful

    I'm stubborn
       And I'm doubtful

           And secretive

Maybe downright manipulative

   But most of all I'm exhausted

Exhausted of the nothingness
   That I float around in
Exhausted of everything
  That comes and goes
    Ensuring chaos
Exhausted of everything and nothing
  And all things in between
         Exhausted of
                     **living

Don't go far off, not even for a day
Don't go far off, not even for a day,
Because I don't know how to say it - a day is long
And I will be waiting for you, as in
An empty station when the trains are
Parked off somewhere else, asleep.

Don't leave me, even for an hour, because then
The little drops of anguish will all run together,
The smoke that roams looking for a home will drift
Into me, choking my lost heart.

Oh, may your silhouette never dissolve
On the beach, may your eyelids never flutter
Into the empty distance. Don't LEAVE me for
A second, my dearest, because in that moment you'll
Have gone so far I'll wander mazily
Over all the earth, asking, will you
Come back? Will you leave me here, dying?