There once was a boy
Who thought he was in love.
Though she treated him like a toy
He thought her an angel sent from above.

He called her his very very first love,
Though he was still young.
He didn’t care she was abusive
She didn’t care she made him choose and,
He didn’t care she cheated
....
But he did care when she wanted to leave him.

There once was a boy
Who finally got over a girl
She’d been very coy,
But she was no longer his world.
Until she came back suddenly.
....
He didn’t know how to feel or who to be.

There once was a boy
Who fell for a new girl
She filled him with joy
And he loved watching her spin and twirl.
Albeit uncomfortable at times
She was still always on his mind.
Until she started to disappear
She was here then there
....
And then no where.

There once was a boy
Who fell, once again,
For the girl who could disappear.
Only this time he held up a mirror.
So he could be there for himself,
When she left like everyone else.
But as he grew on himself,
He started thinking of her like everyone else.
And he knew he had to end what they had.
Because a relationship like that would just be bad
When she knew she began to cry,
....
But all he could say was goodbye.

There once was a boy
Who tried to avoid
Any more notions of love
Until he was sure that was what he would want.
So he stayed far away,
From the girls who’d say “hey”.
And he stayed far away,
From the girls who wanted to stay.
He just wrote what he wrote
Meaning every word, every note.
Until one day he read a confession
....
What now? Well that’s a pretty good question.

I say failure if I trip,
But when the realization makes me stop,
That when I make a real big slip,
I understand what it is to really flop,
I tried out blunt,
I know I am the runt,
Still I thought I could,
And I wish I would,
Have gotten her favorite flower,
Ask her best friend to help me talk to her,
All I could do,
Was just be happy when my heart became stew,
And it was cooked to be burnt,
What I thought may be a flirt,
Was really just sadness,
Hiding in the madness,
But hey it's okay,
It's just life in it's fray,
I'm just gonna say,
That it will happen...one day.

It’s been a while, hasn’t it? Since I last talked to you? Because it feels like lately all you’ve been doing is yell at me and I stay quiet.
I keep holding back my tears, biting my tongue... I don’t want to look weak, but I don’t want to lash out at you either, so I stay quiet.
Every word you spit in my face, every insult you throw at it… it doesn’t break my bones, but it hurts me in ways I could never have imagined, yet I stay quiet.
Though, lately, they seem to bounce back a lot more than they used to, or maybe my sense of pain has just been dulled, so I stay quiet.

To tell you the truth, you’re not good for me.
You like to beat me up when I’m defenseless.
You tell me my problems don’t matter when I’m hurt.
You call me an attention ***** for reaching out to others.
You confuse me with your mixed signals and overthinking.
You make me feel alone and unloved when I need others the most.

You’ve made me lose motivation to become a better person.

Because maybe I really am that bad. I try to look ahead of me, towards the future, but you keep beckoning me to look back.
At all the mistakes that I’ve made.
And I know, there’s a lot of them, each one worse than the last, but you act as if that’s all I do, as if no one will ever love me because of it.
And the thought of that hurts…
So much.

You’ve left a hole in my heart where my inspiration and motivation used to be, because you keep bashing my work, telling me it will never live up to my expectations. I can’t even begin to count how many of my writings’ deaths you have on your name.

Even right now, when I’m going through a lot already, you just can’t resist to make me feel even worse, can you? Whispering in my ear that I don’t try, even though I do; that I will fail when I need to believe that I will succeed.

But I’m done taking this abuse.
And if you think that means I’ll retaliate, you’re sorely mistaken, because I’m not going to fight fire with fire.
If you think that means I’m finally going to leave you, you couldn’t be more wrong, because I need you more than anything.
No, instead I will love you, because you’re all I have and I am all you have. I hope that one day, we can set our differences aside and work together to be better. You haven’t always been like this and I know that deep inside you’re still the same person I’ve once come to know, the person I’ve once come to love.

So remember, despite everything, I will always love you.

Love,
Alexander

When you find yourself drowning in self-hate, you have to remind yourself that you weren’t born feeling this way. That at some point in your journey, some person or experience sent you the message that there was something wrong with who you are, and you internalized those messages and took them on as your truth. But that hate isn’t yours to carry, and those judgments aren’t about you. And in the same way that you learned to think badly of yourself, you can learn to think new, self-loving and accepting thoughts. You can learn to challenge those beliefs, take away their power, and reclaim your own. It won’t be easy, and it won’t happen over night. But it is possible. And it starts when you decide that there has to be more to life than this pain you feel. It starts when you decide that you deserve to discover it

Tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us.
These, our bodies, possessed by light.
Tell me we'll never get used to it
- Richard Siken


there are two facts upon which you ground your love:
     1. you are damaged
     2. they are going to leave

you do not come screeching out of your mother’s body believing this about yourself
     you learn how
     over time
     over minutes and months
     over years

you meet people and take them into yourself
     wrap them in your chest so deeply
     you know they will never escape.
     they may exit your life
     walk away,
     go where you can’t find them;
     but not the presence of them
     the core of them
     the feeling of them inside of you
     beating and glowing and sighing
     like a heart
     not that. that will stay. you’ll make it stay

you’ll teach yourself to grip onto those final remnants
     the way a dying person grips onto breath

you will hold and hold and hold
     not letting go, not knowing how to

you’ll grow a well of absence inside yourself
     and nurture it into a great and incredible yearning:
     this hall of memories within you
     these faces you cannot forget

you will call it grief. you will call it
     *mine

the girl who shows you the truth is
     ballet and brilliance
     you watch her sideways on the bus
     where she sits with her mother,
     face swathed in light,
     profile outlined in radiance
     like the ring of a solar eclipse
     and you have only been around the sun
     nine times
     but god,
     the quiet, uncomplicated
     beauty of her,
     the straightforwardness of
     her warmth—

she is the first person to whom
     you are not biologically linked who sees
     something more in you
     she notices your fire and tends to it
     until it becomes a towering
     blaze

but the last night you see her
     you are sure you are going to die
     caught in the seats of theater
     in front of a stage on which
     this girl dances
     like she has nothing left to give
     but love
     and an utter lack of
     fear

the last night you see her
     she embraces you
     and her hair is curled
     and her lashes are lined
     and her lips are rosy
     and you could scream out with what you
     feel
     but cannot explain

the last night you see her
     the elevator doors close
     between the two of you,
     splicing your longing,
     sending you off onto your own
     barren continent

the last night you see her
     you learn that you love
     and people leave
     and that the people you love leave
     and that this is a truth you almost
     cannot bear


[how to turn my grief into something
     powerful
how not to equate my longing with something
     flawed, something ugly
how to
     rise again
how to
     survive]

these are the things you ask yourself now
     when you are naked and alone in your loss

these are the questions you stay alive to answer
     because yes, you are damaged
     and people leave
     but that is not everything there is to
     this filthy-heavenly existence
     you cannot seem to
     escape

you carry your sorrow like an old handbag
     but you are growing tired of its weight
     preparing to incinerate it and spread the ashes
     the way you spread your devotion:
     bravely, and now,
     without remorse

you are learning that you are damaged
     and wonderful, scarred
     and sacred
     bruised
     and divine
    
they are going to leave
     but you will go on in spite of it
     you will go on because this is
     all you have

you and your heart
     and your overwhelming forward momentum

your love