Cigarettes don’t make you cool or interesting.
They only **** what little life you were given.
But your lungs **** too,
so I’ll pass you a well-decorated lighter,
and we can have a smoke until our vision blurs

—or you begin to cough,
even though I warned you: we were never made for this.

Cigarettes don’t make you cool or interesting,
but they can make you sad.
 They can make you remember
what your father smelled like when you were nine.
 Sometimes, they taste like my bedroom carpet floor.
 Sometimes, I think of the puke that rested on it
after I drank too much ***** one night.

I hope you think I’m mysterious. 
I hope my lips taste like a powerful drug.
 I hope my personality is just as addictive as I am.
 And I hope I **** someone
just as slowly as the cigarettes do.

I felt it, somewhere in me,
 a shivering child longing to be covered
by the wool blanket you carry around your heart.

Embrace me as the person I am now,
because I cannot go back and be gentler .
I cannot go back and seek comfort
in anything else besides words,
 and I cannot go back to the longing for the fire.

But please, ignite me again,
because I feel myself spark every time 
our bodies cross paths,
 and I find beauty in the footprints
you leave me to fill.

Come, my soft love,
 because there is a shivering child
waiting to be called by her name,
 and I think it is your lips that can heal her.

I will love you and make it my own. i will love you and make it my own.
i will not reflect the yearning I had at 13 for my parents to hear my trembling whisper. i will not raise my voice to say that this is love.
because my hands created it— bare. And they tore it to shreds, dissected it just to make sure my mother wasn't beneath this feeling of comfort.
just in case, this time, i could develop some sort of empathy for a woman who cannot hear an artist's voice.
and it isn't my responsibility to love you. but i will—oh, i will. and i will be harsh.
it will be overbearing because i want someone to suffocate me with love.
and it will be painful because i still feel the fingers wrapped around my throat when i said those words for the first time.
but i will love you anyway, and it will be gut-wrenching. it will be torture that you will not understand. but you will try to god, you will try to.
because you love me with something i could never seem to imitate. and i will make some half-*** excuse like:
it is not in my blood.
but i will love you because i will make this myself. and i am strong. i can do this.