there will be days when it’s only eight o’ clock but you’ve had enough and you can’t eat, you can’t talk, you can’t concentrate enough to do homework or read or sing or watch a movie or even move. you’ll be sitting on your bedroom floor staring at the wall making lists in your head of how fat and ugly and stupid and worthless and pathetic you are, how you’ll never amount to anything. your mind will play back and forth between all the bad memories, the sad times, when you felt the lowest you could possibly feel. you’ll hate yourself so much you want to die. you’ll be there for hours.
there will be nights like this, and on one of them your dad will walk in and see you sad and bring his guitar and sit on your bed and serenade you for hours until you fall asleep on the ground. you will be bored and angry and want him to leave, want to cry, but you’ll wipe away the tears when you realise he loves you. he ******* loves you and even though he’s never told you that before, he does, you can see it in his actions. because if sitting with someone when they are sad isn’t love, then what is?
there will be a night with a storm so fierce you think to yourself that finally the earth is as loud and angry as you are. walk outside in that storm. let the rain wash over you and let your hair and clothes get soaking wet and look up at that sky, watch as the lightning scatters across the darkness, turning everything white and light as day. you’ll be so overwhelmed because there is more. so much more than all the badness. everything, the world, life, is so much bigger than you. there is a whole world, towns, cities, states and countries waiting for you. places you’ve never dreamed of, incomprehensible experiences and happiness. listen to the thunder screaming, and you’ll realise it is not angry, just as you are not angry. it is just noise. all that hate and bitterness, the darkness inside of you, it is not rage, it is just so loud. scream with the storm, i dare you. just like nature, you can’t hold it forever. a release of all that negative energy is one of the most beautiful things in the world. like that storm, you can be fierce and incredible too.
there will be days where you are so **** tired and have had enough of all the back-and-forth ******* from people that say they’re your friends. someone will hit you, someone will push you around, someone will call you a name, someone will joke with you but it won’t seem like a joke. everything will be so bad, and then something will happen, you’ll look at the colours of the sky, feel the wind on your skin, a stranger will smile at you, you’ll ace a test you didn’t study for, the person you like will send you a lovely message you, your favourite song will be on the radio, someone will make a daisy chain for you and say you look ‘pretty’ but you’ll feel beautiful. there are days like this. you have to wait for them. they will come. i promise you.
the thing you have to understand is this is only a moment in your life. a day, a week, a month, a year that *****. there is more to this. there is ******* more to your existence then the sadness and pain. you’ll open the window even if it’s two freaking degrees outside and the cold air will hit you in the face and you’ll look out into the dark night and feel something. something good for once. something that might be hope.
i know, because i’ve been there. i’ve been there, and i survived.

it's hard to find myself in the hours of the a.m. if i look in your arms i won't be there, my place already filled by a prettier girl with your british accent and my straight teeth. shadows in the doorway scare me back to sleep where i dream of our old text messages and how you wanted to kiss me and you were 'just saying' it but never actually got the chance to.

i want to write something sweet about this but nothing about you and us and that bad temptation is sweet and this isn't even a poem don't go thinking this is meant to sound pretty it ******* isn't.

i had a dream, and you were kissing me. and to be quite honest, if you kissed me like that every time i fell asleep i would never want to wake up.

and i’ll tell you a thing you probably do not know about sad girls with grey souls and broken hearts: once you tell them you love them at three a.m. while they are smoking cigarette after cigarette, your words get stuck in their lungs like the smoke they inhale and they invade their blood like a poison, and just like that, you become part of them, part of their infinite sadness forever or until the last drop of the very same blood you invaded with your sweet sweet words flows out of their lifeless body.

the day in the park when you told me you loved me i noticed things that i never noticed before. your hair looked darker than usual and i ran my fingers through it almost absent-mindedly, a quick action that happened before i could process it. my fingertips came back wet.
saturday morning and clearly straight from the shower you smelt of deodorant, that lovely boy smell, of something fresh and clean but with the hint of sweat already from the walk over here which made me wonder why you ever even bothered with showers, when i liked the ***** sweatiness of your skin more than anything.
spring was sprung, flowers everywhere, the council gardeners pruning and weeding every afternoon when i wandered this way after school, but blissfully absent this morning, you and i lone lovers on a lark.
i noticed the dandelions were swaying, how picturesque, us in that strange place between friends and more, and the grass wet and dewy beneath our feet, rose bushes lining the path. but we strayed from that path, we did. you stole my hand and we started running, you raucous and wild, a lion inside a boy, and me, following and cautious but laughing.
there was this lovely weeping willow, the branches dangling gorgeous leaves, sweeping the ground, a curtain of green which you parted and brushed aside like the way you sometimes brush my hair from my face. under that weeping willow things happened.
“i can’t deny it,” you said. you said, as you touched my hair and my face and no other part of me, so intimate and courageous with my heart beating faster than any other saturday morning. “i can’t deny the fact that i love you,” and you were pushing me back as you stepped forward, little nudges in the hip and the shoulder and then maybe just hard enough to leave a bruise you pushed me against the trunk of the tree. as steady as i was weak.
i checked later, at home, safe in my bedroom with the curtains closed, in the almost dark i pulled off my shirt and checked, and yes you did, you did leave a bruise, but it was not as painful nor as potent as when you finally finally finally kissed me, your lips air as i was drowning, against that weeping willow with your hands finally finally finally on my waist and stomach and *******, and the fire you started in my heart as stupid as it sounds that has not and will not burn out, the pain of having to leave you at my doorstep and waiting until the next time you could relinquish my need, and now after we’re broken up the pain of not knowing if i’ll ever feel those lips again.
the bruises on my skin do not even begin to rival the internal bruising of that first kiss.

your birthday out in the meadow up on the cliff - so we’ll be closer to the stars, you said - the picnic rug spread out and covered with two glasses from your parents’ cabinet, a cheap bottle of champagne neither of us ended up liking too much, a pack of cigarettes buddy gave you as a present, a takeaway box of krispy kremes ordered in from the city, and then you and me.

before the first hour was even up you had somehow found a way to close that final gap between us, you manoeuvred yourself on top of me with an agility that could only be matched when you’re playing basketball. and then you were kissing me, everywhere, anywhere.
“logan,” i said, with those quick snatches of breath when your lips weren’t on mine and instead exploring other interesting places - the hollow of my throat, my cheekbones, the creases of the corners of my eyes.
“mmm,” you murmured, maybe with a question mark on the end but i wasn’t sure.
“you’re meant to be watching the stars,” i gasped, as you found a spot on my neck.
“i am watching the stars.”
i could see them above your head, crazy beautiful, you and the stars together, a sight matchless.
“no, you’re not.”
and by then you had moved back to my lips, and i tasted your words as you spoke into my mouth, fizzy like champagne and, of course, the inevitable sweetness of cinnamon. “yes, i am, mary” - your fingers in my hair, do you remember any ******* part of this? - “in the dark like this i can see the stars reflected in your eyes.”