tonight i almost asked you why we haven't spoken in three weeks
but i am so afraid
because i know the answer,
and you don't like me anymore.

sometimes you find a girl who is forever holding up a pearly light. she is forever golden but she looks forever sad.
maybe you are seeing your reflection in the glass and mistaking your face for hers.
there are goddesses of love whose arms have not been attached for a century,
and there are shimmering pieces made entirely of death.
i wonder if being made into art makes you feel less sad about being dead.
i think i would like that to happen to me.
stain glass with my blood and carve rings from my bone, string my hair into robes and paint lilies on my skin.
i want to be immortal, admired.
even if i end up tattered and frayed, covered in stains and held together by only a rope,
tell me i am art.
put me in your gallery on a pedestal and draw a line on the floor so that people cannot stand to close.
(i would push them away anyway. i always do.)
burn me, if you must, because fire is supposed to end things but it has created so many new colors.
put your hope into me. it does not matter that i can be erased because i am here right now, and we are feeling everything in capital letters and i have to be home at three so let's do something
turn me into something that a teenager who is pretending to be more whole than she is can find herself in,
for hours i want her to look at me and try to understand why i make her want to cry.
i always wanted to be that girl, and i feel like i am dressing up in her skin.
it does not fit, but the zipper is stuck.  it's too tight.  i can't breathe.
something is exploding.
i don't know if it's inside me or at the end of this road, and i have no choice but to keep going forward.
we'll see when the sun sets.
i will never see any of these people ever again.  they might stop existing tomorrow, and i wouldn't know.
i think i will miss them, just in case.
all of the things i will never tell you can be found between these walls.
i am sorry that i will never paint your portrait.
i still love you.

i am on a bus and i am sitting next to a girl i haven't sat next to in a very long time.
we used to listen to taylor swift and now we are listening to poetry that makes us cry.
i am so much happier than i have been because i am looking at art and i feel like maybe,
if i try hard enough,
i can become art.
the colors remind me of my old bedroom and they remind me of my old best friend.
she was in the hospital last month, because she overdosed.
i promised her once that we could talk about our end, but we never did.
i wonder if she ever thinks about me.
it is one am and it is raining and i am wishing that he would paint my portrait to keep in his pocket,
to immortalize in a frame that is prettier than i ever hope to be,
on a wall next to painstakingly created flowers that hold more emotion than i will ever feel.
the moon has a special hold on poets, but all it is doing tonight is making me wonder why my hands don't pull angels from stone and beauty from destruction.
i am wondering if i am still alive, if any of these people are still alive, and if the dead feel good about themselves.
i am wondering why i feel so different than i did last year.
maybe it's the dress and the notebook and the quiet steps i take because i don't want to disturb the art,
or staring long enough at a stranger that i can pretend to know his story, and that he wears his father's watch.

i am on the bus and she thinks i am less sad because she is less sad.
but when i look at all the art the first thing i feel is jealous, which is really the same thing as being sad.
i want to spend forever in the glass rooms but i don't deserve to, because i am so selfish.
i think that if i look at monet and picasso and van gough for long enough i will absorb them,
but i also want to walk past them, to the pieces whose plaques contain only a lifespan,
with no detailed description of the reasoning behind the use of numbers hidden in the abstract.
(picasso put them in so he could stay in touch with reality.)
i think that maybe that's why i am doing so much better in math this year.
i just want to stay in touch with reality.
because i have been staring at "evening mood" for half an hour and all i feel is sad,
because after the sunset there is nothing but darkness and that's what the night brings and it's what thoughts of you bring too.
it is called sandstorm but it makes me think only of the sea.
i think i need to get away from here for a while.  maybe i will go to the sea.

i haven't been on a bus in a long time, but here i am.
i spent the day as something i have always wanted to be.
we haven't talked in a month but she still thinks i am beautiful.
why am i crying?

sometimes when your wind is crying out to its lost lover, your sky looks yellow.
sometimes it's pink, and sometimes it's so black i can't see the snow outside the tiny window i look out of every night when i wish on a star.
i guess i'm wondering why.
i'm sure there's a scientific reason, but i've been falling asleep a lot in science class lately.
i think that i like to think you're feeling the same things i feel when i'm around you.
the weird part is, i don't even know exactly what those feelings are.
i mean, i'm obviously not happy. it doesn't take meeting up with you to know that.
i guess i just have a lot going on sometimes.  you can understand that, right? everything important happens at 3am.
it just isn't fair that i don't know what's going on, in me or you.
this is less of a love letter than i expected it to be.
i think it's more of a goodbye.
i don't think i should see you anymore.
here's where the love comes in-
i can't stay away from you. when your sky is yellow i am watching, and when it's pink, and black. i am watching as you fade away to a 4am and a new feeling and a new color, and i am watching when you come back.
you hold me when nobody else will, and you are there for me every night, even if it's only for an hour.
that's more than i get from anyone else.
who cares if i always leave you with a bad taste in my mouth and a tear-stained face, or that you've never said anything to me at all?
just sat, surrounding me with silence.
at least you have never told me you don't love me too.

is everyone stressed out?
or has everyone i care about
stopped
caring
about
me?

if you can see that i am breathing do not ask if i am lonely
i am
always and forever
as long as i live on this giant rock spinning in endless space
i am
i am
i am

the planet looks weird from up here,
wherever i am.