Go ahead
hold me a little longer
than usual.
You say to me,
without using any
words at all,
"it should have been me,
its still me."
Like i don't already see
those sky blue eyes
every time i close my own.
Because we're still holding
on to god knows what.
Because it is you
and it will always be you.

And my problem is that i don't know
where to start or how to end.
I live in ellipses,
commas, and dramatic pauses
and I pretend that I'm doing it on purpose.
When you saw through the blur in my head,
you told me all about my heart and
how out of sync it was with my mind.
And I was sitting right next to you when
I hid a letter in a box,
tucked it right between your running shoes,
but it's December,
and you don't run when there's snow on the ground.

I told you I was a baseball field,
empty at two in the morning,
dust settling, but I don't think you
knew what I meant.
So I told you that my bathroom sink
has swallowed more demons than gallons,
and that I lay on my kitchen floor
more often than I sit on my couch,
and that I am hemorrhaging indigo
and dry-heaving maroon late at night
when you are asleep,
and maybe you only pretended
to understand what I was talking about.

They're all sick of me
ending statements with "never mind,"
downplaying my madness to keep them calm.
I told my dad I loved him for the first time
in two years, and followed up by
stealing my grandfather's anxiety medication
to sedate the butterflies in my stomach.
I like to think I know what it feels like to be dead.
Like sleep, only colder. Darker.
Less and less until I only exist as
stains on people's brains.
I always liked the number zero.

I am the journal I threw out two nights ago
without checking the pages for things to keep.
I am three days awake, bloodshot eyes,
six cups of black coffee first thing in the morning,
and black-out curtains at three in the afternoon.
I am a suicide car and a pedestrian who never looks both ways.
I'm my own worst enemy.
Someday, I'll light a few candles to set the mood and
take a bath with my toaster.
I am an appendix; nobody needs me.
I'm full of **** and I need removing.

And I guess you should know that I am not sorry.
You're going to find that letter tucked between your shoes
come spring, written by someone who isn't red stains
on bathroom linolium. She was
rainbow streaks that the sun plastered to your livingroom walls
at eight in the morning.
At least, that's what you told me.
I don't think I knew what you meant.

i’d rather write about the freckles on your back than think about all of the ways in which you quite possibly don’t love me.

i feel sick at the very thought of you picking me apart the way you did; fingers grabbing and stroking in a catastrophic symphony of skin and vulnerability.

let’s read between each other’s lines; share my sentences and punctuate my paragraphs with your mouth; because i can breathe easier on the mornings where i wake up wrapped around you.

because my moods change like the ******* seasons and the spinning in my head doesn’t want to stop.
                                         you tell me that i should probably get a therapist because no one that thinks about all the ways in which they could **** themselves has an ounce of mental stability.
                                          i tell you that i have been to four.
                                          names faded into a blur with hazy snippets of conversation remaining.
20mg.
                    30mg.
you tell me that trust issues and scars aren’t endearing and i tell you that neither is counting up the potential number of pills needed to dissolve your body into the living room carpet.

let me sink inside your skin and make a home in your flesh;
i tell you about the nights where i lay awake in the bath turning the water red.
                       tragic, isn’t it.

you tell me that this isn’t how my head should work and i tell you that i already know. everything you could possibly tell me i already know.
i know that 400 calories a day isn’t normal, and my hands shouldn’t shake all the time.
                                             i know.
please let me stitch myself into you, even just for a while; until i no longer feel dizzy and my world stops spinning.
i don’t need you to tell me that it will be okay, because honestly i don’t think it will be and, that in itself, is okay.
                                                                ­                 let me stitch myself into you, because my own skin can’t take it anymore.

let me call you back when my voice stops wobbling and my vision straightens out, but honestly, i’m terrified that it never will. what if this is it. headaches and tears and shaking and blood.
                                             and the debilitating, gut-wrenching feeling of pure and euphoric emptiness.

                                              tragic, isn’t it.

A painful tear leaks from my eye,
It screams a terrible sound,
A sound so loud but unheard from all around,
It flows down my cheek and seeps into the ground,
“Help him”, it cries “he wants to die”

When I was younger, I used to think I was going to be a Star.
Under a spotlight where everyone knew my name...
I was five.

Now, I want shadows and to be as far away as possible.
Hidden and far from consequence,
And even further from myself.
Where my name is not a name,
But just another word without any true meaning.

When I was younger, I used to think I was going to be a Star.
Now, I want to disappear.

I should have jumped overboard when I had the chance.

i learned the hard way that caffeine is not a substitute for sleep
and that i am addicted to the way you feel on my eardrums
and that i can't make myself disappear completely without dying.
you are a cold day in august with overcast skies
you are midnight and six in the morning and mid-afternoon.
you are the cracks in the ceiling and the stars in the sky
the smell before rain and thunder and lightning
electric and erratic and terrifying.
you are a blank slate and a new beginning
and i am screaming heart attacks and dry heaving suicide notes
at four in the morning.
i walk holes in my shoes daily like it’ll fix my insides
and knit every broken thing back together
while you saturate my mind with your intensity.
when we met, my veins were leaking loneliness
hemorrhaging bad ideas and harboring secrets.
hiding.
you were my safest place.
and rumor had it that drinking bleach would **** the thoughts in my head.
your words were amnesia.
my head forgot how to make me feel empty
when i wrote your name at the top of the next blank page in my journal.
i didn’t give a **** about gravity
until i fell into your orbit.

Everyone around me wants to die and
I'm beginning to think that I am
The Catalyst
And I am a surrealist.
Their souls catch fire and fall apart
They can't even put up a fight.
Blood spills, pills ****
Bitter tastes on the mouths of all my friends
call it love at first sight,
finding meaning at the end.
They look the big, bad wolf
right in the eye
and they don't even scream when he
takes the first bite.
Their hearts still in the morning light.

Bad days were written into my code.
Cold wind blows and cut through my coat
and slices my throat
like a surgeon with deadly precision.
I had a decision to make.
I froze.
You've been told
To treat me like an emergency room
When I did what I said I woudn't do
Say it out loud or decompose
and it was urgency and maroon
sliding down my chest and from your nose
as we drove down the avenue
and you took sharp turns
down familiar roads.
I listened as you spoke.
A composer with no composure,
but i think that was just the coke.
an "i love you" long overdue,
that last bit of closure,
and the promise i broke.
Your words wrapped tight around my throat,
I let it stop my pulse.
I suppose i am toxic.
Talk sick, cut quick with a razor
words stick, proceed calmly out the door
it can't be fixed.
i wrote it down for you
all those years ago.