They say, "There are plenty of fish in the sea," but you see, I assure you, I am no longer in the sea, I am on the dock barely breathing.

When you left me all alone, I flopped out of the water in a full blown panic, with every text you did not open I launched myself into the air trying to remember how to breath. With every day we did not speak I grew weaker, oxygen deprived, you were my air supply. Flopping, flopping, gasping, and desperately grabbing onto any part of you I had left, I no longer felt alive, have I already tasted the bitterness of death? All I think about all day on the gritty dock is our best memories and the secrets you unlocked for me, we had something so pure and good; and then reality comes flooding back in the form of a panic attack, why am I not good enough, how the hell do you not miss me, where is your pain and your misery? Flop, flop, until finally it stops. I have been lulled into a disgusting dream, one where we do not speak, and this is supposed to be reality. I can no longer breathe. I am a fish out of water, with no more wounds left to bleed. I am dried out. Entirely. No more tears, air, or life can be found inside me. Please, Dear God someone put me back in the sea. Let us reabsorb the love that has inevitably left me to plead. But no, friend, carry on, there are plenty of fish in the sea. There just is no longer me.

Cover up the moon and the stars
A hurtful veil over my widening sky
A vengeful malicious intent
A never reason

It should be raining

Listen to the murmur in the crowd
The way the thunder grows louder
And the skies grow dimmer
As we await the storm

Cover up the sun
The clouds grow gray in anger
And the atmosphere becomes thick
And the land becomes dark

It should be raining

A ****** shroud
All that dream are disavowed
The thunder claps grow loud
The clouds are angry

Because they never could be the sun

It should be raining........

I watched my father scrunch his eyebrows together
whenever my mother said something he didn't like,
his impatience seeping through his dark skin,
apparent in the way he turned his body away
as if he wanted to run from all this
but he's trapped now, trapped forever.
I listened as my mother told me she did not want to stay
and my brother and I are the only things anchoring her unto this godforsaken house
of peeling white paint and crumbling walls and endless shouts and burning words.
I watched them hold each other when things got tough
and I knew it wasn't because of love—
it was because they were the nearest things to each other.
At a very young age I knew love was something that dissolves,
a flower you water everyday,
a story you never stop writing,
And some people, they don't know,
that they have stopped watering,
and they're running out of ink, only on page 3.
Little girl me knew.
Big girl me continues to watch it unfold,
dead petals in their hair
and dark ink between their fingers—
dry

I lie awake with thoughts of you occupying my mind

And I know that dialing those ten familiar numbers would get you here in a matter of minutes because it’s only 2:04am and you rarely ever sleep before 3.

But I will forbid myself to pick up the phone

Because although I would love to feel safe and secure I know it will just make it harder in the end.

How can I be at home yet feeling so incredibly homesick?


I try again to remember blissful moments

Moments before things got complicated and stressful

Like when you traveled thousands of miles to meet my little brother.

Or when we danced at a country bar in a small town to music we didn’t even know and enjoyed the company of people twice our age.

Or memorizing each other’s orders at every café, breakfast bar and ice-cream shop we went to.


I try to remember occasions before the shadows of your past made constant appearance in your character,

And those very shadows caused the very arguments that broke the one thing I was sure couldn’t be broken.


Now it’s 2:12am and nothing’s changed,

Just another night spent obsessing over what used to be.


R.M.