Fire in my veins, blood in my mouth
Her mind was shattered, while mine travelled south
Did he cut himself on your pieces? Or did you learn to put yourself back together?
I hope you grew out of finding beauty in sadness, that you understood the possibility of happiness without depression.
I hope you learned never to fall in love with a broken mirror.

It ached. I remembered you, and it ached.
I walked where our feet treaded, my sneakers in sync with the prints we had left in my memory.
I held her hand, and thought about how warm yours felt that first night our lips touched.
The smell of strawberries coming from her hair suffused the chill night air, and I couldn’t help but compare how similar it was to the flowery aroma of yours.
Almost angrily I pulled her chin up, and stared deep into brown eyes that looked so much like yours;

I kissed her,

And it didn’t ache anymore.

I vaguely remember us on the edge of a canal
Fists clenched, holding the night sky
Standing, screaming that we were alive
Back then it wouldn't have been a lie

And on barstools as well, faint guitar riffs
Echoing through smoky pub air
Heads lain flat on damp tables
Wish we'd known then the difference between having purpose and simply breathing

Also our beds, with the lights dimmed
Asking questions neither could answer
Just two ignorant kids waxing philosophy
Just two ignorant kids already forgetting how to live

You have to understand. I know it was my fault, but you need to accept the fact that you chose me. The cynic. You chose the one who would break up with you, and you chose wrong. You believed in huge romantic gestures, the kind you so often see in your Hollywood productions. You believed that love was real, as if it was something you could hold in your hand. And if it was, then I am sorry, but it was crushed in my palm and the smoke breathed in to coat my heart with yet another shell.

She felt like fire,
leaving scorch marks across
the inside of my chest

It burned everything I was
and I was left like residue
from a catalyst used wrong

I felt like ice
running from her flames
melting under her smoldering skin
I felt fluid and chill
but I was burning up too fast and


I feel like air.
Quiet.

I’ve seen myself in the mirror.
it’s one thing to acknowledge your existence,
and another to question your place in the universe.

I sleep with the television turned on.
While I scream, it drones.
I don’t think I’ve watched a minute of it in the last three years though, I’m glued to my phone.
We’re glued to our phones.

I don’t yell much anymore.
Lack of living has beat the life out of me.
I’d worry about what any of this means, but being chemically inbalanced means I’m prospectively challenged.
So I don’t worry about it.

Maybe tomorrow will be different.

"I'm not afraid to die," I said
If I was sure money wouldn't be wasted on a funeral
I'd **** myself anyway

Inconsequential, any of us
Why does it even matter, when all we are is dust?
"You inject meaning, and that's how you live how you do"
I reject that completely, what I've done is just not done.

I have written enough to fill libraries about you.
I have painted enough to fill a museum or two.
I tried capturing worlds with words and universes with brushstrokes and everything in-between.
Did you know there are over a million words in the English language? And only 10 million shades can the human eye see.
I didn’t. It took your presence to realize there were so few words to describe your eyes,
And your absence made me notice every shade of gray caught in the damp morning light.
Flowers will grow from the dirt beneath my ribs and the world will die a million times over before I forget to write about you.
I hope you don’t stay forever, but I pray my words do.

Stubborn as all hell, I am
When you say you just want to be friends
But what happens when I kiss someone else
And want you on the receiving end?

As I pull off her dress,
Wishing it was us making a mess
Feel fire rolling off her tongue, in full heat
But my heart still plays your beat

She shudders and moans the way you used to,
But still
Still she’s not you

I wonder if you know how it's like to be irrevocably aching. I wonder if you understand when I stumble out a club at 4 on a Saturday, my hands filled with her and my head filled with you. I wonder if you can tell that I am spineless even when I am inebriated, that sobriety only brings back a lump in the throat that came when you left like a sick, sick, sick replacement. I wonder all these things, and sometimes I don't have to wonder, because I know you don't, not a little bit, not at all.

regret
[ri-gret]
/rɪˈɡrɛt/
noun. the lump in your throat that arrived when she left

i hate seeing my reflection - it is a
stark reminder that i am here.
the call of the void is always fleeting - how easy would it be to step in front of a bus?
i struggle with coming to terms with this - even suicide is not an option, even dead i wouldn’t want the responsibility of my own death on me.

its maddening.
trying to force the words, any words! out.
god ive never met anyone more deserving.
even still, anything i write? i doubt.

2 am and I can't sleep
With you racing through my mind
How could I?
Leaving tracks and bitterness on my insides
The scent of flowers and putrid feelings linger on
Permeating the air around my soul
You left your imprints, you ******
They burned through and left a hole
I can't shake you out
I breathed you in too deeply
Poisoned my very being
Now I feel so ******* lonely

you asked once why everything
i write sounds like regret - and i
remember lying through my teeth, wanting so ******* hard to sound like as if i’ve never given a **** in my life and wasn’t about to start.

i mean, it worked with everyone else, didn’t it?

i was fuming. how dare you? deconstruct
me like that, and for that i mustered all of my boyish pride - and pretended I never knew you.

and that is why everything i
write sounds like regret.

tell me about the sadness you have squirrelled away. the one that threatens to show itself in every smile your eyes don’t quite follow. the one you nurture secretly, feeding it with short bursts of self-pity that no one’s ever privy to. your little guilty pleasure - because you cannot feel anything else, so this will have to do.

some nights
i am there, flying over words, my brain voiding out the blank worlds it skipped in its impatient race to catch another glimpse of what i saw that night, you knee deep in the water with your eyes lost beyond the horizon when you said this should be enough but it never would be

other nights i am here, crawling over words, trying to get to there.

I felt like a thief, undeserving of the air around me
Every breath stolen from the lungs of someone less unworthy
Even then I couldn't stop breaking hearts
Despoiling souls, taking them apart
It filled me with completion
Causing another's destruction
Reducing them to shattered nerves,
Trembling hands and ****** curves
It made me feel significant, that I existed
Just only with the toll of self-hate

I ***** stanzas -
I spew literary clutter
My poetry is aimless
The words all muddled

I write unsharpened
The point pressed pointless
A fire smoldering with no tinder
The universe questions its existence

I remember when we sat on a park bench at night, and your head lay nestled in the hollow of my shoulder.
My arm circled around your waist, reaching to meet its twin’s wrist.
I looked at you, and you blushed, and told me that staring was rude.
I spelled ‘M-I-N-E’ in the space between your collarbones and your brow with kisses, and breathed words I never dared to speak.
You were flowers in May, the sea spray in July, and the cold wind of November.
I was obsessed, and I knew I would never be good enough.
Two days later, we broke up.
Every kiss since then has left me lonelier.