she smears her lips
with mama's red crayons.

(then
she swallows them whole)

lips like sour cherries,
puckered ,
                  swollen .

wiping her eyes on soft
tissue,
blood stains instead.

its times like these i get
so sentimental that i regress a bit
to days that i seriously wished
i was dead.
though, more than anything,
i want to just wish for you.
i went to your instagram
and i saw some of your prom photos.
you are so beautiful.
i wanted to cry and laugh at the same time.
i want to tell you about
my fear of staying in one place and
my fear of moving away,
how i still love the same person i told you about,
the voice in my head telling me i should quit my passions,
and about how
in times like these i grip onto the syllables of your name
and pray that everything will be okay.

i miss you a lot.

I am a vessel for y’all to share.
A vessel of dark clouds and lightning air.
A testing of humankind.
To teach the gods about a human’s mind.

i feel like there is so much love left
when people leave us
and we have no idea what to do with them
so we keep them in boxes,
we store them in drawers
and sometimes,
we wear them on cold nights
when no one is watching.

all around us we make sure
we live in a place
with no trace of what has been
yet every closet is filled with the bones
of a dead love
and every corner is a reminder
of where we got lost

we hide the things they left behind,
we create mausoleums out of our rooms
and call it “moving on”

even my room is haunted
with his hasty departure
his old sweatshirt,
his silk necktie,
and the ocean blue summer dress he gave me
gather dust as a relic of a past
i have exhibited in the walls
of my broken heart

i buy cigarettes
and try to remember the taste of
his nicotine mouth
i study my face in the mirror
and try to remember the look of the girl
he fell in love with
i stay in the nights longer
i skip all the cracks in the pavement
i keep wishing he come back

one day i woke up
in a cold bathroom floor
filled with my tears and *****
that’s when I knew
where all the leftover love goes
it seeds hatred
then grows into despair
and finally bears the fruit of grief

there is no reasoning with a broken heart
only grief

and grief is the greatest leftover love there is
it spills all over
and seals your chest tight
until you feel no fight
and no other

so i waited and wasted away
until my ribs cracked
under the pressure of all the grief flowing out

and one day
i realized
i left one of his jackets
in my old apartment abroad
i couldn’t bring it any longer
my luggage is filled with so many new things
and his was a heavy garment
i just couldn’t carry anymore.