December first,
I don't miss you
Where'd you go?
I was with friends,
I wouldn't know
I stopped checking
December first,
Did we ever love one another?
I can't recall the last three years
because the last three weeks
With friends
Have conquered months of worthlessness
You bestowed upon me
Did we **** for three years?
I don't remember,
He ***** me better,
hell, I **** me better
December first,
You're ugly now,
I laugh about it,
how your hair is so stupid
And how I kissed you forever but you lacked the allure,
and how you look the same in every ******* picture,
And I'm so mature,
Drunken laughing at you online,
With friends, at least
December first,
You mean nothing to me,
It's insane you ever did, December first
you don't haunt me anymore,
I'm not festive
but I'm not sad either, I'm not grieving
December first, my first holiday alone,
I'm 20 and my family wonders where you are but I don't give a ****, I'm celebrating with friends.
I don't miss you because you cut me open last year,
I don't miss you because you always ******* talked over church bells,
And this year I can hear.
December first, welcome back.

Isn't it something?
To place the churn
In your gut
Onto light blue lines
And bathroom walls?
Isn't it something?
To flip that nervous
***** onto a canvas
For passerbys to notice?
Isn't it something?
The way heartbreak
Claws open your ribs
One by one as if
She were tasting each
Slowly letting you bleed
And how the world could see
But far less often understand?
Unless you put it on a paper
With a pen and with your hand
Isn't it something?
The way words can mend the sores
She left the day before,
Or make them seem urgent at least
So there is less of you for the world to feast
Upon the vulnerability that you have become,
But it is words you leave
Eyes that see
That do the caring
The world may sit and read
For it is human to be hungry

I want to leave an imprint on the world
But still have wrinkles in my skin from
Laying in bed for months at a time
Exhaustion set in last year and never left
She's a thief and I'm a forgiving friend
I have a heart full of hot air balloons
And sparklers, flocks of birds fly toward the sea, rocks where my brain used to be
Weighing me down
I moved to the beach to get away
And now my lungs are filled with water

I was 16
I asked you for understanding
You said you'd never pity me
So I stopped reaching up to
Where you placed yourself
Above me on a throne framed
In ivory. Tusks like fences,
You said you didn't feel sorry for me.
You never cared who or what had to die
To make yourself happy.
I got blood from my wrists
On your stark white gown.
You kicked me out for being messy.

And I will romanticize the way we fell out of love until the day I die so that I may mourn in peace. I don’t want to know you as someone who violated my boundaries and called it care. I don’t want to know you as someone who stepped into my chest and destroyed everything in sight in the blink of an eye. Without even trying, really. I don’t want to know you as someone who robbed me of a year of life and gave me two years of flashbacks and rose memories and harrowing remembrance of what was- what was so powerful and encompassing and beautiful that when we split I knew nothing but emptiness. I don’t want to admit or accept that I allowed myself to be treated like that. So I will remember the way you hurt me but leave that part out when I talk about you. I will write about you in gold to give myself more time to forget what was underneath.

Yesterday
We kissed in sunlit woods
I felt my soul latch onto yours, again
Wind and your lips on my skin
Paralyzed with happiness again

We ****** on the living room floor
After hours spent convincing ourselves
We couldn’t, we wouldn’t
I don’t regret a thing

You were born from sin
Lustful kisses in fields of chamomile
Sweetened tea on the fourth of July
You were made from wrongs that felt right

You were born from sin
The devil was once God's favorite angel
But I wondered what it would have been
Like if it went backwards
And he was terrible first?
Like we were

Vengeful tactics made for unfair fights
You were made from wrongs that felt right
Lustful kisses in fields where homes
used to be before
the brave men bombed them
We celebrated death
like a birthday for a child-
wildflowers grew
where libraries once were
you held my hand
When I couldn't understand
Why freedom looked like a fire escape
Instead of running in a meadow barefoot
you painted pictures I hung on my walls
Of Poe and forests where trees die but do not grow
I always stayed in tune
To see what came next
Every move was a guess


You were born from sin
And I loved you for that very reason

you are
the second cup of tea
after I spilled the first by mistake
you are
my third time, finally right
you are
stepping on the breaks at just the right time

before a head on collision
you are
the flash I saw before hitting the dash
you are
in between my seatbelt and my veins
you are
calming, cloudy rainy days
you are
something else I've never felt
but never want to stop
you are
new
you are you

Despite how it looks, I forget about you a lot,
I think I do, at least, I've gotten better this year.
This semester took me for a spin, I threw up everything,
but I threw out nothing, just tucked away our belongings,
they gather dust but they wouldn't burn so I kept them,
I've gotten better this year, I think I have at least
It's funny how in March I thought I was dying and
since then I've been using the same sheets because
they smell like you.


You are at the bottom of my cup,
you are residue I didn't finish up,
you are left behind,
bitter taste in my mouth,
you are what I complain about,
but I still make time every day,
to drink until I'm sick,
just to make sure you're still there,
and to feel just as pathethic

you made it so hard to care for you. you made it so easy to love you and easier to lose all progress, collapse in on myself every time we touched lips, when yours moved your words hollowed me out like a rusty locket I never took off even when it hurt me to wear, I was never fully aware of the fact that you did not love me back because it hurt to know that once again, I was the one who loved more. I got sick of the silence, it ate away at me like a wasp's nest invades a tree unexpectedly, I loved silence until I loved you and then it drove me crazy. You made me lay my past out across sidewalks of the town we grew up in. I told you everything. Please don't go. You convinced yourself that loving me was going to be easy and when I fainted and fell off my pedestal you darted before anyone could tell where you were going and no one has heard from you since. Please don't go. Why am I so hard to love? Why did you promise me that you would never hate me and then leave? Why am I so hard to love? Please don't go. I wear your whiskey stained sweaters as an armor and I fight with the mirror and the keys that you left in the door. Where did you go? Please come home. I won't ask you to make the bed anymore and I won't tell you the reasons I felt I was unlovable, I know it drove you crazy when I talked about myself like that. Why did you go?

Falling in half love
With everyone I meet,
Scared to go in past my feet.
Afraid to open up
Hesitant to divulge feelings
That hang as painful cliches
But hurt just the same
as if they were open wounds
the salty sting, the frantic "ooh"
I love that blood is blue before it hits the air
My skin was fair before you hit me, I hadn't seen that shade of blue,
but it came in different waves, different shapes too.
I still wonder what healing is like for you.

Or if you even had to.

You never had to heal,
never broke,
never choked on your own tears
begging for one more chance to prove yourself to me,
you would never bleed

I remember the first time I looked into your eyes
I felt everything inside you
suddenly felt everything inside me too.
Parts of me I wasn't aware existed started thawing out
I felt my bones start to shake.
I fell for you three years ago to this day.
And since then, I haven't been able to look back.


I remember the 56th time I looked into your eyes
I swore to God you were the one that made life worth living, constantly giving me something to smile about as the world seemed to crash around me in an unescapable pattern and I always fell into you.
I became comfortable with leaning on your shoulders though they too were weary but you never told me to stand up on my own
and I became afraid of being alone after the 154th time
I looked into your eyes and saw my future.

I remember the 876th time I looked into your eyes.
That day still haunts the perimeters of my mind
I felt my chest sink in that day
as you said the words "I'm not in love with you anymore"
after that every time I looked into your eyes I felt absolutely nothing.
I felt crashing, I felt sadness for a bit,
but nothing clicked like it did for years
and I felt the lump in my throat crawl into my brain
and I remember telling you I felt the same.
I wasn't in love with you anymore.
Prior to that, that thought never came up
I couldn't handle the pain of knowing I would have to move on
so I stopped looking into your eyes,
to spare myself the aching,
every time I felt a rush of blood pump to my heart
almost fast enough to make it stop,
and I wondered if it would ever start again.

The very last time I looked into your eyes
I felt a part of me die and I don't mean
it metaphorically,
I mean I felt my insides wither away so fast
they made me feel like I was losing air,
taking every bit of strength to put one foot
in front of the other just to bring myself out of there.
I said goodbye without looking at you for fear I might fall back
just like you let me for years.
I said goodbye without looking back and now I forget what
our last goodbye looked like,
but can't seem to forget how I felt at our first hello,
and I wonder if this is what hell is like.
Knowing that if you could, you'd do things right a second time,
but having that ability stripped away from you by a Greyhound bus
and a parking pass,
and always, constantly, looking back.

I zone out sometimes and in the back of my mind
I can still hear your whispers that sent chills up my spine
and though they're three years old I hear them boldly,
quiet hushes play louder than music I turn up all the way
so that no one can hear me screaming about how it's been a year
and I have not healed yet
sometimes I wonder if I ever will or
if this is what I am ****** to forever,
I asked god once if he was real simply because
I could not feel anything for days,
I searched frantically in cigarette boxes
for cement feelings gone and lost,
I found ***** change and pocket lint, but
not love, nor pain and I thought
only he could take that away
but it went and came
in viscious waves
that drag me in and
tides that drown me in memories
I forgot how to swim for survival when I spent years
with my head barely at the surface just to catch my breath
I tried to leave behind last spring in hallways of buildings
marked "condemned" now
and I asked him what it meant, God,
to not believe in him but to want to
because someone had to be at blame for this pit in my chest
I tried to map it out by pinpointing stars that mimicked sharp jolts
on my heart but I only connected old words you said
into sentences that still eat away at my brain in my head
and I wonder what the **** I did to deserve this
unbearable rememberance
for someone who forgot me well before they even left

you said alright
when I said I was leaving
and I should have known there
to pack my bags and stop treating it
like some well-written romance novel,
because your care was fleeting the first time
you saw who I really was and I forgot what it was
to trust someone with absolutely everything
because when you left I had absolutely nothing