"why?"*

my breath hitched at
the question and i
thought my heart
would jump straight
from my ribcage, and
maybe i knew it would,
because you do
not want to know
why or when or how i
stopped loving
you

you just want me
to hold your
hand again, you
want the nights of
sugar-tainted lips
and whispers of i love you,
i love you when the
world around you shattered
and pieces of the broken
sky felt like the glass
shards in your lungs

you never really
wanted me
you just wanted
a hand to hold

you've been sending me
text messages along
with slivers of the heart
you once claimed to own
and i cannot give
you anything of
mine because

there's nothing
left

i ran away from home
when i was fifteen for two
weeks, packing blue knee-highs
and makeup i would never
use, and fell into
the mantra of not knowing
where i was going but
the apathy wrestling inside
of me said it never mattered
so long as i was
free

i hold my breath in
an unsure pen.
my soul is battered,
beaten, and scarred and
i cannot decide if this
is a result of tragedy
or my disease; it's
more a painting of the
two, a swirling of the colors
which have turned me
black and blue and i
am not who i once
was for my breath has
escaped my lungs and
collapsed into the ink

of a pen whose melody
has not yet been
sung.

to the girl who wrote me asking
me for advice at four o'clock in the
morning when her brain was high
off of an ashy heart: stop
******* around with toxins, and
no, i don't mean the drugs
turning your life into
unwholesome chaos. i mean
your ******* friends who told
you that
your problems are nothing
your demons are nothing
you are nothing. stop
it. you're better than
them.

to the friend who asked
for advice on how to turn
herself into a walking
skeleton: get over
yourself. anorexia and
bulimia will not fill
some hole in your tragic
past, they will ravage everything
good in you until you
are nothing but the flesh
you have despised. do
not ask me how to "become
an anorexic" because all you
are asking me is how
to die.

to the boy who i have
dedicated so many poems
to: god, you are so oblivious
to everything. to the soulless
"i love you"s spoken out of
pity, to the feigned grins, to
the fact that you are ripping
me apart. i was always told
to not love someone
who was sad because they would
drag me to the pit of the ocean
with them, and i should
have listened. there isn't
enough of me left
to share.

we met two years earlier
on a night when my makeup
was smudged against
the tears. i jumped in front of
your car with aching
sobs burning in the rear
of my throat, knocked
backwards into traffic
with blood seeping out
of the crack in my wrist. i

screamed and cried as
my lungs caved into
this pointless oxygen
addiction but you called
an ambulance anyway, holding
my hand despite the ******
fingertips all the way through. you

visit the hospital each day
till i'm released, whisper "it's
going to be all right, love, stay
golden for me please" into my
hair when you believe me
to be asleep. i fell for you

as hard as the stars would
fall for the moon and our
love story as beautiful
as a flower blooms in the
winter despite the cold.

you were diagnosed
later that year and i watched
the sickness eat at your
heart. i clutched your pallid
hand as you shake, and you'd
never stop trembling for months
on end. you heaved stardust
all over the floor and drenched
your clothes in perspiration
and i could taste the champagne
tainted on your lips

but at night i
whisper "it's going to be all
right love, stay golden for me
please" in your ear, knowing you
aren't sleep.

i held you so close to my
heartbeat but dear god,
when yours stopped
i died with you.