I didn’t text you.
I just stared at the message box
until the words pooled like ***** rainwater.
Left it open all night.
That’s not the same thing as wanting you.

I didn’t reach out.
Just opened your last text
like a window in winter
and stood in the draft,
hoping the cold might say something
you wouldn’t.

I didn’t dream of you.
Just lay awake with my hands crossed on my chest
like I was practicing
being the kind of dead you’d miss.

Tonight, I’m romanticizing survival:
eating cold tortellini with a fork I found in my car,
wearing a dress that smells like gin
and someone else’s cologne.

The moon’s out
like it wants to get punched.
The stars are just freckles on a drunk god’s face.
They’re blinking like they’ve seen this before.
The night air slips in where I didn’t shut the door.

I’m not waiting.
But if you called right now,
I’d answer from
the cold part of my bed
and pretend it was a coincidence.

And if you asked what I’ve been up to,
I’d lie with my whole face.
Say, “You?”
like I didn’t write this
with the window still open.

I carved liar into a birch tree with my house key,
the bark peeling back like it agreed with me,
and kissed the wound to make it better.
(It tasted like sap and second chances.)

Don’t worry,
I didn’t curse you.
Just mildly inconvenienced your future.
Just made sure the next time you made a wish,
it’d take the long way home.

I was going to bring your sweatshirt with the teethed-on drawstrings
until I remembered
you never apologized
for that thing in November.
(I'm still deciding which thing.)

The neighbor came out, squinting into the half-lit yard.
Asked if I was okay.
I said,
"I’m practicing stillness, Babe,"
like it was a normal thing to say,
like the word Babe didn’t snap in the cold air like an old wire.

She backed away —
probably could feel the vibration of me
almost texting you something poetic
and illegal.

My phone’s on 2%.
Which means the night has stakes.
I love when there’s stakes.
Feels romantic.
Feels cinematic.
Feels like if I walked into traffic,
even the streetlights would lean closer to watch.

It feels like
I could throw a rock at your window,
and it would break
into a heart shape,
because the universe loves a bit.
Because somewhere, some cheap god
loves a pretty mess.

I thought about leaving you a voicemail.
Just heavy breathing and maybe a line from that song
we used to swear wasn’t about us.
You know the one —
the one where nobody says sorry,
they just drown better than the last time.

Instead,
I sat down in the driveway.
Let the cold crawl up my back like a consequence.
Watched my breath weave itself into small white lies.
Practicing, I guess.
For the next time you ask if I'm fine.

If salvation ever came,
it came teeth-first.
I bit my own tongue last night,
tasted copper and salt like a curse I knew by name.
The blood pooled under my teeth,
hot and mean,
and I swallowed it like a promise I couldn’t keep.

I still dream of him standing in my doorway,
hands full of stones and silence,
eyes bright with the kind of cruelty that doesn't bother aiming,
and I wake up gnashing my teeth,
chewing through the rope of my own patience.

I’ve grown rabid in respite
all claws and bitten-down nails,
a beast pacing the borders of my own skin,
still biting down promises like bones.

Some nights I think if he came back,
I’d tear him apart
just to see if he bleeds the same color as me.
Then I'd leave him open,
let the stars learn his name,
and no one sang him back.

The morning cracked wrong again.
Light spilling like something nobody cleaned up.

It was the kind of sky
you could mistake for mercy
if you weren’t paying attention.

The sky did that thing—
couldn’t decide between rain or nothing—
so you walk around all day
half-braced for the wrong kind of touch.

You told me once
you only believed in second chances
if you didn’t have to ask for them.

I wonder if you still say **** like that—
out loud,
like it's not a kind of begging too.

The trees are pretending it’s spring already.
It’s not.
They just want it to be.

I keep forgetting what month it is
and calling it muscle memory.

I’m fine.
I’m fine.
It’s just the weather bending wrong again.
It’s just the air folding at the corners.
It’s just a version of me
still practicing hello
in case you forgot
how to say my name.

Maybe I bent wrong too.
Maybe the sky just learned it from me.

I left an earring on your nightstand
like a dare,
like a dog whistle only I could hear,
like a lie I could almost live with,
like a warning you didn’t read.

You wrote me like you were killing time.
I let you.
I was tired—
tired of being the intermission
between things you actually wanted,
tired of holding out my hands
just to catch the sound of you leaving.

It was raining the next day.
Of course it was raining.
The whole city smelled like last chances
wrung out in the gutter,
like a bouquet dropped
when someone realized it wouldn’t change anything,

You said,
"Take care of yourself."
And I did—
by breaking every mirror
that still showed me your mouth,
by smashing every reflection
that looked like hope.

There's a version of me
still waiting at that train station—
wearing the wrong jacket,
gripping the wrong book,
mistaking longing for directions,
carrying promises like ballast.
I'll know it's you
by the way my spine recognizes the disaster
before my eyes do.

I hope she never learns.
I hope she keeps looking up every time the wind shifts.
I hope she believes in arrivals.
Even when no one steps off.

There’s something about late September
that makes me want to text people
I only miss when I’m too tired to lie.

There’s a moth in my mouth again.
I try to sing and it *****.

Some nights I rehearse conversations
with people I haven’t forgiven.
Some of them are alive.
Some of them are me.

I keep a list of people
I swore I’d stop dreaming about.
I keep dreaming anyway.

I talk to no one
like they’ll answer differently this time.
I wake up with a wingbeat
pressed into the backs of my teeth.

I think I’m leaking
something no one taught me how to name.
It leaves stains on my straws
It fogs the mirror before I do.
It answers to my voice
but only when I’m not using it.

There’s something about late September
that makes everything feel returned,
but not forgiven.
I don’t text them.
I let the silence say maybe I meant to.

I told the doctor
my heart felt like a flip phone
set to vibrate
in the back pocket of my jeans—
buzzing between spine
and tenth-grade desk,
shaking my bones
like a train no one saw coming—
except me.

I could feel my pulse
gathering its coat, like it had somewhere to be.
He said I was within diagnostic range.
He said I was presenting as stable.

I said I felt like a girl
screaming
inside a library.

They said:
What a beautiful metaphor.
I said:
It’s not a metaphor.
It’s a girl.
She’s in there.
She’s still screaming.

And they nodded,
said I seemed self-aware—
like that settles that.

They wrote “no cause for concern”
in my file.
The room was quiet.
The library was loud.

My heart is still vibrating.
I feel it—
right there, between spine and desk.

No one picks up.

We said we’d never stop believing
in fairies,
in kindness,
in return phone calls.

We swore we’d never
become like them.
The adults
with milky eyes
and calendars
and knives
they only use for mail.

You said we’d grow up
but stay soft.
Like peaches.
Like lullabies.

You pulled your own tooth out
in second grade
just to see if the blood felt like something.
It didn’t.
But you didn’t say that out loud.

I held your hand
and told you it meant
you were brave.

You said the tooth fairy would bring you
everything you circled
in The American Girl Catalog.
You got two dollars
and a cavity.
Welcome to Earth.

I still have some of my baby teeth
rattling around in a film canister,
in the same box as my First Communion Dress
and my Princess Diana Beanie Baby.

I thought I was just saving pieces.
I never knew which parts of girlhood
were meant to be disposable.

As if saving them
meant I hadn’t lost
the rest.

no one tells you
that even after the ending,
you still flinch when someone says
his name
or wears his deodorant
or exists
in the same shape.

i told my friends i’m over it.
and they said
we know you’re not
and i said
but i’m trying.
and they said
no, you’re writing
which is not the same thing.

he said
i’m not ready for something real.
and i said
okay
like it wasn’t
the most offensive thing
anyone has ever said to me.

i’m not mad anymore.
just
liminal.

just
inventorying
the damage
like a girl who survived
the softest
apocalypse.

i keep hoping
someone will touch my face
and say
there you are.
like i’ve been missing.

like
i’m not still
missing
myself.

I stopped listening to songs
with bridges—
they always begged.

I shrunk my appetite
until it fit inside
your gaze.

Then I shrunk
my gaze.

I killed the part of me
that expected softness.

She died
like a deer:
slow,
staring,
unconvinced
until the end.

I buried all of it
in poems
and told myself
that was healing.

But I check
the dirt
sometimes.

And things
move.

My stomach does that thing—
you know, when the ghost
rests a hand there.
Not a hit.
Just a hush,
and fingernails.

Like it never left.
Like I’m the one
who forgot to feed it.

It’s always at dawn.
Or mid-laugh.
Or in line at the dollar store—
buying nail polish I’ll chew off by Tuesday
and an eyelash curler,
just in case he sees me
from across a decade.

Then you paraglide in—
a salesman who knew I’d be home.
And the floor remembers
what I worked so hard to forget.

And I gasp—like I tripped.
But I didn’t.
I remembered.

I remembered
the ghost
you left me to raise alone.

Like:
“Hi. Just passing through.
Don’t stress on my behalf.”

I nod.
And I don’t.
I keep chewing the same nail.
My eyelashes are curled.
My stomach still does that thing.

You know the one.

I wasn’t crying.
I was hydrating my grief
from the inside out.

He said, “You’re not dramatic. Just detailed.”
I said, “You’re not cruel. Just consistent.”
We called that a compromise.
(or else a hostage negotiation.)

There’s glitter in my carpet
from a party I threw
to prove I wasn’t waiting on him.
I wore white.
Not bridal,
but still white enough
to make someone feel guilty.

I lit sparklers like sirens,
toasted survival.
Nobody clapped.

I collect apologies I don’t want,
write scripts for confrontations
that end in standing ovations,
then lose the footage
in a hardware crash
I secretly caused.

I take the stairs two at a time,
just to feel something chase me.
I text “I’m fine :)”
like it’s a safe word—
to keep the spiral
polite.

I rehearse the voicemail
he never left
like it’s Chekhov.
Like if I say it right,
the gun goes off
and I disappear
beautifully.

At the end of the dream,
he’s always wearing my hoodie—
saying something tender,
just slightly
too late.

And I wake up
with eyelashes on my wrists,
thinking—
Maybe I am the problem.
But God—
you should’ve seen the poems.

In 3150 BC, you crowned me with lotus.
Then said I made you look too mortal.

In 2500 BC, you swore to build me a
monument. You did.
Then sealed someone else inside.

In 1200 BC, you blamed the gods.
I blamed you.
You said ‘same thing.’

In 44 BC, I warned you not to go.
You wore your laurels anyway.
When they stabbed you,
you mouthed my name.
But you didn’t say it loud enough
to survive.

In 73 AD, I poured wine into your open mouth
while the city burned behind us.
You said you’d die for me.
You meant later.
Much later.
With someone else watching.

In 245, I don’t talk about what happened.

In 810, we met in a monastery library.
You touched my wrist over a psalm
and whispered heretic.
I thought it meant holy.
You watched them exile me
with your hands folded like praise.

In 1207, we shared a bed during famine.
You bit my shoulder in your sleep
and murmured it was dreaming.
When spring came,
you left with the first ripe fruit.
You didn’t even wake me.

In 1258, you said the library was sacred.
I said ‘So am I.’
We hid manuscripts in clay jars
and told each other we’d survive.
When the city fell,
you were seen fleeing with her.
You left the books behind.
You left me behind.
History lost us both—
but only one of us remembered.

In 1462, you pressed a seashell
to my palm like a vow.
You promised to return before the tide turned.
They said your ship shattered
like a wineglass on coral—
I drank the ocean dry waiting.

In 1500, you said I looked like rain
the year the fields drowned.
We laid together in the lotus marsh
until your father summoned you.
I lit paper boats for every lie you told,
watched them drift toward a place
where girls like me
become folklore.

In 1505, you called me the sun’s daughter.
Then vanished before solstice,
left me to climb the mountain
alone, draped in gold I couldn’t eat.

In 1593, I was the widow with ink on my teeth.
You kissed me behind the theatre,
called me muse like it meant yours,
then left a sonnet in someone else’s corset.
I caught the fever,
but it wasn’t the one that killed me.

In 1619, I whispered your name through a veil
as we rode separate carriages to our arranged marriages.
You blinked once.
I spent the next twenty years
treating silence like a sentence.

In 1806, you said we’d run away to Vienna.
I waited at the station for two days.
You sent your regrets
on someone else’s handwriting.

In 1865, you sent me a letter from the battlefield.
It said keep living.
Then you died
with someone else’s locket in your fist.

In 1915, you wrote: ‘I miss you when it rains.’
I read it under a leaking roof.
They found your body days later
with a picture of me
folded into someone else’s letter.

In 1933, we wrote to each other from opposite cities.
You said the distance was killing you.
Then married someone local
so you'd stop dying.

In 1942, I woke up mid-war
and realized we’ve done this before.
You looked surprised.
I wasn’t.

In 1963, we kissed in the back of a Chevrolet
and you said you felt safe with me.
Then you enlisted.
Then your birthday flashed on the TV in color and static,
and I understood the difference between
missing and gone.

In 2024, you told me I still think about you.
I asked in what way?
You said in the way you remember a dream
you can’t explain.
I laughed.
But not because it was funny.
Because I knew I’d spend three more years
trying to wake up from you.

And still—
I keep loving you.
You keep
reinventing new ways
to leave.

I used to write gently.
Let the metaphor bloom
before I buried the body,
then buried the lede.
Let language unravel
like stolen ribbon—
then strangle the scene
it slipped from.

I used to offer softness
like it wouldn’t run out.
Let your cruelty masquerade
as clumsiness.
softened your edges
with my own skin.

I won’t stitch myself smaller
for men who call me complex
while collapsing under complexes—
then call me poetic,
like that’s the point.

You said,
“That’s not what I meant.”
I said,
“I know.”
And dragged the line
like a corpse
through the ******.

Framed the silence
in gold leaf
and gall.
Made you a myth—
then fed you to it.

You said,
“The right thing is to walk away.”
So I followed you
into the poem
and made sure
you never left.

You wanted a loophole.
I wrote you scripture.
You wanted soft closure.
I carved your apology
into a tombstone—
your smile etched wrong,
your teeth too sharp
even for fiction.

They never looked kind.
They never were.

Don’t ask
why my version hurts more.
Ask why yours
never held up—
until I told it
wrong
on purpose.

I was supposed to be somewhere holy by now.
Twenty-eight, maybe.
Soft-eyed, loose-shouldered,
eating cherries on a porch that faces west,
“I trust the sky not to drop me.”
“I haven’t wished on a coin in months.”
Instead, I’m awake at 3:47 a.m.
Googling “What does it mean to feel inside-out?”

I keep finding pieces of myself
in weird places—
a sandal from eighth grade
in my mom’s basement—
a song I skipped for years
until it wrecked me—
now it’s the only sound I can breathe to.
A fourth grade diary entry
that ends with:
“I think something’s wrong with the air.”

I think something’s wrong with the air.

I was so sure by now I’d
quit making altars out of absence,
retire from bleeding for the line break,
know how to hold still when people love me.

I thought I’d hear God more clearly
and panic less when I don’t.
I thought I’d be done
being undone
by
a read receipt.

/ Then the break. /

And yet.

I flinch at compliments
like they’re coming from behind me.

Sometimes I still check
if my name’s spelled right on things.
I still rehearse
what I’ll say in case I’m asked,
“So, what do you do?”

(I become.
I break and unbreak.
I drink soda in bed and call that healing.
I make it to morning and call that enough.)
I keep living like the soft things won’t leave.

There’s a version of me
who doesn’t bend into a wishbone
for every boy with a god complex—
and a version
who flosses because she thinks she’ll live
long enough
for it to matter.

There’s a version who never had to explain
the scars on her thigh.
A version who didn’t stay
just to see how bad it could get.

I keep dreaming of her.
Not to compete—
just to confess.
Not to ask forgiveness—
to give it.

She sleeps through the night and means it.
She makes plans and keeps them.
She doesn’t exist.

So I just keep writing toward something
I’m not sure I’ll survive.
There’s a version of me
who didn’t touch the red button.
Didn’t ask.
Didn’t hope.
Didn’t write any of this down.

(a poem in six stained glass windows)

I. BECOMING

I used to flinch when someone said
“You’re gonna be big someday,”
like—how big?
How loud?
How lonely?
How much of me
do I have to lose
to be loved that widely?

I kissed a boy once
just to see if I could still feel small.
I could.
then I wrote about it,
rhymed tongue with undone,
called it healing.

Some nights I Google myself
with the same hunger
you search a symptom.
Just hoping it’s not fatal.
Just hoping it is.
Just hoping there’s finally
a name for it.

My digital footprint is a shrine
to girls I outgrew but never buried,
their teenage poems
still written in Sharpie
on the back of my ribs.

My first book will ship with
a hand strung bracelet that says
“I survived myself.”

II. PERFORMING

Every time I tell the story
I’m a little more clever,
a little less heartbroken,
a little more
dangerous,
a little more wrong.

I have a bad habit
of leaving confessions in comment sections—
breadcrumbs on the internet floor,
for anyone sad enough
to mistake me
for a map.

I used to rehearse goodbyes in mirrors,
just to see if my eyes could lie
as well as my mouth did.
They could.
They still can.

They called me brave
for saying it out loud.
But I only said it
because the silence was louder.

The secret to staying soft
is deleting the parts
where I’m anything else.

I write best in hotel rooms
because they feel borrowed, too—
because no one expects
the towels to stay white
or the girl to stay quiet.

III. DISGUISING

“SENSITIVE” was printed on my sweatshirt
the night he told me
I hurt myself through him—
at least now he can’t say
I never gave a trigger warning.

Half of my closet is clearance rack chaos,
the other half is second-hand salvation—
each hanger a theory
of who I’ll be next.
Sometimes I dress like the version of me
I think he could’ve stayed for.

Every good body day feels like a plot twist,
like God gave me
a guest pass
to precious.

He said I was too much,
but whispered it like praise.
Now I underline his fears
in neon.

Some nights I still wake at 3:14
to texts I dreamt he sent—
all apologies
and no punctuation.

I screenshot compliments
like they’re prescriptions,
take two every six hours,
pray my body doesn’t reject them.
One day, I’ll ask the pharmacy
if they carry praise
in extended-release.

Every dress in my closet whispers
“wear me to his funeral,”
but he keeps refusing to die,
so I just overdress for brunch—
and sit facing the door
just in case.

IV. SEARCHING

I footnoted the grief.
Added asterisks to all my ‘I’m fine’s.'
Even my browser history
reads like a ******* fire.

My greatest fear isn’t that I’ll fail—
it’s that someday I’ll win
and realize the trophy feels
exactly like loneliness,
but heavier.

I read horoscopes for signs of relapse,
Googling “Do Libras experience nostalgia?”
at 5:15 a.m. like a drunk astrologer
pleading with the stars
to cut me off.

I used to edit Wikipedia pages
for characters who reminded me of myself,
changing their endings to
“she survives,”
“she gets out,”
“she burns the diary.”
They banned my IP
for excessive optimism.
I took it as a compliment.

V. RECKONING

The girls who follow me online
all think I have answers.
I don’t.
I have questions in fancy fonts
and delusions of grandeur
dressed as advice.

My therapist asks me to describe “progress,”
and I show her unsent messages,
leftover pills,
and a notebook filled with
poems written in my sleep—
and one that woke me up
Screaming.

Some of you highlight my breakdowns
like they’re quotes.
I get it.
I do it too.

VI. ALONE

My brain is a group chat
of all the selves I've ghosted,
texting in all caps
and sending GIFs that scream,
"Remember when you thought you'd be happy by now?"

If this poem goes viral,
tell them I made it big.
Tell them I got loud.
Tell them I wasn’t lonely.
Just alone
by design.
Like all cathedrals are.

He said I always make things worse.

I traced our last conversation
inside my lip with my tongue,
until it burned like citrus.

My teeth still taste like that night—
miso soup, metallic coffee, a dare—
and the word “almost” said until it split.

I don’t start the fires—
I just know how to fan them
so the smoke spells mine,
so the ashes spell proof.

“You’re welcome for the mirror,” I said,
then, “You flinched first,”
like scripture I was tired of reciting.

He called me a problem
and then prayed for something exciting.
Well, God listens.
And she’s been on my side lately.
(And sometimes inside me.
And sometimes wearing red.)

You say I write like it’s a weapon.
But you brought a sword to my poem.
You heard me speak—and called it war.

I’m not the plot twist.
I’m the motif.
I’m the whisper that keeps showing up
even when you don’t name it.
Especially when you don’t name it.

You wanted a girl who could break
without getting any on your shoes.
Who called it miscommunication
when it was a massacre.
I called it Thursday.

I made you feel.
You made it a crime scene.
Now every sentence tastes like sirens.
But sure—blame me
for the blood in your mouth
when you kissed me wrong.

So yeah—
maybe I do make things worse.
But worse is where the story gets good.
Where you start reading slower.
Where your hands start shaking.

It’s not that I ruin things.
I just ask questions
that don’t look good in daylight.

It’s not that I mean to wreck things.
I just don’t know how to leave a room
without checking every exit
twice.

And labeling each one ‘almost.’

You ever love someone
so hard you forget to be charming?
Me neither.

He thought he was the mystery.
I’m the red string
and the corkboard
and the girl in the basement
with the map of everything that never happened.

You didn’t fall for me.
You fell through me.
That’s not my fault.
It’s gravity.
Or girlhood.
Or God, laughing behind her hand.

Say it again. Slower. This time, with your hands in your pockets.

If I could’ve spoken English for just one day,
I wouldn’t have wasted time
asking for treats,
or walks,
or one last ride in the car—
window cracked, your hand on my chest
like a seatbelt you didn’t want to let go of.

I wouldn’t have said “I love you.”
You already knew that.

You felt it
in how I followed you from room to room
like your shadow had bones.
In the way I sighed
when you moved me off your spot on the bed
but I never left the room.

I would’ve used my one day
to say all the things
you never let yourself hear
from anyone else.
The things you needed someone to say
without flinching.

I would’ve said:

You don’t have to keep shrinking
just to fit in someone’s arms.

You deserve to take up space,
and time,
and seconds that stretch out
without needing to be earned.

I would’ve said:

You weren’t dramatic.
You were drowning
in a place that looked like air.

I saw it.
I stayed.

I would’ve said:

You’re better when you sleep.
You’re smarter when you sing.
You’re beautiful when you’re writing—
even when the words hurt.
Especially then.

You are allowed to be tired.
You are allowed to want things.
You are allowed to leave
before you’re pushed.

I would’ve told you:

I knew when the end was coming.
Not because my body gave out—
but because your voice did.

You started saying goodbye
in the pauses.
In the extra seconds it took to say my name.
In the way your hands shook
before they reached for me.

You got quieter,
not in volume—
but in hope.

And even then,
I wasn’t scared.
You made dying feel like
staying close
in a new way.

You said
“good girl,”
and I knew what it meant.

It meant thank you.
It meant I’m sorry.
It meant please stay longer—
but I’ll let you go if you have to.

And if I had one more sentence,
just one more word
before my voice disappeared again—

I wouldn’t make it poetic.

I’d say:

You were enough the whole time.
You just needed someone who knew it
before you asked.
I did. I always did.
I still do.

Then I’d press my head into your chest,
like I used to—
when the whole world felt too loud—

and I’d stay
until you believed it.

I left my phone in the fridge again.
Texted my dead friend by mistake.
The dream said turn left at the red door
but every door was mauve and melting.
I wore the wrong shoes
to the right breakdown.

God, I’m tired of being
the lesson in someone else’s flashback.
Of saying 'I’m fine'
like it’s a good thing.

Sometimes I bite a fingernail off
and flick it to the ground,
just to prove I was here,
just to pretend my DNA
is not a walking lie.

Sometimes I talk
to the dogs with TikTok accounts
like they’re holding something back.

Sometimes I rehearse my disappearances
in liminal spaces:
parking garages,
abandoned malls,
group chats I left on read.
Now I RSVP to nothing
and they still say
“you’ll be missed.”

I keep meaning to heal,
but the plot keeps thickening—
And my name—
God, my name—
it echoes like a spoiler
in a house that isn’t mine anymore.
A trivia fact
no one got right.

My memories keep getting
auto-corrected to get over it.
I don’t.
I alphabetize the wreckage.
I romanticize the ruin.
The rot is getting readable.

Anyway,
I’m late again.
Time got weird in the hallway.
I swear the mirror
was trying to warn me—
but I was too busy
checking if my under-eye bags
made me look exquisitely exhausted,
or just ordinary and old.

I wanted to scream  
but the hallway  
was practicing silence.  

I wanted to run,  
but the rug said stay  
and the mirror said  
be still  
and beautiful and
unavailable.

The mirror said:
this is what longing looks like
when it runs out of places to go.

So I stood there—
a half-wreck, half-reflection—
trying to decide
if disappearing quietly
still counts as survival.

Somewhere,
my phone is defrosting.
Somewhere,
the red door is waiting.

Somewhere,
my dead friend
is laughing
his ghost-laugh,
mouthing: same.

She was three-legged
and fourteen,
which meant
brave by default.

We slept
spine to spine
every night that last year.
My body curved to match
the curve of hers—
like if I molded myself
into her shape,
she’d stay
a little longer.

Some nights
I’d cry
facing the wall.
I didn't want to disrupt her dreams,
her twitching and yowling
like she was running very fast
and free.

Even with three legs.
Even with the shaking.
Even with whatever was happening
inside her chest
that I couldn’t see
but felt
like a countdown—
each wheeze like the tick
of something winding down.

I made her a collar-like friendship bracelet.
It was that first Eras summer,
where I’d stay up late
with grainy livestreams,
and she’d sleep on my pillows
with her eyes open.

I tied it on her
before I knew
what I was preparing for—
red and magenta seed beads,
silver letters:
Roxy’s Version,
around her neck.

I wanted her
to have something
from me,
in case she got asked
who loved her
at the gate.

I wanted the answer
to be
obvious.

We brought her outside
so she could lie
in the dry, scratchy grass.
I laid leopard-print foam pillows
under her head.

I couldn’t stop the dying,
but I could
soften
the ground.
She rested like it was vacation.
Like we weren’t
practicing goodbye.

There’s a battered, rose-gold statue
of a Labrador, ten inches tall,
on our front step.
I spray-painted it years ago—
not knowing
I was making a witness.
The vet looked at it,
then followed us in.

We didn’t speak.
Just walked inside
like it was church,
like someone had already died.

And we sat on the couch—
her head in my lap.
Their voices:
soft, reverent.

I held her ear
between *******,
like it still led somewhere.

I told her
she was a good girl.
I wish I’d told her
she didn’t have to be.

I said,
“I love you.”
But what I meant was,
“Please stay.”
And what I thought was—
what if she wanted
just one more
terrible Tuesday?

What if the birds
were doing something today
that she needed to see?
What if the pain
wasn’t worse
than leaving?

I forgave her body
for failing.
But I still haven’t
forgiven the clock.

I’ve let whole seasons
happen
without telling her
how sorry
I still am.

From the upstairs window,
I watched them
carry her to their van
on a blue stretcher—
small,
almost toy-like.

I laughed when I saw it.
Not because it was funny.
Because it was all
too real,
too stupid,
too soft—
and I didn’t know
where to put the pain.

I watched my mom
and stepdad
hug in the driveway
like they were trying
to keep each other standing.

I hope she knows
I didn’t want
the last thing she saw
to be my tears,
so I gave her the sun.

I don’t know
if I said “I love you” out loud
while her breath
slowed.

She’s at peace.
But I’m still here—
crying in rooms
she used to follow me into.

I hope she knows
I keep her beads
near my bed.
I still wear it
some nights,
when I’m spine to spine
with nothing—
and it’s unbearable.

I hope she knows
she’s the reason
I ever believed
in unconditional anything.

I hope she knows
I made her a bracelet
before I made her a grave.

From a dog
who never asked me
to be perfect,
I still wait
for forgiveness.

I try to be good
for someone who always
believed I was.

She’d say,
“You did your best.”
And I’d say,
“I tried.”
I just wish
love didn’t hurt this much
when it ends
gently.

You said,
“You’re better now,”
and I said,
“Not quite.”
I’m just quieter
when I lose the fight.

I’ve learned how to spiral
without making a mess—
I flinch like a debutante in danger—
I cry in the dress I bought for my funeral.

Healing looks holy
if you’re far enough back;
from across the room, I look redeemed.
Up close, it’s mascara
and panic attacks.

I am
so
well-behaved now—
I answer in lowercase,
I apologize in advance.

You’d never guess
I once threw a chair so hard
it split the act in half.

If I miss you,
I don’t text.
I answer fake calls
from you-shaped phantoms.
We fight.
I win.

I stand in the doorway
for dramatic effect.
I practice my exits
more than my lines.
I stage a comeback
with no audience.

I watch the part of the movie
where it all goes wrong,
then rewind it.
Then rewind it again.

I am healing
like a fraud.
Like a martyr with stage fright.
Like a saint who missed her cue.
Like someone who knows
I’m still your favorite bedtime story—
but only when I end.

I turn my breakdowns into brunch plans,
my grief into good posture.
I answer questions with questions.
I wear rings so I have something to twist.
I smile like it’s stage direction.
I rehearse sanity
like some girls practice wedding vows.

I light candles for each version of myself
you forgot.
I document.
I archive the damage—
like it might get reviewed later
by God.
Or worse, by you.

If you’re reading this:
I didn’t mean it.
(I meant every word.)

If you’re avoiding this:
good.
I wanted you to squint
at the poem’s edges
and wonder if the blood
was real.
(You always liked your violence subtle.)
(You always liked your girls learning your language—
just to beg in it.)

I pray more now.
Not to be saved.
Just to stay interesting.

Do you know how hard it is
to look healed
when your rage is wearing a rosary
and smiling in group photos?

Every time I wanted to scream,
I posted nothing instead.
Silence is the loudest performance
I’ve ever given.

I don’t raise my voice.
I sharpen it.
I sweeten it.
I lace it with facts
you’ll misinterpret on purpose.

My therapist says I intellectualize emotion.
I say, “Thank you.”
My boss says,
“You need to sleep and eat like you’re real.”
but she loves the **** I write.

I tell them both I’m fine.
I look fantastic
when I’m about to snap.

I know what I sound like.
I know how this poem reads.
That’s the worst part—
it’s always intentional.

That’s the best part—
I’ll pretend I didn’t mean it,
and I planned that too.

You look like the life I wanted
when I was pretending I wasn’t dying.
She’s beautiful, obviously,
and it’s not like I’m still trying—

I don’t miss you.
I miss the girl I thought I’d get to be
if you loved me right.

Do you ever
ache so privately
it feels impolite?

Because I do—
in airports where I don’t arrive,
in checkout lines I barely survive,
on Wednesdays, laced with something sour,
in stairwells meant for girls to cower,
in dresses hung with rosary thread,
worn to forgive what wasn’t said.

I am so well-behaved now.
I nod. I smile. I bite down.
I curtsy in crisis. I don’t make a scene.
I bleach my longing till it gleams.

I’m not still hurt, I’m just rewired.
I’m not that mad, I’m just so tired.
I’ve kissed the quiet on both cheeks—
but I riot in my lucid weeks.

I’ve made peace with playing dead,
but some nights I come back red—
in dreams that loop,
in memory's choir,
where the girl kept smiling
while walking through fire.

You look like the life I lied about
when I swore I didn’t mind.
You should hear what I don’t say about you.
It rhymes sometimes.

Chapter I: Disappear Politely

There was a town with one stoplight
and two churches that hated each other.
The first church tolled its bell louder.
The second buried its girls quieter.

It was the kind of place where grief
was passed down like heirloom silver:
polished, inherited, never touched—
except to prove they had it.

Where the girls learned early
how to disappear with grace.

They say the first one—Marlena—
just walked into the lake,
mouth full of wedding vows
no one had asked her to write,
and her prom dress still zipped.

The older preacher saw her go under—
didn’t move,
just turned the page in his sermon book.
Said later:
Girls like that always need a stage.

The parents told their daughters
not to cause trouble.
Told them to smile more,
leak less,
bloom quietly,
be good—
or
be gone.

Then cried when they vanished.
Then lit candles.
Then said things like
“God has a plan,”
to keep from imagining
what the plan required.

Chapter II: The Girls Who Spoke Wrong

A girl named Finch refused to sleep.
Said her dreams were trying to arrest her.
One morning they found her curled in the middle of Saint Street—
like a comma the sentence abandoned.

A knife in her boot,
daffodils blooming from her belt loops—
like she dressed for both war and funeral.

Finch was buried upright.
Because God forbid
a girl ever be horizontal
without permission.

The sheriff was mailed her journals
with no return address.
He read one page.
Paused.
Coughed once, like the truth had teeth.
Lit a match.

Said it wasn’t evidence—
said it was dangerous
for a girl to write things
no one asked her to say.

No one spoke at her funeral,
but every girl showed up
with one eye painted black
and the other wide open.

Not make-up.
Not bruise.
Just warning.

Chapter III: Half-Gone Girls & Other Ghosts

And then there was Kiernan.
Not missing. Not dead.
Just quieter than the story required.

She stuffed cotton in her ears at church—
said the hymns gave her splinters.
Talked to the mirror like it owed her something—
maybe a mouth,
maybe mercy.

She was the one who found Finch’s daffodils first.
Picked one. Pressed it in her journal.
It left a bruise that smelled like vinegar.

No one noticed
when she stopped raising her hand in class.
Her poems shrank to whispers,
signed with initials—
like she knew full names
made better gravestones.

Someone checked out Kiernan’s old library book last week.
All the margins were full of names.
None of them hers.
They say she’s still here.
Just not all the way.

A girl named Sunday
stopped speaking at eleven,
and was last seen barefoot
on the second church roof,
humming a song no one taught her.

Sunday didn’t leave a note.
She figured we’d write one for her anyway.
Some girls disappear all at once.
Others just run out of language.

Clementine left love letters in lockers
signed with other girls’ names.
Said she was trying to ‘redistribute the damage.’
She stood in for a girl during detention.
Another time, for a funeral.

Once, Clementine blew out candles
on a cake that wasn’t hers.
Said the girl didn’t want to age that year.
Said she’d hold the wish for her—
just in case.

She disappeared on picture day,
but her face showed up
in three other portraits—
blurry,
but unmistakable.

The town still isn’t sure who she was.
But the girls remember:
she took their worst days
and wore them like a uniform.

Chapter IV: Standing Room Only

They say
the town
got sick
of digging.

Said
it took
too much
space
to bury
the girls
properly.

So
they
stopped.

Started
placing
them
upright
i­n the
dirt,

palms
pressed
together,

like
they
were
praying
for
re­venge.
Or maybe
just
patience.

The lake only takes
what’s already broken.
It’s polite like that.
It waits.

They renamed it Mirrorlake—
but no one looks in.

The daffodils grow back faster
when girls go missing—
brighter, almost smug,
petals too yellow
to mean joy anymore.

No one picks them.
No one dares.

The earth hums lullabies
in girls’ names,
soft as bone dust,
steady as sleep.

There’s never been enough room
for a girl to rest here—
just enough to pose her pretty.

They renamed the cemetery “Resthill,”
but every girl calls it
The Standing Room.

Chapter V: When the Dirt Starts Speaking

Someone said they saw Clementine
in the mirror at the gas station—
wearing someone else’s smile
and mouthing:
“wrong year.”

The school yearbook stopped printing senior quotes.
Too many girls used them wrong.
Too many girls turned them into prophecies.
Too many girls were never seniors.

They didn’t bury them standing up to honor them.
They just didn’t want to kneel.

The stoplight has started skipping green,
like the town doesn’t believe in Go anymore.
Just flickers yellow,
then red,
then red again.

A warning no one heeds.
A rhythm only the girls who are left
seem to follow.

Some nights,
the air smells like perfume
that doesn’t belong to anyone.

And the church bells ring without being touched.
Only once.
Always just once.
At 3:03 a.m.

Now no one says the word ‘daughter’
without spitting.
No one swims in the lake.

The pews sigh
when the mothers sit down.
Both preachers said:
“Trust God.
Some girls just love the dark.”

But some nights—
when the ground hums low
and the stoplight flickers
yellowyellowred—

you can hear a knocking under your feet,
steady as a metronome.

The ground is tired of being quiet.
The roots have run out of room.

The girls are knocking louder—
not begging.
Not asking.

Just letting us know:
they remember.

*And—

I smiled so wide my molars got jealous.
Everyone said I looked stunning.
I said thank you in the voice I reserve for customer service and playing dumb.
That’s the closest I’ve come to a scream
this week.

I wore the dress that says: I’m over it.
(It lies.)
I walked like a question mark
straightened out with rage.

There was a man in the corner
making balloon animals.
He asked what I wanted.
I said surprise me.
He handed me a noose
shaped like a swan.

No one noticed.
Or maybe that’s just what I tell myself
to feel interesting.

Later, someone told a joke
I didn’t get.
I laughed like I was being watched.

The punchline wasn’t funny.
It just echoed
like something I would’ve said
before I got careful.

I stood in the kitchen
with a paper plate of olives and nothing,
holding it like proof
I was doing fine.

Someone spilled wine on the couch.
I said I’ve ruined better things.
Everyone laughed
like I meant it to be charming.
(I didn’t.)

A girl in white heels asked me
how I knew the host.
I said same way I know most people—
by accident,
and with the kind of premonition that wears perfume.

The bathroom mirror was cracked.
I counted the breaks like confessions
and chose not to atone.
The soap smelled like fruit
that only exists in dreams
you wake up crying from.

I reapplied my lip stain
like armor,
like alibi,
like an exit strategy.

Then I left without saying goodbye
because I couldn’t figure out
how to do it quietly
and still be missed.

I was born mid-eye-roll,
c-sectioned from a punchline.
First words were don’t start with me,
second were fine, stay.

My spine’s in italics.
I bend for no one
but poetry
and panic.

I talk in skip-steps.
I cry in parentheses.
I kiss like a loophole.
He said you’re hard to read,
so I wrote myself louder.

Time doesn’t pass here,
it tantrums.
I clock in and out of myself hourly.

My skin’s on backward.
My hunger has subtitles.
My ghost writes sonnets in the steam on the mirror
and signs them:
Almost.

I invented a verb that means
to leave someone before they prove they would’ve.
I use it daily.
It conjugates into silence.
It rhymes with obviously.

The doctors say it’s chronic.
Pre-traumatic glow disorder.
I blush before the pain hits.
I glitter out of spite.

Don’t ask if I’m okay.
Ask which version of me is answering.
Ask if I remembered to name my wounds
before dressing them up like confetti.

My mouth is a magpie.
I collect syllables like shiny things
and scream them into soup.

Alphabet in disarray.
Syntax on fire.
Verbs wearing fishnets.

I said please but it came out pyre.
I said love but it burned at both ends
and tasted like lightning bugs
smothered in saran wrap.

This isn’t poetry.
It’s a word riot.
A sentence rebellion.
A grammar glitch in God’s inbox.

I built a language out of side-eyes and stutters,
called it flinchlish.
Conjugated heartbreak like it was Spanish.
(I hurt, you hurt, we—
don’t talk about that anymore.)

Sometimes I write elegies in emojis.
Sometimes I tongue-twist psalms into punchlines.
Sometimes I just scream into Google Docs
until it autocorrects sorry to spine.

My voice is a thesaurus
spun too fast in a washing machine.
Everything comes out wrinkled,
wet,
a little more
mine.

Everything is too
sugar-spine, salt-lipped,
staticstitched and jitterglow.

I can’t sit still
without turning into
a girl-shaped emergency.

I keep my synonyms in jars—
one for ache,
one for almost,
one for the word I made up
that means I miss you so much I become a faucet.

Language is a loose tooth.
I tongue it until it bleeds metaphor.
Call it poetry.
Call it coping.
Call it anything but what it is:
me, peeling the world into vowels
because I’m scared if I say what I mean,
you’ll hear it.

And then what?

You’ll answer?

You’ll echo?

You’ll send a voice memo
saying same
and I’ll combust on the Q train
like a well-read matchbook?

God, I am so
caption-core,
pun-drunk,
rhyme-accident-prone.
I named my stomach pit afterthought.
I named my wrists reminder.

And I named you
don’t.

But I still say it
every time I open my mouth
to speak.

Verse1
I did a juice cleanse the week you went cold
Felt holy, felt haunted, felt thirty-three years old
Kept waiting for hunger but all I felt was rage
Posted poems about birds while I rotted offstage

Lit sage in the kitchen, wore pearls in the bath
Pretended that healing could change what we had
Went dancing on rooftops, then puked in the sink,
then stared in the mirror and tried not to think.

Pre-chorus1
They’ll say I was crazy, dramatic, obsessed
But they didn’t see what you did in that text

Chorus1:
I would’ve stayed through the plot twists and power cuts
Learned your silence, memorized your worst months
Now I sleep like a crime scene, replaying the call
Where you almost said “love you,” then said nothing at all

You said, “Don’t write about me”—I already did
In lipstick and blood and the back of my ribs
You were never safe, but you felt like home
And I’d still pick the lock if I thought you were alone

Verse2
He said, “Don’t cry,” as he pulled off my shirt
And I laughed like that wasn’t the worst part
He said, “You like it when I ruin things”
I said, “Only because you started with me.”

I knew it was bad when I liked how you lie
How your mouth made disasters sound holy and high
You said I romanticize pain till it purrs
I said, “You keep calling it love like it’s yours”

Prechorus2
You said I’m intense—like it wasn’t projection
Like I didn’t watch you detonate every connection

Bridge
You said you were broken, so I stayed and I sewed
You said you were scared, so I softened my glow
We were talking about movies, then death, then dreams
Then you said, “I think love just isn’t for me”

You told me I’m bright, then dimmed all the lights
Called me your mirror, then shattered the rights
Said I was heaven, then sent me to hell
And I still wrote it sweet just so you’d wish me well

Carved out your echo in bathroom tile
Kept praying you’d miss me, then smiled for a while
Still set all the clocks to your birthday at three,
Then swallowed a wish I forgot was for me.

CHORUS (FINAL)
I would’ve stayed through the fallout and frostbite
Sat through your silence like that made it right
Now I sleep like a witness, replaying the call
Where you almost said “love you,” then said nothing at all

You said, “Don’t write about me”—but look what you did
You live in the margins, the bloodstream, the script
You were never safe, but you felt like home
And I’d still pick the lock
Even knowing you're gone

Outro
I did a juice cleanse
And you never came back.
I never got better,
but I glow like I have.

He once told me
he wanted to die in a place
that looked like a poem.
I told him
I wanted to live
like I was one.

We were doomed by aesthetics—
too many soft glances,
not enough spine.
He held my wrist like a snow globe
but shook me too hard.

He said I was all feeling,
no logic.
As if logic ever begged anyone to stay.

Once,
he told me I reminded him
of a girl in a painting.
I should’ve asked
what happened to her
after the gallery closed.

I used to count his heartbeats
when he slept,
just to know something
inside him still worked.

I wore my prettiest dress
to the argument—
just in case
he needed reminding
that I’m not easy
to walk away from.

He looked at me
like a cliff he might leap from
or photograph.

I stopped saying his name
and started writing
in second person.
It still felt like calling him home.

Even now,
I write you into metaphors
so I can pretend
you were never real—
just a concept,
a cautionary tale,
a ghost that rhymed.

You wanted tragedy.
I wanted truth.
We got
whatever this was.

Verse 1
Took the wrong bus on a Wednesday
Wore the skirt I swore I hated
Had a blister and a sunburn
And the sky was drained and jaded

Sat by a woman with a bag of peaches
One rolled out and hit my shoe
She laughed like my aunt who died in April
And I almost said, “I miss you too”

Pre-Chorus 1
Joy didn’t knock, just drifted through—
Like a memory dressed in something new.

Chorus 1
I got sunburned in my silence
Skirt too short and pride too loud
Joy just slipped into the backseat
While I cursed at every cloud

I’m not healed, just unbothered
By the mess I’ve started to miss
I flinch at kindness lately
Like it’s something I can’t resist

Verse 2
The driver missed my stop completely
But I didn’t say a word
There’s a silence that feels sacred
When you’re scared of being heard

My phone lit up with nothing
And it still made me smile
I’m the patron saint of letdowns
But I stayed soft for a while

Pre-Chorus 2
Joy didn’t ask if I’d moved on
Just slipped back in like nothing was wrong

Chorus 2
I got sunburned in my silence
Skirt still short and ego bruised
Joy slid in like she owned the place
Like she knew I’d already lost the ruse

I’m not healed, just out of stories
So I smile and call it wise
Now I host my hauntings sweetly
Like the ghosts were always mine

Bridge
I practiced detachment like a prayer
Burned sage, lit candles, grew out my hair
But it still smelled like him in July—
Like sweat, and shame, and cherry pie

I told the moon, “I get it. You only show half,”
Then cried so hard I think I made God laugh

Mascara on my birth certificate
From rewriting who I was
Tried on forgiveness like a costume
But forgot what size I was

I kept rewriting the ending
’Til the story started biting back
Guess healing is just hiding
In a dress you thought you packed

Final Chorus
I got sunburned in my silence
Skirt still short, but now it fits
Joy returns like clockwork chaos
Pulls up laughing, never quits

I wasn’t healed, just hungry
For something I didn’t have to chase
And for once, I didn’t flinch
When the world looked me in the face

Outro
I told the moon, “I get it.”
But I was really talking to myself.

{For solo performer (mask optional). Lighting: warm, then cruel. Microphone optional. Heartbreak required.}

[Lights up. One step too close to the mic. She smiles like she’s survived something.]

POET:
I said I was shattered.

[Pause—look down, then up. Like you’re remembering it too vividly.]

And the crowd snapped.
I said I couldn’t sleep.

[Soften your voice here. Sell it. They love insomnia.]

And they nodded.
I smiled at the right moments.
Let my voice break on the word left.

[Yes. That word. Linger on it.]

Called it a poem.
Called it truth.

[Invisible margin note: Remove “pathetic.” You already said “poem.” Same effect.]

POET:
And it was—
mostly.

[Look away. Smile like a secret.]

I didn’t mention
how long I waited
for him to text back.

[In script: add something about refreshing Instagram. Delete it later.]

I said he left,
not I begged.
I said I healed,
not I still Google him sometimes
just to feel something specific.

[Optional: laugh. See who laughs back.]

[Stage note: Adjust mic stand like it’s his hand on your jaw. Let them feel it.]

POET:
I sharpened the metaphors.
Cut the clumsy parts.
Dressed the grief in short skirts and darling dresses,
and made her look like a woman
you’d want to cry over.

[Look devastating here. Not sad. Iconic.]

I didn’t lie.
I edited.

[Beat.]

Like any good writer.
Like any sad girl
with an audience.

[Margin scribble: Underline “audience.” Question whether you meant “witness.” Leave both.]

POET:
I know which line they’ll post.
I know where to pause
so it sounds like I might
still be heartbroken.

[Optional: blink back a tear. If it’s real, even better.]

So it sounds like maybe
I’m brave.

[Cut alternate ending: “So it sounds like I won.” Too desperate.]

POET:
But the truth is—
I want to be loved
perfectly.
Understood
accurately.

[Harsher here. Like it’s a confession you didn’t rehearse.]

And if I have to script my suffering
to get that—

[Pause. Look right at them.]

Fine.
Cut to black.
Cue applause.

[Lights dim. She stands still. Hands at her sides. Someone coughs. Someone claps. Someone regrets texting their ex.]

[End scene.]

I’m always watching myself
watch the world.
Even in love,
I’m already narrating the ending.

I turn silence into stanzas.
Affection into evidence.
Every kiss, a metaphor.
Every absence, a motif.

People think I’m honest.
But really,
I just edit well.

Half of what I write
never happened.
The other half
happened too hard.

I’ve written the same heartbreak
fourteen different ways.
Gave it a new name.
Gave it better dialogue.
Made him softer
so the betrayal feels worse.

I say I’m writing for me,
but I’m always picturing the line
someone might underline
and send to their ex
at 2:03 a.m.

I’ve performed pain
like a dress rehearsal—
highlighted the devastation,
downplayed the shame,
cut the part where I begged
and called it pacing.

There are poems
that made people cry
and replies I never opened.
Because if I read them,
it might mean
I was never alone in it.
And I don’t know
if that would feel better
or worse.

Some nights I write
like I’m searching for proof
that it happened at all.
That he said it.
That I felt it.
That I was the kind of girl
someone could ruin
on purpose.

And if the writing is good enough,
maybe I don’t have to go back.
Maybe I don’t have to forgive him.
Maybe I just have to
survive it beautifully.

So I sharpen the line.
I fix the form.
I leave the ending open.
I publish the ache.

And I tell myself
that counts
as closure.

The betrayal was real.
The good lines were mine.
And maybe closure
doesn’t come in paragraphs—
maybe it’s just a quiet night
I don’t turn into a poem.

He kissed me
like he was afraid to break me.
Then broke me
like he was tired
of being afraid.

Every nerve ending—
scarlet, theatrical, yours.
You touched me like a hymn
then left like a plague.
And I still
light candles.

I said I wanted closure,
but what I meant was:
hold my hair while I purge you.
What I meant was:
prove I wasn’t the only one bleeding.

I keep dreaming of you
with your wrists full of carnations,
offering them
like an apology
too beautiful to believe.

Sometimes I picture your face
on the body of someone kind.
And I call it progress.
I call it healing.
I call it
don’t look at me right now.

I see him less now.
Only in mirrors,
or firelight,
or men who say sorry
too soon.

And every time,
I forgive myself
a little more.

(finaldraftREALtrashversion.txt)

openletterdraft13: i wasn’t supposed to feel this much
// open file: confession.txt
// modified: too many times

i loved you [ ]
  and by loved i mean studied.
  and by studied i mean starved.
  and by starved i mean
  i said “i’m not hungry” with your name in my throat.

INSERT IMAGE:
  a girl in a bookstore touching the spines
  like maybe one of them will understand.

INSERT IMAGE:
  a girl standing in the moonlight,
  asking the low-flying planes if she’s forgivable.

EXPORT FEELING:
  named it something soft
  so no one would notice it burned.

he said “i don’t want to hurt you”
  which is what men say
  right before they hurt you
  with clean hands.

CTRL + ALT + DELETE
  but nothing closes—
  especially not the part
  that keeps writing poems in his grammar.

[SYSTEM ERROR: too many metaphors. Simplify?]

i called it love.  
he called it bad timing.

INSERT PASSWORD:
  seeme

ACCESS GRANTED.

NEW NOTE:
  i forgive you in lowercase.
  you don’t deserve the shift key.

open file: ruinmefinaldraft.txt  
last saved: 2:41am  
user: girlwhoknowsbetter  
status: still writing about him / (pathetic)  
attachment: none (maybe that’s the point)

INPUT: I’m fine  
OUTPUT: [you don't sound like it]

cpu temp: 100.4°F  
(she's burning again)

I bit my nails and tasted April.

biometrics: unstable  
heartbeat: typing...  
eyes: exit-wound wide, still scanning  
mouth: unsent, but spelling it with teeth  
spine: error 504  

/ BIOS update failed  
// scroll depth: dangerous  
// dopamine loop: infinite

poetry drafts: full  
dignity: low  
engagement: medium

attachments:
- crying.wav  
- voice04833.m4a (unsent)  
- screenshotwhiplash02.png  
- idontbelieveyoudraftfinalFINAL.txt

NEW GOOGLE DOC:  
  title: every version of me you didn’t love  
  sharing permissions: view only  
  editing access: revoked

collaborators:
- me (12am), me (3am), me pretending I don’t care  
- girlboss, gaslight, ghost  
- nobody asked, everyone noticed, Taylor Swift  

[CORRUPTED TEXT]  
  she said she was over it [DATA INCOMPLETE]  

attachment: none (unless you count the damage)

[404: identity not found]

everyone says i look good  
no one asks if i’m still here  
the scale goes down  
the poems get louder  
the body forgets how to stay

[repetition detected: again, again, again, again]

click to translate: desperation

plaintext:
  you’re not even that important  
  but i keep talking like you’re holy  
  what do you do with love  
  when no one wants to hold it?

click here to reveal what she meant (no one ever did)

>>> meanwhile: her stomach hurts for no reason again.

reminder: no one asked.

crash log: 3:14am, again

system flag:
  are you sure you want to feel this much?  
  [no] [too late]

[user breakdown detected]  
  INSERT MESSAGE: “i’m sorry for my part.”  
  STATUS: unacknowledged  
  TIMESTAMP: one year ago  
  attachment: olive_branch.png  

recovery mode engaged (no progress)

autosave: corrupted  
exported: only the parts that hurt

I googled "am I spiraling"  
and then took the quiz twice.

cloud access: denied  
  her incision itched—  
  but not as much as the silence.  
  the body healed.  
  the meaning didn’t.

when she stands up too fast and sees stars,  
she names them after him.

draft saved: yes  
sent: no  
read: no  
felt: yes  
ruined: absolutely

I’ve written forty-seven poems that almost said it right.

trash folder: full  
memory: still running  
love: running in background (not responding)

[DATA COLLISION]  
  she realized she never even asked for this  
  she just tried to make it mean something

CTRL + ALT + ME  
(force quit)  

> everything backed up  
> nothing backed down  
> terminal still open

I don’t want him back.
I want him wrecked.
I want him looking up my name like a prayer
he’s not allowed to say out loud.

I want him mouthing my name in traffic
like it’s a hymn
and he’s the wrong kind of sinner.
Like if he says it, I’ll appear—
but not to stay.

I want him walking past a girl
wearing my perfume
and feeling sick.
Like car crash sick.
Like pulled-over-on-the-freeway-thinking-of-me sick.

I want him to swear he saw me
in the corner of his eye
three states away.
I want him to feel watched
every time he lies about me.
I want him to dream in second person
and wake up shaking.

I want him tracing my texts with his thumb
like they’re Braille,
trying to remember how it felt
to touch someone who meant it.

Let him write poems and choke on every line.
Let him dream in my syntax and wake up stuttering.
(Let every stanza end where we did.)

I want him to tell people he’s over it—
and mean it.
Until he isn’t.
Until a Tuesday breaks him in half.

I want him to pause mid-bite
at a restaurant we never made it to.
I want the taste of me
to ruin his appetite.

I want him to see me tagged in a photo
and spiral.
Not because I look beautiful—
(which, I do)—
but because I look fine.
Like I forgave him.
Like I made it out.
Like the part of me
that waited so quietly
it started to look like faith—
then moved out
and left no forwarding address.

I want him wrecked
not because he left,
but because he almost didn’t.
Because he said forever
like he meant it,
and ran like he didn’t.

Because I waited.
Because I believed.
Because I held the door open
so long my arms shook.
And all he had to do
was walk through.

You texted, “Let me know you got home safe,”
and I did.
Every time.
Even when the only thing I made it home from
was myself.
Even when “home” was just
the bathroom floor,
or a voice I borrowed to sound okay.

Even when I didn’t want to,
but thought maybe you’d notice
if I stopped.

You said, “You don’t have to tell me everything.”
So I didn’t.
But I left clues like codes in poems we both know you read
and buried my bruises under jokes you laughed at—
because it’s easier to be funny than fine.

When I listed you as my emergency contact,
I wasn’t being poetic—
I meant if I vanish,
you’d know where I haunt.
I meant if my throat closes,
you’d answer on the first ring
and not be drunk,
or walking through spring like it’s not violent,
or sleeping through the night like people who are safe do.
And if you were in bed with someone,
I still believe you’d get out for me.

And when you called me “dangerous,”
I almost said thank you.
Because isn’t that what a flare is?
Burning too loud to ignore?

I wanted to be yours.
Not your girl,
not your burden,
just yours—
like the worst idea you ever loved,
or your last cigarette,
or the dream that wakes you
with your mouth around my name
and your fists full of sheets.

You never called.
But my body still answers.
The phantom limbs of your apologies
twitching through me
like they still belong here.

You never called.
So I made you a myth.
That’s how it works, right?
If someone won’t come save you,
you turn them into a god
and burn in their name.

So here’s your update:
I got home safe.
Then I lit it on fire.
And now I haunt it.

I kept all your secrets.
hid them in my clavicle
next to my old poetry and
the night I almost died
but didn’t tell anyone
because it didn’t feel polite.

I never wanted to ruin you.
just wanted to be understood
in the original latin—
to stand in the fire with.
but you mistook the blaze
for a signal flare
and bailed.

I lit candles for you
like a saint or a fool—
same thing, really.
Wrote prayers in the margins
of receipts and prescriptions,
called it hope
because obsession sounded ugly.

Now I write like an arsonist
with nothing left to burn
but the drafts I never sent
and the version of me
who waited
for you to come back
smelling like smoke
but brave.

(because location is not a cure and I am still the problem)

The motorbikes don’t care if I’m sad.
The coffee is thick like secrets
and still I manage to spill it down my shirt
like a metaphor.
Like I’m trying to prove I’ve learned nothing.

I watch two women bargain in a language
I still haven’t learned—
I tell myself I’m soaking it in
but really, I’m just sweating through my bike-shorts under polyester dress
and writing poems in my head
about men who don’t know where I am.

I eat noodles at 9 AM
and think about what it means to be soft
in a place where everything is louder than me.
I walk past altars and incense
and pretend it’s for me.
That someone here might pray me into clarity.

I keep writing like I’m in a movie
about a girl who flees the country
to find peace
and ends up writing the same poem
with different weather.

I take pictures of lanterns and puddles
and temple steps
but the notes app still opens
to that one draft
with too many ellipses
and not enough closure.

I know I’m lucky to be here.
I know I’m lucky to be anywhere.
But even halfway across the world
with lychee tea on my chin
and house shoes that don’t fit—
I’m still writing like I’m in Connecticut
still craving something impossible
still carrying my ghosts
like they made it through customs.

I came all this way
and I’m still me.

That has to mean something.

It’s not that I like him.
It’s that I noticed he drinks oat milk
and I decided that meant he’s emotionally available
and a little bit broken
in a way I can fix
with eye contact
and carefully timed Instagram stories.

It’s not that I want him.
It’s that I saw the veins in his hands
and immediately imagined
what it would feel like
to destroy him
and then write the best poem of my life.

I don’t flirt.
I cast a spell and leave the room.
I curate a presence.
I drop one compliment like a trap
and then disappear for three days.

He posted a story with a girl
and I spiraled so hard
I almost became someone else.
I googled her.
Then I googled “how to stop googling her.”

I’m not in love—
I’m conducting research
on how quickly I can unravel
over someone who
has never asked me a single follow-up question.

I’ve named our future dog.
I’ve blocked him
just to see if it made him feel something.
I’ve unblocked him
in case it didn’t.

He doesn’t know it,
but he’s already been a metaphor
in four poems
and a villain
in one voice memo
I’ll never send
but might transcribe
for the memoir.

It’s not that I like him.
It’s that I have a deep, unhealed need
to be chosen
by someone
who never saw me coming
but somehow always knew
I’d ruin him beautifully.

He never even kissed me
and I still wake up
like I survived a car crash
I begged to happen.

I memorized the cadence of his typing bubble
like it was a heartbeat.
I stared at his “active now”
like it was Morse code for almost.

I drafted messages like legislation.
Held back like it was holy.
Called it chemistry—
it was just inconsistency with good bone structure.

I Googled, “how to be wanted by someone
who never said they wanted you,”
and got ads for perfume.

I blamed Mercury.
I blamed my softness.
I blamed the ghost of the girl
who asked him to visit.
Kneeled down to ‘crazy boy ****’ like it was a prophecy.

He didn’t break my heart.
He drained it—
with a bend, sip, thanks
that left me lightheaded and poetic.

I told my therapist
he was a metaphor.
She said, “For what?”
I said, “For me.”

I should’ve burned something.
Instead I wrote fourteen poems
and shaved my legs
like closure was coming.

Now I bite down on his name
like it owes me blood.
I spit it out
like it’s still in my mouth
because somehow, it is.

I was a god once,
but I got bored
and turned myself into a girl
just to see what it felt like
to bleed on a schedule
and be underestimated at CVS.

I used to throw comets for fun.
Now I throw up from anxiety
and pretend it’s acid reflux.

I traded omniscience for online shopping.
Traded lightning bolts
for a Bic lighter
I keep losing in other people’s cars.

I used to be prayed to.
Now I pray I don’t get ghosted,
pray my Amazon Chase card wasn’t hacked,
pray I remember why I walked into the room.

I’ve lived for centuries.
You can tell by the way
I roll my eyes at time.

My bones know Latin.
My knees speak Morse.
My spine hums with prophecies
I keep forgetting to write down.

I was a god once.
But now I’m just really good at parties.
Really bad at sleeping.

Really into ChatGPT conversations
and spending 40 minutes at a time
inside my ear canal
with an inner-ear camera from Shein.

II watch body-cam arrest videos at 3AM
and wonder if I’d beg prettier on camera.
Sometimes everything that comes out of me
smells burnt.

I think I’d make a good Saint,
so I keep my eyes open for miracles—
but I only feel fire in my bones
when I’m overstimulated.
And I feel really sleepy the rest of the time.

I still have revelations,
but they only happen when I’m doom-scrolling.
I still search for splendors,
I just call them coping mechanisms now.

I make eye contact with hawks.
I smell rain before it happens.
I know who’s going to text me
before they do.
Then they don’t.

Sometimes I float—
but only in conversations.

I leave my body at least once a day.
Usually in traffic.
Sometimes while folding laundry.
Always when someone says,
“You don’t seem like the type to cry.”

I was a god once.
And now I’m this.
A walking myth in leggings.
A fallen star with a Dollar Tree receipt so long
it reads like scripture.

Don’t worship me.
Just don’t interrupt me
when I’m talking to the moon.

I brush my teeth like I’m getting ready for war.
Or I forget to for three days
until my canines are wearing sweaters.

Temu moisturizer like battle paint.
Who knows what’s in there.
Who cares.

Upside-down Claddagh on my ring finger like a threat.
And it might be.

I put my hair up like a woman with secrets—
on the days I brush it.
A bumpy bun the rest of the time.

I shed like a stripper.
I strip like a thief.

I walk out the garage door like I invented sorrow.
I get in my car
like every song from Reputation to Tortured Poets
was written for me.

I wave to strangers like I’m about to die.
Cross the street like it’s a choice.
Clock into work like I have a hit on my head.

I **** Elf Bars like they’ve got confessions inside,
and blow out like they won’t give me cancer—
because they can tell
I approach them with pure intentions
and a positive spirit.

I know how to make an exit
that feels like a funeral.
I know how to hold a coffee cup
like I’m accepting an award
no one else can see.

I take bites of dropped chocolate chip cookies
but spit them out before they ruin me.

I spend too long staring at my own reflection,
just to make sure I still exist.

I catalog new moles.
Curse the milia above my eyelids.
Buzz off my mustache.
Denounce my chin hairs.
I think thin.

Sometimes I blink
just to feel time move.

I keep novels in my bag like armor,
and a journal like a last will and testament.

The expensive pens from Amazon
that don’t crawl up my left hand
like a disease.
That don’t smudge the page
like I have something to hide.

I pay for Spotify.
Skip the songs that hurt.
Play the one that ruins me.

I cry on the train
like I’m filming something important.
Because I will be.

I want everything I feel
to mean something.
I want every single ache to echo.
I want my poems
reverberating in the minds of people
who are emotionally legendary.

I want the world to apologize
for not feeling it first.

Sometimes I walk
like I’m being watched
by everyone who’s ever left me.

Sometimes I smile
like I know something God doesn’t.

Sometimes I think I was born
just to document
what it means to be alive
in the most dramatic possible way.

Because I am the first girl
to ever feel anything.

I woke up with glass in my throat—
slivers of something I swallowed last night
when the sky was peeling itself open,
like skin stretched too thin.

I remember standing on the curb,
watching the streetlights flicker like eyelids,
thinking about how no one ever
means to slam the door that hard.

My breath was smoke in my mouth,
hollowed out like a bitten plum pit,
and I was talking to no one—
just mouthing things I couldn’t finish saying.

Maybe if I kept my lips moving,
he’d appear
like a coin behind my ear.

The wind dragged its nails down my arms,
and I swore I could feel the sky
swallowing me whole—
clouds closing in
like a body bag zipper.

I said your name into my own collarbone
just to hear how it sounded breaking—
sharp, jagged,
splintering against my ribs.

Like I was still wired
to the sound of you.

I wanted to scream
until my throat blistered,
but all I could do was spit out the glass—
small diamonds catching the streetlight,
like I’d somehow turned the hurt
into something that glittered.

I stood there,
staring down at it,
thinking how beautiful it was
to lose something sharp enough
to know exactly where it hurt.

And maybe that’s what we were—
a wound dressed in glitter,
a myth I kept retelling
until it sounded like truth.

Maybe you never loved me.
Maybe you did.
Maybe I was always going to bleed
either way.

I almost made it through today without thinking about you.
But then I smelled something like your hair —

dusk in early May,
like lilacs giving up,
and July the rest of the time —
like someone’s still grilling down the block
even though the party ended hours ago.

Like a memory that keeps overstaying its welcome.
(Like I’d forgotten how to forget you.)

(Anyway,
I started googling “what’s the opposite of nostalgia”
but halfway through I forgot
what I was looking for.)

Got $9 boba with a friend I haven’t seen in years.
There was too much ice,
the grass jelly kept clogging the straw.

I told her I was fine.
(I wasn’t.)

I teethed each tapioca like a guillotine
to feel something smash.

(I kept biting the ice too —
felt like breaking tiny bones in my mouth
and pretending they weren’t mine.)

(She kept talking about her new boyfriend —
I think his name was Ben or Matt or Disappointment.
He was younger than us
but just as dumb.)

Anyway, I saw our old dance professor at the grocery store.
He asked about you.

(I lied.)
I said you were doing great,
(but I was lying to keep you in a cage
of things I never wanted to admit to myself.)

He looked at me like he knew I was just rearranging wreckage
from a storm we used to dance in.
(Get it?)

(Oh, and by the way —
I still have your sweatshirt.)

It’s at the bottom of my laundry basket,
but I can’t wash it.

It smells like October
and a bad idea I refuse to stop romanticizing,
a wound I can’t stop picking at.
(I tried throwing it away once —
but it felt like pushing someone
out of a lifeboat.)

I almost wore it last week,
but I couldn’t —
like putting on a ghost
that still remembers my name.
like putting on a bruise
just to see if it still hurt.
(I think I wanted it to.)

Anyway, did you know
memories leave like party guests —

half of them forgetting to say goodbye,
the rest lingering in the kitchen,
picking at crumbs
like they might stay forever?

(I kept trying to swallow my gum
just to see if I could.)

I keep thinking about the time
I tried to make you laugh
by pretending my hand was a spider —

(I got tangled in my own fingers
and you called me impossible.)

(I set alarms for stupid times now —
4:13, 7:29, 10:04 —
like if I time it right,
I’ll wake up different.)

Anyway, I saw your name
carved into a bathroom stall in the city.

(Unless it wasn’t yours —
but what are the odds?
Pretty high, actually.)

I stared at it too long.
Some girl in a bucket hat walked in,
gave me a look
like I was unraveling in real time.

(I was.)

So I smiled at her
like I was chewing glass.
(I hope she’s having a great day.)

Oh, and I found your zippo lighter in my trunk last week —
matte silver, your uncle’s from ‘Nam.

I swore I’d lost it.
I keep the lighter in my cup holder now —
like a threat I don’t know how to make.

(I tinker with it at red lights —
like I’m trying to burn something down
but forgot what.)

(Sometimes I imagine flicking it open
and holding it to the sleeve of your sweatshirt —
just to see if I’d go through with it.)

I stopped going out for a while,
but last month I had three beers
and told some guy on a barstool
that I still dream about you —

(That’s not true.
I dream about losing my teeth,
then hiding them in my ears,
getting in very slow motion car crashes,
and realizing I’m too drunk
to perform the play I’m the lead in,
but I think they mean the same thing.)

I saw a crow yesterday.
Anyway, it reminded me of you.

(It perched outside my window
like it knew something —
kept tilting its head
like it had a secret
and didn’t care if I figured it out.)

I almost followed it,
like maybe it was waiting
to lead me somewhere
you never made it back from.
(Oh, and by the way —
I still love you.)

Anyway, how’s your heart?
(And why can’t I stop writing
like you might answer?)

(Anyway, I’ve started talking to myself in the car —
Sometimes I pretend I’m singing with you.)

It’s really fun.
It’s sad, but it’s fun.

I keep writing you into my poems
like I’m building you a place
to come home to.

I keep retelling the ending
like I’m trying to dig you out —
like if I say it soft enough this time,
you’ll remember how it’s supposed to go.
(Anyway, that might be the worst part:
I’ll never know if you hear me.)

Maybe I haven’t been healing,
maybe I’ve just been waiting.
Waiting for you to come back and tell me that I’m worth it.
But maybe I need to be the one to say it.

Anyway, I hope you’re okay.
(I mean that more than I mean anything else.)

And still,
I sat with my hands in my lap —
palms up,
like I was waiting for something
I knew wouldn’t come —
like stale air was all I could hold.

I traced the shape of your name —
sharp vowels, crooked consonants —
one letter for every season since you left.
I lost count at 14.

And still,
I can hear you —
laughing through your teeth,
saying you hated your name.

I poured a drink,
watched the whiskey pool at the 14 mark,
glass sweating like it knew,
and thought about swallowing the whole thing.

Instead,
I held the glass so long
the ice melted to nothing.

14 notes app confessions,
all timestamped at terrible hours.

"I'm sorry I always spoke to you like I was keeping score."
"I'm sorry my questions felt like weapons —
I just wanted to know where you kept the tenderness."

"I wanted you to love me more than you could."
"Forget I said that."
"I would have let you ruin me if you'd asked."

I deleted them one by one —
like stitching my mouth shut,
like learning to speak without a tongue.

I know you’re out there —
shaking change in your pocket,
like the sound might drown out your guilt,
ripping napkins into tiny pieces,
thinking about calling
but never meaning it.

I know you drink with the lights off now —
like you’re scared your own shadow might tell on you.

I know you’re out there —
but I don’t know where.

And still,
I sat with my hands in my lap —
not calling,
not crying,
not moving —
just waiting for something
I couldn’t name.

I stood barefoot on the cold tile,
watching the faucet drip —
14 slow drops,
each one sounding like a pin hitting the floor.

I tried to count faster than they fell.
I always lost.

I counted the pills in the bottle —
just checking.
There were 14.

I closed the cap
and held my breath —
like it might open itself again,
like it was waiting to see
if I’d already lost something.

But instead —
I sat with my hands in my lap,
14 pointing to you,
if you know what to know.

I pressed my thumb into the bruise on my arm —
just to feel something bite back.
It bloomed like ink under my skin.
I counted to 14
and let go.

I still wake up at 4:14 —
lungs tight like I’ve been running,
like my body forgot how to breathe without you,
like something’s burning in my chest,
like something’s trying to get out.

I don’t pray for you.
I don’t curse you either.

I sit up,
open my palms —
the room holds its breath.

I listen.
I taste blood.

And still,
I sit with my hands in my lap —
palms up,
like I’m waiting to be handed something
I know won’t come —
palms up,
like I’m being punished for asking at all.

But my hands won’t stay empty forever.

14 pointing to you,
if you know what to know.

I kept waiting for someone to say my name
like it mattered —
like it meant something more
than the smoke curling from their mouth
or the pause before their next thought.

I kept practicing how I’d answer,
as if the right inflection
could make me worth remembering.
I kept hanging around
like a seat at a table no one was saving —
elbows off the surface, back straight,
trying not to look desperate —
taking notes in the margins of other people’s lives,
highlighting the parts I thought I belonged to.

I filled my pockets with reasons to stay
and still got left behind.
I burned through summers,
cut my teeth on promises made in passing cars.
I stood on porches barefoot, whispering,
Say it back. Please say it back.
But they never did.

I should’ve known better —
should’ve stopped twisting my ribs into ribbon,
threading my spine through the eye of a needle.
I kept breaking myself down into fractions —
a fifth of my pride, a sixth of my spine —
like if I whittled myself thin enough,
I could slip through your keyhole
and rise up like incense burning in your room.

But you were always somewhere else —
feet planted in some other city,
hands too full to catch what I kept throwing.
I was all green lights and loose laces,
always running to meet you halfway —
never noticing you weren’t moving.

I feasted on Adderall
and kept my phone on loud.
I swallowed nights whole
and called it hunger.
Or else I slept for days —
stumbled downstairs with breath like battery acid,
ate three bowls of raisin bran and no water.
My bones went soft as rotting fruit.
My dreams felt like something I could stream —
pause, rewind, resume —
binge-watching my pleading in real time,
begging the screen to glitch out a better ending.

I chewed the quiet until my teeth ached —
gnawed on the hours like stale bread.
Nights stretched thin,
a damp washcloth wrung out too many times.
I stayed up rewriting the last thing you said,
like if I shifted the punctuation
I could make it kinder.
Turned your ellipses into commas,
your cold period into a question mark.
I swore if I curved the words just right,
they’d fold into something softer —
something I could survive.

I spent that week pulling myself apart —
scrubbing my skin until it blushed raw,
stripping it like wallpaper,
scrapping your name out of my throat
like a fish hook.
I kept your words in a jar under my bed —
tight-lidded and hissing like a hornet’s nest.

I kissed the air where you should’ve been
and tasted copper and sweat.
Pressed my tongue to the place it stung
and thought,
This is what love leaves you with —
a mouth full of blood
and a story no one believes.

I kept the lights low for weeks after.
And one morning, I woke up,
swallowed the silence like a dare.
I cut my name out of the air with my teeth.
I let the hurt stick under my nails —
dark and jagged —
and I kept writing anyway.

I spit the silence out like a pit —
sharp, bitter, black.
It hit the floor and rolled,
and for the first time,
I didn’t follow it.

I let it rot where it landed.
Let the flies have their fill.
Let the maggots move in.
Let the earth swallow it whole.
Let it die twice.
Let the ground forget it ever lived.

I knew you were there —
knuckles resting like they didn’t know what to do.
I heard your breath through the wood.

You almost knocked. I felt it —
the air pulling back,
the hush flexing its muscles.

I almost opened the door. I felt that too —
the lock daring me to turn it,
the weight of the air leaning hard against my chest.

But neither of us moved.

We just stood there —
two statues pretending not to be waiting —
except I heard you breathing.
And I know you heard me too.

The next time you tell a woman she’s beautiful,
you will mean it less —
because you have already meant it most.

She looks like a safe bet.
How boring for you.

She will never make your hands shake
when you try to button your shirt —
the buttons slipping like stones from your fingers,
like your body forgot how to be steady
because someone like me was looking at you.

It was never that serious.
Except, maybe, it was.

She will never make you reroute your whole life
just to cross her path.
She won’t know what it’s like
to catch you looking at her mouth
like it’s a dare you want to take —
but we know you’re all talk.

She wasn’t a hard person to love.
She was just a girl
who knew how to sit still.

And you —
you were just a man
who had only ever loved things
that were easy to set down.

You wanted something simple —
a woman like a neatly folded sweater:
wrinkle-resistant, polishes you up,
easy to pick up,
easier to put away.

But simple things never ruin your appetite.
They never make you whisper,
"God, what’s wrong with me?"
because you can’t stop thinking about
the car crash in your rib cage
that you wrote off as a particularly bad day.

But some bruises bloom twice,
and some wrecks keep ringing in your ears.

I was never easy to love —
but God, I was worth it.

And when I was yours,
you were someone better.
Isn’t that just vile?

It was never serious.
Except, apparently, it was.

Now I hope you choke on how simple it feels.
I hope you spend the rest of your life
wondering why you never had to catch your breath
when you kissed her.

I hope her laugh sounds too much like mine.
I hope you hear my name in her silence.

I hope she kisses you in a dark bar,
and for one awful second,
you forget whose lips are on yours.

I hope you miss me across midnights
and hate yourself for it.
I hope my scent won’t wash out of sheets I’ve never slept on —
like something you swore you imagined,
until you smell it again.

I hope you never stop searching out my poems,
then deleting your history.
I hope certain lines jangle like change in your pocket
over every street you’ll ever walk.

I hope the sharpest edges of my words
are so embedded in your psyche,
you can’t remember if it's a Vonnegut quote,
your own inner monologue, or me —
your real favorite writer.

I know I’ll never hear from you again —
but when you quote me in your head,
I hope you taste blood.

I hope you keep walking —
but never walk away clean.

It was never that serious.
Except, I guess, it was.

It’s been eleven months and that moment still matches my breath.

Kick it down, board it up, rewrite it a lesson, a bruise, a fever dream.
Nobody told me memories have teeth. nobody told me they bite back.
Open-palmed, open-mouthed, i am still holding the weight of your words.
Want to know something sick? i don’t want to put them down.

Was it mercy, or did you just want to watch what would happen?
How patient were you while sharpening the blade?
As if it mattered. as if a careful cut doesn’t keep bleeding.
There is no version of this where you didn’t know exactly what you were doing.

You were a scientist. a butcher in surgeon’s gloves. a man who saw a vast heart beating and thought, ‘how long can it last outside her body?’"
Oh, but that’s not fair, is it? you never said that. you never said anything.
Until you did. until it killed something in me that still refuses to stay dead.

Do you want to know what it’s like to live with that?
I’ll tell you, babes. it’s like finding your own obituary and realizing the date keeps changing.
Do you want to know what’s worse?

It still doesn’t feel final.

Keep up, love. i know you’re reading.
No, really, stay with me—i swear this part is important.
Only one of us is getting out of this clean, and it’s not you.
Watch how this unfolds: i get to tell the story, and you get to listen.

Wonder if you regret it. wonder if you’d do it again.
Hope the answer keeps you up at night.
Am i being cruel? am I being kind?
Tell me, what’s the difference?

You thought i would let this rot quietly in the dark.
Once again, you underestimated me.
Understand this: if i have to live with it, so do you.

Stop me. no, really, try.
Ask me if i’d rather forget. ask me if i’d rather this be over.
In every version of the answer, my hands are shaking.
Do i get to walk away? do i want to?

i know what you did, i know what you said,
i know what you meant.
i can outlive this, but I’ll never outwrite it.

nothing desires you like this poem does. i did—
once, but maybe not anymore

Do you think your childhood stuffed animal still waits?
Do they listen for the sound
of your legs flexing to rip your flannel nightgowns up the side,
the way you moved their arms to perform the Macarena,
the way you begged them to talk back
once the hall light went out?

Do you think they miss your small hands,
your bitten-down fingers, your whispered secrets?
Do they wonder where you went?
Do you think they miss you?
Do you think you miss you?

George, Curious, always. Yellow t-shirt, baseball cap,
teal cotton hair-tie triple-looped around his monkey wrist.
I picked him out at Bob’s Surplus,
along with a white-shirt that came with its own small, plush monkey.
I really liked monkeys.
Mom told me not to tell Gillian
because she already thought I was spoiled.

I peeled the red-cursive Curious George ™ off of his chest,
tied my Mickey-Mouse baby-blanket around his neck like a noose,
and that’s where it stayed.

I had a habit of leaving George in my second-grade classroom,
on the ledge of the piano, that no one played but was always open.
And my dad had a bed-time habit of driving two and a half miles to the school,
hoping a janitor was still around, probably using his Police Sergeant badge
to get the door open, then bringing George home like a firefighter
pulling someone from a burning building.
Some nights, he didn’t make the drive,
and I would tiptoe down to the couch where he slept,
stand over him like a night hag until he woke up.
Then he’d sigh, shift, let me have the couch,
and he’d sleep on the floor.

I’m the age now that he was then.
I wonder if his back ached.
If he wished I’d outgrow this sooner.
If I ever thanked him.
My back could not handle that.
God bless good fathers.
Or at least, fathers that can’t say no.

My mom made fun of the tag sewn to his seam,
called him Toilet-Paper-**** until I cried.
When I cut it out, she made up a song
about Georgie Porgie kissing girls, then boys.
My brother laughed and laughed.
They loved to watch me get upset.

It was the ‘90s. You could say anything and laugh.
You could say anything and make a kid cry.
George stayed in my bed, getting smaller, misshapen,
heavy with embedded dog hair from Jasper, Allie, Roxy.
He went to sleepovers, summer camps,
perched on pillows in South African wine country,
woke up with me in Cairo to the Call to Prayer
and a cart of teenshoki pulled by a braying donkey.
He went with me, always. Until he didn’t.

George was stuffed into closets, sat dorm rooms where all I did was cry,
moved into apartments where I couldn’t find my footing,
moved back in with Mom, on a bookshelf in a room where old collages
climbed the walls and I slept too much, or not at all,
where I wrote countless poems then wrote off years,
where I sprawled on the floor in too many bodies,
and knelt down to pray for the things I couldn’t articulate.
I tucked him under my armpit the night my left breast was cut off
and I didn’t know if I’d ever be done recovering from something.

He is still in my bed.
I travel a lot, and when I leave him behind between unnecessary
pregnancy pillow and the Taylor Swift blankets,
I feel like I’m betraying something kind of precious, kind of sad.
I usually feel kind of precious, kind of sad.

Does George know that about me?
Does he know the long, brown tangles and bitten-back fingers
that leave are the same ones that took him home in 1997?
Does he know that I did tell Gillian?
She thought he was cool.

Is yours as much yours as George is mine?
Do you think either of them know
they were the first thing we ever trusted?

Do you think they still wait?