those little words,
and the ones
that came after -
I'm sorry
I made you wait.
your hands in
my hair,
your hands
at my waist -
*but I know
I'm sure.

I spent the better part of our
four years wishing for a miracle
so we could have our happy
ending

how funny to find my miracle
was waking up to realize
I deserve better

and to find that my happy
ending should be much
more than an ending

and that I need no one's
company for that
but my own

you broke me, you know.
it doesn't matter, though.
I've never really been whole
but you left me more of a
battlefield than I've ever
been, and it wasn't until
I was looking at the wreckage
that I really understood
the casualties. and I hate
you for it. I hate that I stand
on the precipice of happiness
and wholeness, and all I can
really see is that battlefield.
all I can really feel is that
vast terrifying emptiness
and not enoughness that you
drowned me in for years. all
I feel is the terror that I'm
going to **** this up,
because I'm not enough. that
I'm going to be left behind
because I'm worth nothing
to no one. and god I never
want to go back to being that
girl I was when I was with you,
the girl whose worth depends
on who she's with. I hated
her. I hated how she catered
to your every whim, I hated
how she swallowed her pride
and her heart every single day
so you could feel good.
you ****** me up and
I don't know how to undo
those years of degrading and
shame and cheating and
lies and anger and misery
and it's the ******* worst
story in the world. the girl
who stayed in the terrible
relationship, and now,
staring down the barrel
of something good,
all I want to do is run.

******* for that.
******* for everything.

he'll wipe the blood from your
chin, tell you you're beautiful
even when your smile splits
from ear to ear. he'll sew your
cheeks back together, tell you
it's okay that your lungs
occasionally collapse and it's
okay that sometimes you
can't breathe, because he'll
fill you with life when you
can't do it yourself and when
you apologize for smearing
your existence all over him,
when you apologize for what
a mess you are, when you
apologize for not being
better, he'll gently take
your face in his palms,
he'll tell you what a beautiful
thing you are, that you're his
mess, and god, baby girl,
you're so worth it.

darling little dolls,
suspended above the stage,
the scuffed toes of their dance shoes
just barely reaching the floor
and I watch you make
them dance, watch their
painted smiles and sad eyes
and their undying loyalty
to the grace of your fingers,
the turn of your wrist.
they dare not ask if you truly
love them, or if you love the
applause at the end
of every performance.

I could tell them, could tell
them about the night I
snuck into the empty
theater, long after the
crowd had emptied and
the lights had gone
out. I saw them lying there,
lifeless without your
careful direction,
left in a heap - unloved,
useless now,
and I'm sure you were off
somewhere, those fingers
bringing some other girls
with painted smiles and
sad eyes
to life.

did you know?
when you laid hands
on this fire skin the
flames that licked
underneath?
did you see the
way your palm
seared itself into
my skin? marks like
that rarely last
but days and
days
and days
later,
that mark is
still there

and god, I realized
how you pulled
me out of that
burning abyss
I realized
you
saved me
from drowning
in this ocean
of myself
and I can't
thank you
enough
but god I'm
sorry for the
way things still come
out of my mouth
like terrified
little
whispers

I'm sorry I'm
still wading in this
river of fear
because I know
you're nothing
like what
came
before
you
but I'm scared
I'm still
there
you know?
that girl
from before
and I are
nothing alike these days but I feel her sometimes creeping under my skin telling me you loved a monster you are a monster he'll never love you nothing will ever be okay just wait for the day he leaves and you forget how to catch your breath

I don't know how to
shut her up, but I know
neither of us deserves
her breathing down our
necks
but know
just know
I am
so grateful
for the way
you don't
put me
back together
but the way you
hold onto me
while I do
it
my
*self

standing in your bathroom,
staring down my own reflection,
at odds with your words and
my own thoughts - the ones where
I don't see the beauty you do,
the ones where you don't feel
the feelings I see in you. that ***
sits in my belly, warm and brave
and desperate for something
else, something you don't want
to offer too soon. you're out there,
quiet and waiting. waiting,
god knows what for. waiting
for the right time, waiting
for the spark of something.
yet no one knows the feel
of my skin better than you,
nor do they know the curve of
my hip. and so you wait. and so
I wait.
and I hope.
the *** in my belly
warms the cold need in my bones
and I will come back to you,
desperate and willing
but still,
you wait.

we are Here.
the little red dot
on the map that says,
you are Here.
but it's almost like
undefined territory
on the map, it's almost
like we're on some new
street that's not on
a map yet. our little
Here dot is floating
out in the middle of
the ocean, it's planted
in the middle of
absolute nowhere
and maybe that's
what we are:
nowhere and nothing.

but god, I'm looking at this
map, and I'm looking at you
and I don't care about any
map. I don't care if we're
planted on it, I don't
care if we are Here or
There or Anywhere
because I'm looking at
you, and you have those
eyes of permanence, those
endless pits of dark
abyss that I want to drown
in and this map means
nothing to me because
you are Here and I am
Here and if we are in the
middle of a ******* ocean
I am begging you to dive.

I emptied myself for
so many of you, only
to realize you were
more than happy to
see my bones
at their barest
and leave me in
pieces, carrying
away the parts that
matter most and leaving
me nothing
in return.

i feel it happening.
i feel myself
falling down that
veritable rabbit hole of
feelings and
vulnerability and
you
and that's
a ******* terrifying
thing, just a dangerous
******* place to be
because god knows
if you'll catch me
or you'll just let
me hit the ground.
not even the ground,
it's like tipping
backwards off this
cliff ledge,
not knowing
whether there's
merciful water down
there to catch me
or jagged angry rocks
waiting to rip me
to pieces.

they gut you, sometimes.
like little fish, like hunted
deer - they don't mean to.
you were the deer they
clipped on the highway,
you were the fish too sick
to release after catch. and
they hold on, they try
to save you. but in the end
the true mercy is the true
end, and so they gut you.

do you understand? did
you see the way I poured
myself out for you? an
ocean of love and want and
need, and it was just food
for the dirt. I ripped myself
open, you ripped me open,
and now this carcass needs
disposal. I don't imagine
I'm worth a wake, hardly
a moment of silence. the
trash heap out back seems
to be a nice enough
place.

is it too soon to say this?
is it too soon to ask you
to stay? I dreamed about
you again last night,
fourth time this week. it
was hardly worth mentioning,
except the way you looked at
me, like maybe I'll never
have to ask you to stay,
because you'll do it anyway.
I don't want you to be a passing
ship, making quiet waves in
the middle of the night, only
to sail away sometime in
the early morning without
saying goodbye. I want to be
your harbor, I want to be the
place you land and realize
this, this place here, was always
meant to be your last stop.
ship becomes house becomes
home. is it too soon to say
this? you know I didn't mean
for this. everything tears
me to shreds, wanting something
so tenuous rips me to shreds
but god, there's something about
you that makes me want anchor.
it makes me want to hold on
for dear life, even if it means
sinking and drowning,
becoming yet another
skeleton laid to rest on
your ocean floor, miles and
miles deep and irretrievable.
it's just that when I close my
eyes, I smell you on my skin.
it's just that when I close my
eyes, I find myself still getting
lost in the bottomless abysses
that are your eyes and I could
stay there forever,
in that dark and beautiful
abyss.

is it too soon to say this?

tell me to let go.
tell you it's like
amputation - yes,
I can learn to live
without that limb
but god, I am
never whole again.
I never liked how
easy it was for you
to strip me of my
choices. never liked
the way your hand
was like tape over
my mouth, the way
you draped your
marionette strings
all over my body.
that cage you built,
I outgrew it faster
than you could have
imagined. it's funny
how easily you erased
me; it's funny, you told
me my love was like
tattoo, permanent and
forever on your skin
but it seems like you
erased it easy as pencil
lead. it's easy to forget
about us, we were so
forgetable. it was
easy to let you go.
I loved you. did I love
you? it's easier to ask
if you loved me, and
I think the answer
to that question is as
complex and complicated
and infinite as this
universe we live in:
yes and no and never
and always. you didn't
fight until I walked
away, and even then
those pulls on that fishing
line were lackluster at
best, and when the line
snapped, you watched
me drift away, like a ship
you never quite planned to
board. or maybe that
was me, watching you
sail away on your little
ship for one. it was supposed
to be for both of us,
but I think it was always
only big enough for you.
it's almost
impossible to disentangle
these wires between us -
the ones where we loved,
the ones where we didn't,
the ones where you left,
and the the last one where
I left. it doesn't matter,
really. our story was
so much ugly, so much
loneliness and anger.

it wasn't like losing a limb,
losing you. it was
more like losing an
entire layer of myself,
a layer I didn't realize
I'd outgrown until I was
looking at its tattered
hems and all the rips
and scars, and how it
stopped fitting so long
ago. I threw it out
the other night, and
my god I didn't think
twice.

when we collide
it will be something
like irate ocean pulverizing
the rocky cliffs, pulling
the earth to its knees.
it will be the silence
when it snows for the
first time around midnight,
the muted air and the
peaceful silence.
it'll be our hands
and it'll be our mouths
and it will destroy entire
universes, and quietly,
afterwards, it will
build them up stronger
than they could have
possibly imagined.

they pried us apart with
knives and tweezers,
extracted every last nerve
and so we drift away.
what am I now?
empty vessel?
empty canvas?

I don't think vessel,
I don't think canvas.
I am an emptiness
unlikely to fill, blank
surface unlikely to
become masterpiece.

I'm something like a
balled up note, with things
like "love you" and "don't
forget the milk" written
on it, crumbled up, fallen
out of someone's pocket
long forgotten. words that
mean everything, but
all at once amount to nothing.

I'm a dried up river bed,
full of footprints and animal
corpses. I am empty, I am
devoid of life, I am...
I am nothing.

and you are gone,
fled the moment the
last tie was cut, a pillar
of relief to be free.
once, you were everything.
once, I was everything.
once.

thank you
for everything.
thank you for all of
our greatest moments,
thank you for our triumphs,
for our growths, for our victories.
and even for our losses, thank you for
the injuries. thank you for loving me, and for
destroying me. because in the wake of you, I have
learned more than I ever could have imagined. I am more
myself than I have been my whole life. you showed me what love
can be, and what love should be, and definitely what love isn't. you
showed me that I could break away from the things that
wreck me. that I can still grow and change and
become a more perfect version of a flawed
and broken girl. thank you for giving
me that strength. thank you for
loving me. thank you for
being the first, and
but the most for
not being my
last.

nothing but
frayed nerves
and liquor.
nothing but a
nightmare I
can't wake up
from.

I am waiting for permanence
to take shape, to be something more
than idealistic fantasy.
because that word sticks to me,
like tattoo, like a thick scar, the kind
your fingertips wander to in
idle moments. I want it to be real,
I want to lose myself in bottomless eyes
and understand that is what
permanence feels like.

you'll find me in that space
where the sun hasn't quite set
while the moon hasn't quite rose,
where dark and light are
somewhat at war with each other,
and their battle spreads across the sky
in violent hues of red and violet
and gold, when only a few stars
are brave enough to to share their
light. you'll find me in that tender
place between sea and sky, you'll
find me in the curve of his palm
where I rest like an empty house
waiting for love to come home.

sometimes losing
what you once thought
you could not stand to be
without
means finding
the things you never
knew you needed.

it's just that you pulled on a loose thread,
the very one meant to unravel me.
and your hands are full of what's left
of me, and I don't think that's what
you meant. but I feel you stitching me
back together, even without meaning it,
even without wanting to. I'm no longer
tattered, in pieces, I'm something
resembling wholeness. I'm something
that stands on her own two feet,
and maybe it'd be better to say I
did it myself, and maybe I did -
but still, you were there and you
tugged hard enough to trigger the destruction
that lead to my recreation.

I kept you in my chest somewhere,
like a little bird in a cage.
you weren't so little though.
you banged around in there,
stretched out far enough to
break my ribs, puncture my heart,
let the air out of my lungs.
maybe you were something like
a stampede of antelope, trampling
everything in your path
simply because you were afraid
of the loud and twisted inner-workings
of the home I tried to give you.
I don't think you meant to shred
your host, but I watched you climb
out of my chest, looking something
between helpless infant and
antichrist and you looked at me.
oh, you looked at me. you held my
hands, you kissed my lips.
and as you watched every bit
of me fall apart, you whispered,
*I don't understand how this
could have happened.

she is the ocean,
giving rise to new moons
and high tides. she
will be the force
to guide you to safety,
to guide you into
the abyss. she
will give you life
and she will
swallow you whole
and while you drown,
while you feel her fingers
pulling the very life
from your skin
you will smile,
you will thank her. because
between going under
and letting go,
she is both destruction
and salvation.

I was drowning
but you never
learned how to
swim.

I am not perfect,
nor do I wish to be.
I want to fall in love
with every single flaw
and I want to fight
relentlessly to shape
this tiny moment of
existence I've been
given into something
meaningful and emerge
from this bottomless pit
an unstoppable force,
fearless and beautiful.

you carved a cavern in my chest,
a hollowed out tomb for
every ghost you ever loved.

love like crime scene,
***** sheets,
blood smeared walls.
swallowed promises
like broken glass but
you're just an exit
wound that refuses
to heal.

my hands are empty
and I hope to fill them
with yours.

I rose from dark water,
untethered from the collapsing
kingdom hidden deep down
at the bottom of the ocean.
my fingers like brittle branches
from grasping onto you for
so long, but my lungs fill
with this fresh air and the
toxicity of your prison
seems to drip from me like
ink. my insides are putting
themselves back together and
I hold the hand that finally
rescued me, and he will wait
until I am clean again.

fill in the empty spaces -
your fingers are brushes
for this canvas and
I am an unfinished piece.

how awful goodbyes are.
do not mistake this as easy -
do not mistake my relief
as happiness in the act.
breaking your heart was
the hardest thing I've ever
done, and I will forever
feel your grief in my bones.

I'm sorry I loved you until
I didn't; I wanted you to be
the permanence etched into
my very blood cells but
nothing ever happens
the way you want it to,
and the way things happened
with you took every last
ounce of me and destroyed it.

so in a way, please understand
that you crafted this undoing.
in breaking my heart over and
over again, you set the foundation
to break your own - and you may
not understand that now, but
I hope someday you look back

and understand the way you broke
the girl who loved you steadfastly,
unconditionally, unquestioningly.
remember that I didn't wake up
one day and decide to love you
no longer, understand you chipped
away at my love until it wasn't
anything anymore. understand
I wanted more than anything in the
world to never hurt you, but you
left me with no other choice.

remember it wasn't me
who wrecked the house we
built together - understand
that you set fire to our bed
long before I left it.

breathe you in deep
like salty summer air
like cold winter, just
before it snows -
feel you on my skin
all the way into my lungs.

trace lines of poetry
into your skin
with my lips
and the barest touch
of my fingertips

take your time,
it's alright to go slow;
but my god I want to know
how it feels
to kiss you.

eventually I'll stop writing about you.
I miss you, in a way. I still love you,
in a way. probably always will.
but after awhile, after it sets in,
you will evaporate. you will stop
being in the foreground of my
waking mind. even now, the space
you occupy is so small. more or less
of a habit, I suppose. the habit
of thinking of someone you loved
for four years. you on my mind
is a knee-**** reaction. I guess I
thought since I did the leaving,
it wouldn't be like this. I thought it
would be like ripping off the band-
aid. the residue that's left rinses off
with a little water, a little soap, a little
scrub. oh, no. you are wound. healing,
but still bruised, still sort of aching.
but you are an exit wound now, the
memory of an injury that will come to
pass. someday, you won't even be
background. you'll be the faintest
whisper of somebody I used to know,
a trace of somebody I used to be.

when you finally let go of me,
let me go with grace.
remember that I loved you.
remember how much.
remember the exact
cadence of my voice
each and every time I said it,
the feel of my palm
against your cheek.
the taste of my lips
on yours. don't forget
how I held you,
and how I held you up.
remember my courage,
remember my strength.

understand this:
letting you go was so
unbelievably hard -
so distressingly painful
that I almost couldn't.

but remember all those nights
you weren't there.
remember the words of those
girls you chose over me,
again and again.
remember the taste of
every lie you ever told me.
keep in mind the company
you kept, and how rarely
you went to me first.
think of my loneliest nights
where all I wanted so
desperately was you -
and how you always wanted
for something else.

and when you sit in anger,
thinking that I gave us up on a
whim. please, hold in your hands
the weight of me and the weight
of my hopes.
because my god, I wanted it to be
you. but everything you ever did
unraveled that boulder of me
until all that was
left was the barest grain of sand.

carry me gently;
I am something of a
fragile little bird
and I trust the weight
of your hands
will not crush me.

I was torn apart so slowly, I barely noticed.
but I was in pieces long before I met him.
I was a lonely, empty shell of a girl when I met him,
already chewed up and spit out by one boy
and by countless others long before either.
when I met him, I was desperate for something
and it blinded me. I met him and I was blind, and so I loved him.
I loved him with everything I had in me,
I loved every ounce of his potential, both real and imagined.
I loved his give no ***** attitude, I loved the way he spoke,
I loved the way he was absolutely
unlike any person I’d ever met.
and this was my tragic flaw:
often enough, “unlike anyone I’d ever met”
seemed more or less to mean
“someone who’s going to rip you to pieces.”
but god, did I love that boy. I
loved him when distance stretched out between us,
I loved him when my phone never lit up and
my message count was at a constant zero.
I loved him when he’d disappear for days and
I loved him even when it felt like loving him was wrenching out my own guts.
something in me was severed,
and I couldn’t find it in myself to understand
that this is not how love is supposed to be.
love isn’t meant to make you lonelier, more miserable, more empty.
love isn't meant to hollow you out, to empty
every part of you that ever mattered.
that escaped me each time he lied,
each time he cheated,
each time his woman of choice reached out to me
to tell me what **** my boyfriend was.
I wish I would have listened.
I wish he wasn’t so brilliant an architect,
because he sure built himself a throne of lies.
locked me so deep into that castle I couldn’t see beyond his walls.
I couldn’t escape, didn’t know how, didn’t know I wanted to.
didn’t know how badly I needed to.
through everything, he was a pillar. he was bravery and
strength and resilience – to me, anyway.
but mostly he was just a clever liar, and I was an easy believer.
he was my religion, and I didn’t question his teachings.
he believed his own fables, though.  
as he crafted, so his lies became his own truth.
We were both blind, foolish idiots.
everyone but me watched me crumble beneath his weight,
and it took too many years for the glass to crack from my own inside,
but I saw it. I saw the mangled mess I’d become
under his kingdom. I saw my bleeding lips and my cracked fingers and
my dead eyes. I saw the monster in him,
the monster that didn’t know any better.
he wasn’t a monster on purpose, he wasn’t evil.
he was just as broken and hopeless as I was – but
my pity, my sympathy, my love couldn’t carry him anymore.
a monster who ignores his own reflection will never change.

and so I left.
I gathered up the remaining shards of my being
and I walked out his front door,
and even as he swore and scream and fought and cried,
I slipped like the ocean through
his desperate,
pleading fingers.

tender little fingertips
too afraid to let go -
tracing at the frail
lines of your bittersweetest
existence.

and they'll tell you
to wait it out
to let it be,
let you sink
while demanding
you rise beyond
hand-drawn lines.

the last time
I felt you slipping-
I felt you slip like
ocean through my
fingertips.
I felt the shift,
and I knew
I'd lose us somewhere
along the line.
I knew the last time
I kissed you,
standing in the rush
of cars and departures
and arrivals,
I knew as I held on
to you with fevered desperation
I knew it was the last time.
I couldn't say it then,
I couldn't say it for awhile,
but somewhere in there
I always knew.

and I'm sorry.
I'm sorry you're
not what I want.
I'm sorry
I can't be what
you need.

I had to let you go,
and it was the hardest
and most freeing thing
I've ever done.

a dance of sorts,
caught in a driftless sea.
fragments of memories
and the people
we used to be.

all those little things
I believed to be fate
turn out to be
simple
coincidence.

if  
this  
is
all   we   ever   get
I   want
*o u t .

the hesitation
between mind and body
here and now,
now and then.
the taste on your lip,
the fear in your eye.

it's the apprehension in this hello,
the distress in this goodbye.

I think I lost us.
I think I emptied my pockets
for you and in turn,
all you gave me were
heavy stones to line them with.

I think oceans filled between us,
I think I sailed away while you
stood on the shore,
collecting stones and
staring at the horizon
instead.

I think I got tired of asking
for what ought to be offered;
you got tired of being asked
for things you couldn't
ever give.

I think I finally understand what
they mean when they say
people grow
in different directions,
because you remain along the dirt
as brush
and I've grown far up these bricks.

this is a losing battle.
this is me, putting down my weapon
and removing my armor
because I cannot stand the
blood pooling at your feet.
this is my surrender because
my wounds are far too deep
to continue this fight.
we will never find common ground,
we will never be eye to eye.
and in this war, victory is losing you
and defeat is losing my life.
which is the nobler sacrifice?
because here, there are no victors.
there is only bloodshed and massacre.

equations
where variables and numbers
and letters find themselves
meaning -
yet we do not.
unsolvable equations,
where your x and my y
never add up to z
where z is grace
and z is perfection
and z is comfort
but these are just
unreal fantasies
these are just irrational numbers
going on and on and on
far off into infinity
because no matter how hard we try
your x and my y
will never be z.

everything is on the table now

matches. kerosene. pen.
paper.

I wrote to you. I swear,
I did.

I wrote your name over
and over until my wrists
ached.

couldn't ever get much
further than that.

you know something, though?
I can't even remember your face.

I remember the scars on your arms
and the freckles on your belly.

I can hear your laugh, I can feel
your skin beneath my palms.

but I can't remember your face.
and it all feels so meaningless now.

because I wrote you that poem once,
and I know you never read it.
the one where I loved you more with
each passing night and I was so afraid
you weren't even missing me at all

and it's all so different now. so much better,
and so much uglier.

I can't lie, because you're right. because
you know me better than anyone.
and it's a god awful feeling to be tired
of someone you love. to not remember
the lines of their face, or the light
in their eyes.

I owe you more than that. I deserve
better than this.

and the ****** up thing about all this babe
is I still haven't written you that letter.
I still don't have any answers.

because I'm empty and angry and
you're lost and lonely and we're miles
apart. might as well be universes.

and I have this fantasy where everything
happened so much better, it happened
right and we were better people and
god it's so beautiful but it's just a *******
fantasy.

because it's four in the morning and
that **** table is on fire
and I'm here typing away at some stupid
poem you're never going to read and
you're waiting for my response to your
gut-wrenching messages.

and I don't understand how we got
here. I don't understand how love
has to ******* up so badly, how
loving someone so much can
never be enough. how you can weather
storm after storm and disaster
after disaster together and still be left
with empty hands and broken hearts.

I used to make wishes at 11:11,
I used to pick up pennies,
holding them tight for luck.
I used to believe in fate.
I used to believe that good things
happened to good people.

there's a word for people like that: naive.
because, "the truth is,
baby, the world is a cruel place."
he told me he was saving me,
sort of like saving a suicide
victim from a moving train.

because he told me he loved me,
because he told me the world was mine.
because he told me he'd do anything for me.
and I believed him.