i don’t love him, not really.
but i like him a lot.

i don’t like you, not at all.
sometimes, i think i hate you.

but somehow
i still love you.

it’s weird

i’m trying so hard to be okay

it’s killing me to know
we will never have what we used to.
nothing will ever be the same again.
no more late-night conversations,
no endless support,
no hopeless love—
at least, not with you.

maybe it’s for the best.
there was pain tangled in you,
and i didn’t care then.
i guess i should now.

but still, the need lingers—
to tell you this,
to share, to overshare,
the way we used to.
but things are different now.
would it be wrong to say it?
would it even matter?

it feels pathetic,
writing this like i lost you,
like you were ever mine to lose.
but it still feels like heartbreak,
even though your heart
was never in it like mine was.

i think i was your priority once.
oh, how times have changed.
and sometimes, i wish i could go back—
i was sad, lonely, drowning,
but i had you.
it might have been enough for me,
but it was never enough for you.

now i try to replicate what we had,
but nothing ever fits.
it still stings when you joke
about how your friends think we’re dating,
because maybe we could have been.
but we weren’t.

i don’t love you.
but i used to.
and i don’t love you anymore—
but i wish i did.

if you ask me how i am,
i will repeat, reuse, recycle
the same phrase over and over,
slipping from my tongue
like it was the truth.

“i’m good.”
on occasion, “i’m tired.”
sometimes, “i’m happy.”
but never, “i’m sad.”

the lie is engraved, imprinted, etched,
so when someone asks,
“i’m good” comes easy—
because why would i be sad
if my life is perfect,
ideal, flawless?

but then i remember—
when you’re drowning,
it doesn’t matter if it’s ten feet or twenty.
the bottom line is,
you’re still drowning.

so maybe next time,
instead of “i’m good,”
i’ll tell the truth.
because when you’re drowning,
someone might save you.

a secret im too scared to share with anyone
except random strangers on the internet:
i wish i had an eating disorder.
i would be sad
but at least i’d be skinny.

im sorry.
i really am.

i don’t know what i’m supposed to do
with a body that doesn’t feel like mine,
always too much, always too little,
but never just right.

i cut away pieces of myself
yet i’m still too much.
it feels wrong, always wrong.
i look and see nothing but flaws
clinging to my skin like it’s suffocating,
i hate it for just existing.

i look at my reflection and feel disgusting,
a canvas of mistakes
that i can’t seem to wipe away,
no matter how hard i try.

i don’t write about it.
the music, the endless rehearsals,
the way the saxophone feels in my hands
like it’s breathing with me.
i don’t write about the late nights,
the competitions, the friendships forged
in the chaos of scales and solos.
instead, i let it live in the spaces
between my words,
where the sound lingers,
but i never let it spill onto the page.

maybe it’s because i’m scared.
scared i’ll sound like a nerd,
or that you will underestimate my potential,
or maybe that the music i love
will turn into something
i have to explain.
so i leave it unspoken,
a quiet symphony only i hear,
never written,
never shared.

i think i’m over it now.
not because i’ve stopped missing you,
but because i’ve learned how to carry it,
how to let the weight settle without sinking.

you are still there, in my dark, lonely moments,
in the way i am forever changed,
in the way i almost reach for my phone
before remembering there’s nothing left to say.

maybe i’ll always miss you,
but i think i can live with that.

i always know it’s getting bad
when i start chewing on the tie of my sweatshirt.
i think it’s called an
aglet,
but all i know is,
it’s fraying like
me.

seventeen feels like a standing in a doorway,
too old to go, too young to stay.
it’s realizing you’re easier to reach than you thought,
but still, no one does.

seventeen feels like the silence that comes after sending a text,
but never getting a response.
like looking across the room,
only to meet his disgusted gaze.

seventeen feels like things are getting serious now
but you’re not ready to accept that.
it’s the ache of knowing you’ve outgrown this place
but you’re simply not ready to let it go.

seventeen feels like boys that love me
but they wouldn’t if they knew me at all.
loving one that’s only falling apart,
who took a piece of me with him when he left.

seventeen feels like knowing you’ll miss this,
but not being quite sure why you would.

is this what growing up is like?
losing a piece of myself,
over and over?
because if so,
i don’t want to anymore.

i wish i could feel it
the ache of not being enough
the way it once cracked me open

but now
there’s only silence
an emptiness where sorrow should live

nothing breaking

nothing healing

just

n u m b n e s s

still

today i realized
how easily i can be manipulated
and still
i let it happen

how could anyone love an eliza
when it stumbles off my tongue
like it doesn’t belong to me?

i’m easy to hold,
but impossible to reach

shoveling the snow at 10 tonight,
because your parents aren’t home,
and i guess that’s what you do
when you’re 17.

you turn your back,
feel the sharp betrayal
of a snowball,
barreling from your sister’s hands.

grabbing the sleds,
saying just once.
is that what you do when you’re 17?
or am i still a child?

you walk the neighborhood.
the cold bites, exhilarating.
but the snow feels heavier somehow,
emphasizing the absence
of something you can’t name.

i remember the sweet honeysuckle days
when they would ask me
what i wanted to be when i grew up,
and i would say,
with the confidence only innocence provides,
“an author.”

i can’t say that i haven’t held on
to that youthful desire—
no, it lingers in the back of my mind,
a dream that glows dimmer with every year.

but as i’ve grown older,
as life has gotten less colorful
and my words feel like shadows
of what they used to be,
i’ve realized that some dreams
are better left as dreams.

perhaps it isn’t meant to be—
perhaps i was only ever meant to write
for myself,
to weave a world where no one else
has to live but me.

am i a poet?
because lately, i don’t think so.
no longer do i have the strength
to write more than a couple lines.
all i feel is despair,
and the desperate need to be alive again.
am i even a poet?
maybe i’m not.
maybe i’m just someone
who writes down their pain
and calls it art.

i could fill a library full of novels about you

tonight is my last night being 16,
and the air feels heavy,
like it knows what i’m leaving behind.
i would pay everything i have,
every dollar, every secret,
every scar,
just to go back.
back to scraped knees instead of broken hearts,
to believing every birthday was magic,
to running without wondering
where i was going.
but time is cruel,
and childhood is a price you can’t refund.

you said you didn’t understand me
because you can’t think of a reason i should be sad for.
how do i explain depression
to someone who only knows sunlight,
whose heart has never grown heavy with rain,
who has never felt the weight of nothing at all?

you can’t understand,
because you’ve never fought your own mind,
never tried to build joy
from the rubble of yourself.
how do i explain?
i don’t.

i am breaking down,
a flood behind my eyes,
a weight i cannot carry,
a silence i can’t disguise.

the walls feel too close,
my thoughts too loud—
a scream that no one hears
in a room without a crowd.

this is the end.
this is all there is.

i want to stop bleeding,
but the only one who’d understand
is the reason i start again.
there’s no one left to hold the weight
but me, and i’m so tired.

yeah, call me a ****.
it must be why i’m not only afraid of intimacy,
but any sort of physical touch as well.

it’s snowing,
but not enough to cover the ground,
not enough to stick.

just like me—
falling, trying to matter,
but never enough.

how do i go back to when i was happy…?

my new year’s resolution
is to take my medicine every night

why would i not take it
if it keeps me whole?

i don’t know
i wish you could tell me

december 26 is the saddest day of the year.
the wrapping paper is gone, the songs have faded.
yesterday, the house was full of light,
but now it feels hollow,
like joy was something borrowed
and the owner came to collect.

it’s the inevitable comedown of christmas.
a year stretches out before you,
but you know it won’t be the same.
the world moves on,
the magic grows thinner,
and you’re left holding memories
that feel heavier than the wait.

the year unwraps its brightest cheer
in frosted lights and candle’s glow,
as christmas waits till we’re all near,
its warmth the last the year will show.

the story saves its sweetest line
for when the pages nearly close,
the song crescendos one last time,
the crowd erupts, the music goes.

the journey feels like it’s complete
when weary feet at last arrive,
and even meals reserve their treat
for final bites that make us thrive.

why does the best so often wait,
as if to tease, as if to mend?
perhaps it’s just life’s quiet way
of saying joy is worth the end.

i felt
happy
today

i will not
let myself
ruin it

the vacuum hums,
and i feel it in my chest—
a restless kind of anger,
like a match about to strike.

maybe it’s because the sound
reminds me of yelling,
of my mom’s voice tearing
through the air like it had teeth.
when i hear it now,
i want to scream back,
but there’s no one here to blame.

the only time i can stand it
is when my hands are on the handle,
when i’m in control of the noise.
maybe that’s the metaphor:
it’s not the sound,
but the power to make it stop.

the snow falls, but it doesn’t stay
even december can’t make me whole again

the space between us
isn’t just miles—
it’s the stories i can’t tell you in person,
the way your laugh feels quieter
when it’s filtered through a screen.

i wonder if you ever think about
how different things used to be,
when we could share a joke
and feel it echo between us,
not get lost in the distance.

friendship shouldn’t be this fragile,
but sometimes i worry—
how much longer can we hold on
when even time zones pull us apart?

is everyone else broken like me,

just better at hiding it??



or is everyone else okay,

except for me??

they ask why we’re broken—
why teens drown in sadness,
why girls starve themselves,
why lives are lost to silence.
this is why.

her words settle like dust
on the edges of mirrors
i already avoid.

she called me names
i’ve spent years
unlearning.

her voice wasn’t loud,
but it carried—
straight to the part of me
that still believes
every insult
ever whispered.

i tell myself she’s wrong,
but i know i’ll carry this
long after she’s forgotten
she ever said it.