i thought it’d be poetic
to leave you the same way i found you,
with a contentless text—
a simple entered space
(i knew you wouldn’t catch it)
although you seem to be someone
who thinks very deeply about all someones,
your thoughts about me are puddles
disguised as over-complimenting oceans

and i really do not know
what i am or what i’ve been to you,
or if i’ll be able to keep myself away
from you, or why you’d drive hours
to see me in the middle of the night
when you “plan on kissing at least one
girl in the next three months,”
(could care less if it’s me)

"what would i be waiting for," you asked.

i’m barefoot, chasing a train i know
is on tracks that lead away from where
i want and need to be (but i liked the way
it felt when your hand touched mine)

glad i never gave you any piece of my heart,
because you’re the type of boy who’d
rip it to shreds, hide your claws
behind your back, and tell me that
i should’ve seen it coming
(though you would’ve been right)

maybe you’re just bored,
and that’s why you decorate
your skin with ink and don’t care
about whose lips you’ve touched,
and i wish i could figure you out,
wish i could draw a perfect portrait
with my words (or even just
my thoughts) of who you are,
but i won’t pretend i know you

i hate you and your ***** tattoo
(but i don’t really hate you,
i hate the way i let you make me feel.)

I think the scent of bug spray on my palms will now forever remind me of you and the late night (early morning) we spent sitting in your car, drawing awfully unskillful portraits on the back of each other’s hands in 
dim light and 3 a.m. stillness. (I wonder if you could tell that doodling on your skin was just an excuse to touch you.) I wanted so badly to let my fingers find yours 
as we laid back in our seats 
and peeked out the rolled down 
windows at the infinite stars scattered above us in the 
early August night sky. I told you I wouldn’t kiss you, 
because I know my heart and 
how relentlessly it would 
replay how your lips felt on mine, and how it would ache knowing
 you couldn’t be mine,
 so I let you kiss my cheek instead,
 and the half a moment that I felt 
your unshaven face brush mine in the middle of the street at five in the morning feels like a fake memory. When you looked at me, I wanted to hide, because I was too afraid to read what words might’ve been written in your eyes, but I felt so content listening to the 
deep tone of your voice 
mix with the obnoxiously loud crickets singing in the trees 
surrounding us. I could’ve sat there with you till the stars disappeared and the sun took their place, but you walked me back home, and you left in the dark, and now I’m sitting in my bed thinking about how the hours between 2 and 5 a.m. have never felt so full.

i don’t want to be someone who writes in pencil
and eats too slowly and walks with eyes that
are glued to the sidewalk and tops of strangers’ feet
i’ve been underwater for so long that
i’ve forgotten lungs are meant
to be filled with air; exhaling seems
more like something found
on the second star to the right, rather
than a process that is meant to be
done twenty-three thousand times a day

i feel like an old woman who
looks in the mirror and all she can see
are wrinkles and white hair and tired eyes and
the absence of who she used to be

but i am not someone who turns away
from sunsets and pretends
that darkness is all i’ve ever known;
someone who thinks
the sun will never rise again

because the sun will rise again—
the words hiding inside of me will
find their way out, because
i cannot hold my breath forever

i am not someone who writes in pencil
and erases the bits that are too
honest and too imperfect and too real
to claim as thoughts of my own

i cannot keep my lips pursed and
hands tied behind my back,
i cannot keep pretending i am
a shadow of who i used to be

my tomorrows hold suns much
brighter than ones that have risen
over horizons of my past;
i have not reached the summit yet

there is so much more me
for me to become

each day, i am new.

i guess you only like girls who are broken
and want to be hurt, like your hands
around her neck, want
bruises and cuts
in the shape of a heart,
inhaling and choking on your affection
like she needs it to breathe

translucent skin stretched across
veins that pump nicotine and you
you, you, you, you, you

judgement clouded by hyper-dependent
infatuation and the need to heal her
hollowness, although you’ll only ever be
another teardrop on her pillowcase
while she hums herself to sleep
with midnight lies

“the loss of you would be the loss of my life”

and the saddest part
is that i almost let myself fall
back into becoming that
lifeless, empty girl
once more because i thought it might
make you love me again.

i found you
but you’ve found
someone else
so i will not let you know

i’m choking on
questions like
was i foolish for
thinking your heart
could still beat for me?
and
am i selfish for
wishing it did?

i found you
but i know
you are better off
with me hiding
in the trees

i will not let you know.

when i asked if he had any tattoos, he said
not yet. but if i do, it’ll be to do with God or you.

it has been
76 days
since he
scratched
out
my name
from
his heart
and moved
onto
you

it’ll be to do with God or you.

i wonder if that line gave you butterflies, too.

it’s difficult
to romanticize the past
or even
remember it as
genuine
when i keep discovering
more and more each day
that everything
you said,
and everything you
promised,
and everything
i thought was true,
was not.