There is something you will come to realise.
Somewhere between regularly scheduled doctor checkups.
Between first credit cards and first credit card debt.
Somewhere around the second or maybe third serious ex.
Some time after the pipe and several dreams.
Long after all those half-cocked convictions
Declaring who and what and how exactly you will be.
A tad older and only slightly wiser.
Always late to funerals and early at parties.
You are a recovering introvert and you'll relapse, often.
You will always try to be ten degrees from the center of attention.
In fact, your want to be needed often supersedes your senses.
You love often, recklessly, but also selflessly.
Do nearly anything for a smile.
You will sometimes be too quick to anger.
Yet someone's tears will always make you soften.
At times, hurt others with a carelessly uttered half thought.
Balanced well by your excessive apologetic nature
and your undying compulsion to be liked.
You will learn the weight of giving your word
and the cost of failing to keep it too.
You will meet friends that feel like family.
And have times when family feels foreign.
But soon understand either is exactly worth
However much you are willing to invest.
Know that you will still have demons hiding around town.
In the end, we must slay our own monsters.
Be our own heroes.
Because ourselves are the only true thing.
We might be this for eternity
or maybe just this sliver.
All the more reason to try.
People improve in shades and moments.
It's a world of entropy and decay.
It's also a world of birth and hope.
A struggle sure, but one towards improvement.
Always try to be a better self than you are.
Because you are all you have.
Take care. It will be ok.

I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine.
I say it in my head again.
Again.
Out loud.
But just above a whisper.
Repeat it again in the shower.
It gets  lost in the melody.
Mixing in the steam in the background.
Back to the head for shaving and teeth.
Master of using the mirror,
without ever quite looking at myself.
By now I'm remembering you again.
It comes and it goes.
Like a cough like a sneeze like a seizure.
Like a moth to a flame.
                                         Or a maybe an addict.
A bit louder because somewhere,
something lights across my synapses
A face, a laugh, a kiss, a memory.
I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine.
Faster.
Both because I'm late.
And because I'm fearfully close.
Close to that razor fine edge of
put together and hot mess.
I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine.
Keys and gone into the day.
I'll wander the streets.
Because I hope if I listen.
I will hear you too
I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm fine.

I can feel it already,
a steady stream of dopamine.
It's flowing right beneath your skin.
I can tell there will be no wading in here.
I don't know yet if this is harmony
or the calm quiet before the hurricane.
Or if I care one way or another.
Or which one of us is the storm.
I worry because I worry a lot more,
Smile a lot less.
These days I manufacture my happiness.
You do strange things to survive your demons.
Was easier to develop Stockholm, then slay them.
I'm still the same down on his luck kid.
Chasing away ghosts in the streets.
I'm on a cyclical self-sabotage trip.
It's not until you might get what you want,
that you wonder if you deserve it at all.
But it doesn't matter,
I'm already drunk on you.
It never feels the same twice.
But it's the best drug I know.
And truthfully,
You seem worth the overdose.

I've been rereading the words that you've sent me; stumbling over phrases and going in circles around sentences.
Your words at best once flooded my being. At worst, they tore me down after building me up.
Unpredictable love, you're unpredictable.
You pull me in and pique my curiosity and reel my heart in with I love you and then toss me aside.
I'm not good enough but you say I love you, yet what you really mean is that I'm not good enough for you.
Hey, I don't take it personally and maybe that's because I'm used to it.
I'm no stranger to your patterns and antics and behaviors.
I know you better than most anyone.
And I'm a fool for wearing my heart on my sleeve and being honest with you.
I should've known better than to give you an opportunity to build me up and tear me down.
But hey, that don't do anything to me.
You can't break a heart that was never yours to begin with.

i want to drink myself into a place no one can reach me
i want the room to spin so i can sit still and feel the world moving and cracking and tectonic plates shifting beneath my feet
i want to dance to music i don't like when i'm sober
i want to feel as beautiful as i feel when i'm drunk every day
i want to drink until all i am left with is empty cups and happy hiccups and i want to call my exes and tell them how lucky they were to have me and how bad timing was never a good excuse
i want to wrap a telephone cord around my fingers and then my body and i want to feel electricity in my hands and i want the world to spin because i tell it to

there are 2 gigabytes on my phone of voicemails and 99% are from you and i wonder if our inboxes mirror each other or if you deleted the ones i used to send you
i thought i would have a lifetime of "goodnight and i love you"s
now all i am left with is a slow phone and the inability to call anyone

i had words on my tongue and they were pretty enough to be let off their leash
but **** it, i have no energy for beauty and delicacy and heartbreak wrapped in gilded paper
i have hurt, though, and she's scratching at the roof of my mouth
hoping that her claws can be her deliverance
deliver us from evil...
...and forgive us our trespasses
as we forgive those who trespass against us
the lord's prayer is on repeat, a broken record in my head
what goes around comes around,
except i keep getting ******* on
but i put my heart out and give love and hope it'll come back for me
i forgive
but don't get me wrong: i do not forget
every wrong done against me has burrowed down in my mind
hibernating and waiting for winter to end
so they can come out with a fury
i forgive-but-don't-forget every time i was kissed and made to feel special,
then left aside waiting like laundry that's clean but not yet folded
but all the hurt
the dried up sadness caked and cracked like an old mud puddle
the wiped away tears only my shower walls have seen
the thudding breaking
sticks on my desk, a reminder,
that even if things are bad
i am not.
i give kisses and receive receding backs, because
...deliver us from evil...
the tables will turn soon
they always do
and i'm willing to wait for it