I am sun-kissed and I glow in the moonlight,
my eyes reflect like water,
and summer makes me speckle and freckle
and I crave rivers and mountains
and other things that make me beautiful.

I am long-legged like the spiders you hate,
my hair is red like roses and smells like springtime,
I am soft in a way you imagine clouds to be
and I no longer fear you or the dark.

I have grown out of sidewalk cracks,
I am a ******* garden and you can't step on me anymore.

I am too tall to be contained and too beautiful to be detained
and I will never again haunt myself with things I couldn't be.

I am too much to be too little and somewhere you always knew it.

So when you talk to me like you think I still love someone who made me believe I was just an ugly girl,
remember that there are flowers growing inside me,
and I washed the taste of your sharp tongue out of my mouth months ago.

I am an ocean with waves and depths and storms and beauty and there is so much to me that you will never get to see.

You were an anchor weighing me down confining me to one stark place of myself,

I am so much more than you ever saw, I finally know this now.

I've got some more wine,
to forget the words I'm drowning in.
We can share the next glass,
and talk about the way the world is,
and the way it used to be.
When we were ****** up,
making out on the steps of the old elementary school,
and too tall for monkey bars
and too young for bar stools.

I told you about my fathers past,
and you told me about your biggest regret,
about a girl with emerald eyes
and a night you wish you could forget.

I think about the letters I used to write you in my head,
and I used to tell you about this boy and this boy and this boy
and the boy that never was, they boy that used to be, the boy that I have yet to meet,
and all the boys I used to see.

Like the more I said their names, the more I thought they'd disappear,
but I'm just reliving old traumas, re-opening old scars
in a same-****-different-year.

I don't know how to form words, without pulling up old thoughts
and I breath in smoke and it speaks my words with a tongue I'm not fond of.
I let liquor dizzy my dreams, and those nights I sleep the best
and sometimes I wake in the middle of the night and can feel you breathing on my chest.

You're a phantom now,
and ghost of my goodbyes,
the sin of my God bless,
Your unspoken words to late to speak,
when I wished i'd spoken less.

When the nights are fine, and the days are new,
will I still love you like I do?
If you forget about your demons, do they forget about you too?

And when are you coming home, from the war you never left for?
When will I see you holding your head up high?
I think,
you've made me lose my mind.

It's too late to start something new,
and I wish that I could say these words to you.

I had a dream that you wanted to **** me,
you told me you were going to drown me in the lake,
you were going to drive your car off the pier and we were going to die together.
I begged you not to do it,
I was terrified,
and trying to convince you that we could make us work,
you didn't have to do this.
Crying and screaming and trying to get out of your car but you wouldn't let me.

(I got the same feeling in my stomach that I got for our entire year long relationship)
(Like I was trapped and didn't know how to get away from you)

I woke up and I was so happy that I am still 900 miles away and that I never have to speak to you again.

You collected old coins,
and I collect my mother's Polaroids,
and we both think the other has an unhealthy relationship with holding on to the past.

I have shelves of old journals in my garage,
because I like to remember what 13 year old me was so upset about.
You have a box of Pogs under your bed that you won at recess in 4th grade.

My collections collect dust, and the dust collects dead skin from my inability to stop picking my lips when I'm anxious.

I collect your old words, bottle them up and put them on shelves in long rows.
There's two whole jars just filled with the different ways you told me I looked nice today, and three for all the ways you told me you loved me.

You have your old matchbox cars, and you gave me one on my birthday because it was my favorite.

In my closet back home is my mothers prom dress, and my grandmothers wedding gown, and they both smell only like old clothes and nothing of the sweet scented women who once wore them.

My drawers are filled with make-up and I have three or more of every shade of lipstick there is,
and you told me that was excessive and I told you
that there is a difference between
cool-toned red
and warm -toned red
and it all depends on how I'm feeling that day,
and you told me I was crazy.

I still remember
secret handshakes
and I haven't got myself
to throw out the letter you wrote me the day before I left for college.

I am bad at letting things go,
I collect memories
good and bad
and keep them in my mind just close enough to bring into frame when things get too sweet.

My collections collect dust,
like family photos and knick-knacks on a shelf,
only my mother isn't here to dust them off during spring cleaning.

(someday I will learn how to throw you)

Oceans ebb and flow,
as do I

Sometimes I think that I will drown here.

There are falling cliffs on the coast of California,
and I still don't know if there is a difference between sand and stone.

I used to say his name out loud when I was alone just to see if it still tasted the same.
It did.

There's things beneath tons of water that no one has ever seen.
There is no light to see them, anyways.

I'm the only one who has ever thought my eyes look like the ocean before a storm.

I don't own a record player but I have four records and I can't use your turntable anymore.

I never meant to hurt you,
I never wanted to hurt you,
and I'm sorry that I did.

Remember when I told you that people are messy?

I wanted to fall in love with you easy,
but you are not easy,
You are obsessions and rituals and raw skin and apologizes and I tried to keep you floating.
You were an anchor that I wasn't strong enough to lift.

You had soft skin and I loved the way you felt but you hated everything about yourself and couldn't even listen to me when I told you why I loved you.

And if there is one thing that I should know by now it's that you can't fix someone with just kisses.



I wanted to stay by your side but I am trying so hard to get out of my own murky waters and we were drowning each other.

I'm sorry for everything

I am still learning to be sad,
without the weight of it,
sinking me like an anchor
(because it doesn't have to)

And I tell myself,
that I don't need anybody
to validate my feelings
and that I can tell myself I'm okay.

But tonight,
I am sad,
and tonight
I don't feel okay,
and I feel lonely,
and I feel unimportant,
and (worst of all) I even miss you a little bit.
And I feel all of these things starting to crush me,

And I tell myself that I am better now, and that I am okay.
And that it's okay to be sad.