I cannot explain all the pathetic measures
my eyes will take to avoid your gaze,
all the paths my legs will journey to avoid bumping into you on my way home.
All the ways I knead my hands to the bone and all the toothpick excuses skewering my tongue.
And I cannot explain the way your presence deflates something inside my chest.
I don't know what to do with all that empty space. It echoes.
I fill it with the thimble's worth of pride that I scrape together,
every meager flake of validation I pick from the floor. I shovel slopping handfuls of sawdust
to try and soak up some of the shadows
but everything dissolves in that oily void, green and hideous.
God, it echoes, and everyone hears it.
I muffle it with my radio silence.
I look at you and I see everything I hate about myself
under a microscope.
Every blemish, every scar, every gaping hole
that you lack.
Stop, look. Here. Wrong.
Hear?
I blind myself with radio silence.
I don’t know how to live with an eternal reminder that I am incomplete.
You, and the place you hollowed without even knowing it.
Green and monstrous.
It echoes and everyone hears it.
I love you, but I cannot explain my radio silence.

she couldn't stop.
it was addicting,
seeing the blood flow from her wrists.

she loved the pain,
although she didnt know why.

he broke her heart,
but she liked the way it felt.

she was addicted,
addicted to pain.

she loved him
and he loved the way she loved him

darling, i wish you hadn't lied when you said you loved me
darling, i wish you hadn't broken all your promises
darling, i wish you loved me the way i love you
darling, i wish you'd considered my feelings
darling, i wish you didn't make me so sad
darling, i wish we could've lasted longer
darling, i wish you cared more about me
darling, i wish i didnt love you so much
darling, i wish we were something again
darling, i wish i made you happy enough
darling, i wish you didn't like someone else
darling, i wish we could have been even more
darling, i wish you hadn't hurt me the way you did
darling, i wish you'd been more careful with my heart
darling, i wish we could have done everything we planned to

there were pizza and grapes on the counter
i couldn't choose which one to eat

i know pizza is bad for me, but i like it
and i know grapes are better for me, but i prefer pizza

so, i went with the pizza.

and now, im hurt.

There was a canvas lying on the floor,
his canvas was lying on the floor.

There was a canvas lying on the floor,
his canvas was covered in red,
painted by his blades.

There was a canvas lying on the floor,
his canvas was covered in blue,
painted by his fists.

There was a canvas lying on the floor,
his canvas was ruined, and overused.

He needed to get a new one,
since he loved painting so much.

He always had a smile on while painting his canvases.

Poem

You must have known.
That day I held your hand and you held my gaze
And the air was thick with smoke and unspoken words and tiresome clichés.
Your eyes crinkled softly like they always do.
Always, always in the pretentious books I would pour over for hours as I try to envision myself right there,
Comforting myself with the idea that someone, one day, will dance with me to the sound of nothing but two hearts beating in unison.
There is something desperately intimate about oxygenation.
Always in these silly, profound books, they describe their darling’s eyes with every hue known to man.
Deep, aquamarine, sparkling crystal orbs that you would be so happy to drown in.
Entrancing and stormy forests.
Pools of warm honey with gold flecks in them, sweet as dandelion wine.

I will not condescend to compare your eyes to saccharine.
Or bodies of water, for that matter, or trees.
I will not waste time equalizing them to shades of the rainbow.
What are eyes, really,
Other than a means to see?
All that is beautiful and all that is clean.
I hold my own eyes in higher esteem than yours, dear,
Because they allow me to revel in the way yours light up when you smile.
How the skin underneath creases and wrinkles in all the most endearing ways
Like the infinite pages of a book in some foreign language
That only I can understand.
The ability to do so is a prerogative of the infatuated.

I wonder if you’ll let me read this book more often now that we’re here, two forgotten souls grinning stupidly at each other in the dark.
You must have known, then, that I would spend every day of the rest of my life reading this book if you only allowed me to do so.
Embedded in my mind was the way the corners of your mouth shot up towards the heavens.
I did not have to trace it to know that it was there.
You must have known.
There was not a crumb of my being you did not hold in the callused palm of your hand.
All of the streetlights were doused by the blanket of the night and it was truly not a movie-worthy moment because there were no stars and the moon was out of sight and there were stray cats padding around in the neglected garbage dumpster and I could not even remember why we were laughing so hard and I loved you.
Unequivocally.