There is nothing romantic or beautiful about smoking
Smokers out there are aware about their bodies being harmed because of cigarettes
I know people who have ruined their lives because of smoking
now could you please stop romanticising this thing because it is ******* ******* me off.

My mirror is covered in cracks and flaws, and some parts that make you look fatter, like a funhouse mirror, and it clings to dust and dirt and fingerprint smudges of oil.
But I don't replace it.
Because sometimes it's easier to spot the flaws in the mirror than to fixate on my flaw riddled body,
Flaws that aren't just skin deep,
The night is beautiful but deadly.
When you can't see, you have to find new flaws to detest,
It's addictive to beat yourself,
I'm in an abusive relationship where I don't mean to hurt me and I can't leave myself-
And there's some macabre satisfaction in the dependable breaking,
Like I know every night I will go to sleep hating the fact that I am still breathing,
There are memories haunting me from as young as ten,
Things that shouldn't still be repeating,
I can't work out how it just keeps accumulating,
Words spoken
And thoughts
And I don't know if anyone else feels sentences as deeply as I do,
And I'm running out of personality to stick pins into,
Trying to fix myself with voodoo
They say negative reinforcement is the quickest way to correct behaviour but I make the same mistakes
it's not okay that I constantly feel like I'm failing,
But life is more than a high-stakes game
And everyone's saying that all teenagers feel this way
But it's not reassuring to know that my generation is one of lost souls and hate.
And we're all really angry,
Whether it's because we'll be working till we're 90 or conflict left undated
Racism still exists and the Chancellor of Germany is getting called a ****
While anyone Asian is labelled Indian or ****
And eating disorders run rampant through the territory where anorexic girls get priority while the boy who binge eats is just called fatty.
And this is where I insert a statistic to convince you that we're unhappy but I refuse to be quantified just so I can mean something.
And it doesn't let up,
Compliments are uncomfortable and seeing good in yourself is arrogance, criticisms self pity
And you never know if they want to help you or just ensure that you understand the importance of conformity
It doesn't take much to convince someone you're okay.
There's not much you need to say
And if you can laugh then you're fine and we know no one checks the closets for skeletons because they're filled with people too afraid to come out of them
People accept 'fine' because they just need to know that they asked the question,
And besides, deeper questions get stuck beneath my skin.
And even when someone else compliments me I don't believe them,
Pushing away others cause I need distance,
Sometimes I feel sick from the level of enforced interaction but people only see the side they want to see.
When I told my friends about the time I struggled with suicidal thoughts they expressed their sympathies and it hasn't come up since.
Romanticising illnesses leaves me unsure if I am suffering or if I just want to be,
And part of me has to agree that diagnosis and its certainty would be better than the admission that life is just like this
You can't get better if it's something you can't fix
I don't think I'm broken but maybe I was made to the wrong specifications cause it feels like I am missing something but at the same time there is too much of me and not just physically
I am choking on the sheer volume of my past, present and impeding future
Trying to get it together
Told that it's okay if I don't know where I want to go
But in year 9 we picked our gcses which determined our a levels which determined our university courses which determine our career, if we even get there.
I keep finding new problems
I am still haunted by the old ones.
But I'll be okay,
Cause today
Someone told me to love myself.

A person like you should never have to go through what you have
No one deserves it, but especially someone like you.

I talked to you for 15 minutes and by the 8th minute I had tears rolling down my cheeks and my heart pulsated so sharply I thought I could see it through my shirt

God, why.
Mom. Cancer. Rehab. Chain. *******. Smoker.
Depression. Anxiety. Body dysmorphia. God, I am so sorry.  

All the cliches in the entire world could not amount to the things I wish I could say to you, and one day make you believe.
All the times you saved me from my worst self, only to realize that while you had saved me, it was your own self that was delving deeper and deeper into its own defeat.
God.
Every time you would come up and give me a hug even when I barely knew you.
When I had no idea what you would mean to me, and how much your life would impact mine.
I am so sorry.
Sorry that your parent's were **** to you. That you didn't get the family you deserve, but made yourself such a strong, completely marvelous person.
I'm not romanticising any of the things you went through because I would never shed a good light on things that caused you so much suffering.
No, that's not it at all.
All the stories you told me tonight seemed too unbearable to be real.
But those stories are your harsh realities and I would trade everything I owned, all the money in my bank account, for you to stop what you do to yourself and the undo the numbness you've trained yourself to feel
you are NOT sad personified
you are NOT just *** appeal and sweet heartbreaker
you even know that my heart breaks, literally I can feel it, when you tell me, show me, paint ******* pictures for me of all the things you've dragged yourself through
I can't pick your feet up and carry you through, though.
God, how I wish I could.
You have to do it on your own, I know you can.
But I just ******* hope you'll follow through in your terrifying, mystifyingly horrible promise of, "Maybe I'll stick around until then"
.
.
.

Ana,
I used to play with you when I was younger.
I remember you were so proud
the first time I weighed 125,
I guess those stomach problems came in handy
for keeping you by my side,
I'd go days without eating,
and you'd smile.
I never let you influence me too much, though...
Not until now.
I've always had you on my mind.
You are inherently deadly,
you are addictive in your toxicity.

I'm not hungry.

I can't help but wonder when Mia
will get me on my knees again.

I'm not hungry.

I'm one of those people who
******* about romanticising mental illness
and eating disorders, yet here I am,
giving a name to you.

I'm not hungry.

All the poems about how my razor
takes my blood and breath but gives me life,
but I've written none about you for a while.
Blood drips from my arms and thighs
and, pinching the soft, scarred skin,
I think of you.

I'm not hungry.

You are a decidedly perfect example
of deadly willpower.
You are one of my several methods
of self-destruction
and yet another thing for me to fall in love with,
I am an addict itching for a bit
of self-hatred, and you are an easy fix.

I'm not hungry.

Maybe if I was just a little bit thinner,
then maybe I'd get there.

*I'm not hungry...

Seventeen
what a terrible age to be
when you were skipping in between nineteen and twen-ty

Soul mate status
you became,
tattered charm
barely onto second names

But you spoke and it grasped me
something strong
too lovelorn and lame
we went on-

Romanticising the grainy photographs
the first date talk
the promise of touch
from a distant walk

Compliments thrown around like
greetings
and it terrified me
all those would-be meetings

That rush that turned out
too intense
and the explosive goodbyes
to false pretence

But there were no real goodbyes
you just left my town
so that was the high
and this,
the comedown

We don't have to know anyone else, just us again
You sigh, look away
I can see it clear as day
I'm sorry, time breaks and sun rays are all I dream of
I'm sorry again, I didn't mean it

I stand there all alone
Diamonds in our hands
Do-do-do, do-do-do

Funny how it seems like yesterday
When I was looking out of place
Daydreaming of cigarettes
It's my wife, and it's my life
I'm still here, have you seen her?

So much is going on while I'm
Standing in the pouring rain
There are places I'll remember
And these memories lose their meaning
When I remember I'll lose affection

I'm cursed you see
I know I'll often stop and think about them
Standing in the pouring rain
If I can't trust you, there's no answer
And I won't be able to trust myself
And I'm sorry for romanticising you
I just want to be friends with you again
And make myself feel very small and unhappy

Because I'm older now
And everything feels a lot emptier
And I'm still churning out sad poems and then
Pretending I've grown since then
Standing in the pouring rain

loving someone with mental issues isn't poetic, or romantic
hell, it's the opposite of that. it's running down to her house at 1.02am in the morning wondering whether she's still breathing
it's anxious crying when she won't text you back because you don't know whether you've lost her
over the slightest smallest things
in everyday things you start to see the things that trigger her
you look out for them
so that you can steer her away
when she doesn't talk to you
you panic because you don't know how she's doing how she's faring whether she's okay whether she's going to be okay from then on.
loving someone with mental illnesses is not easy
it gets tiring

so stop romanticising it.
i see things everywhere on tumblr, on social media,
images full of soft greys and inky blacks
paragraphs that romanticise these things
these ugly things that no one should ever want to feel
are being preached to the public as

'deep'
'mysterious'
'alluring'

*******.

stop doing this stop doing this it's wrong it's so wrong it needs to stop
think about your friend
dying inside, then choosing to die for real
because of these things
are these things really beauiful????
ARE THEY????
NO.
THEY'RE ******* HORRENDOUS.
SO
STOP. ROMANTICISING. MENTAL ILLNESSES.

thank you.

Heartbreak in many ways is a small death, all the same.

A part of you dies when regret is born and you can never get it back while wondering what could have, would have or should have happened.

When your food tastes horrible and the colour fades from the world around you and you are left with what only feels like a fever dream. A low budget version of reality and the writers are all on leave.

Why does this happen? Even though we've seen this film before. Different actors on different days but we all imagine the same ending and we know that there is a plot twist at the end when things don't go the way we thought it would. The way we hoped it would.

Is it perhaps that our hopes and dreams are the leading cause of death? Might we all stop romanticising the idea that our lives are one of the greatest films of all time?

Oftentimes the greatest tragedy is not death but rather the fact that we choose to feel nothing at all. That somehow closing the tap is the answer. Turning off the TV so you don't have to see how it all ends.

Unplug the cables. Throw away the disc. Supress the feeling of wanting more. Out of sight out of mind.

But in order to die, one must live. And if the little death is inevitable, why not live like it isn't? What exactly do you have to lose that you haven't lost already?

There is a certain beauty about the uncertainty of life,
prominence in the assumption that anything's possible.
The daily routines we embark on;
goal-setting, chasing dreams, breaking hearts,
mending broken hearts, emotional turmoil: happy highs,
sad lows, anger towards our failures.
An endless cycle of uncertainty, yet we push on.

There is beauty in that, the uncertainty, so I perceive it.
I love subtle beauty, it opens your mind up.
Aesthetics are not the only beauty, in my eyes.
There is beauty in the stumble and stagger of
a broken heart.
There is beauty in the defeat from an exhausting day.
Beauty in falling out of love, exempting yourself out
of agony.
Beauty in scathing through, barely afloat, to make ends meet.

Beauty, it may as well be that.
Life is open to all sorts of possibilities;
there is beauty in the fact we push on in spite of the hurdles -
push on in the face of struggle and defeat,
push on when everything's going well, of course,
push on when our dreams fail and need altering.
The beauty of life is not in romanticising struggle,
but in that there is strength within all of us;
a strength that fails to yield in the face of defeat.
We are beauty for pushing on.

If someone tells you grafitti isn't art, prove them wrong,
It's okay to miss the people who were bullets to you,
Don't lie that you don't have a lighter on you when you really do,
Your mum definitely knows you've tried drugs,
Never be afraid to say 'no', even when you've already said 'yes',
For your own sanity, sometimes you have to stop romanticising, believe what is already there,
Ask someone older and wiser what love truly means,
When you meet someone, remember their eye colour not what they're wearing,
Don't be afraid to find counsel between the leaves of a book,
When your grandmother asks if you're okay, be honest with her,
When a relationship is over, leave, don't continue watering a dead flower,
One day you'll be eighty, you won't have a twenty year olds legs or a ten year old heart,
Turn off your phone one day and be involved in the world around you,
Ask yourself advice, you know you best, learn to trust that,
Do things differently this time,
Choose the one who looks at you as though you're magic,
Good people just made the mistakes and learnt from them before you did,
Take the time to give someone something they really need,
The one you can never watch a full film with will be the one to haunt you forever,
That song in Pocahontas makes more sense than any other you've heard,
The body has seven billion nerves, there will be that one person that gets on every single one,
We've all sat on the kitchen surface and spoon fed ourselves peanut butter from the tub,
Don't worry, eventually soul mates meet, for they have the same hiding place,
If someone needs a minute, give them an hour,
I know it's hard, but just ask,
Thoughts leave deeper scarring that anything physical,
Now and again, write a list of your best qualities,
Chocolate understands,
Better to have loved and lost, than to be stuck with them forever,
Some people you meet you might never see again, at least not in the way you did before,
Love doesn't hurt, loneliness does.

I know you're afraid
Things might fall apart again,
I don't understand you as much.

I know you're worried
We are just romanticising the past,
Perhaps we are just lonely.

I know you're speculating
I might make the same mistake.
I know you're anticipating
You might feel the same hurt.

But don't you feel the same?
That it's wasted.
We are compatible,
Second to none.

Give it shot,

Give us a chance?

You've held the trophy for so long,
Now is time to let it go.
Time stands still, no need to run.
You may walk, enjoy the sun.
Allow the rhythm to persuade you,
Allow the air to inhale you,
Let nature have her way with you.

The breeze of the trees beckons the bearer,
May he also bear these organic buildings?
He cannot without sacrifice, without compromise,
He has forgotten his torch was from the tree of life.

Life is as eternal as death,
Romanticising one to diminish the other,
Through a silly parade, a wondrous charade,
He remembers he is alive, mortality is  a beautiful thing,
Mortality,
Also a word.

One cannot run,
Nor rationalise.
Words: ailments;
Hindrances to the body.
Words are fuel,
Food for minds.
Craniums Process,
Converting Signals.

He gives silence to respect himself,
He gives his heart to the woods,
For his physique will reside here,
Once borrowed time is complete.

Silence in respect.

You've held the trophy for so long,
Now is time to let it go.
Time stands still, no need to run.
You may walk, enjoy the sun.
Allow the rhythm to persuade you,
Allow the air to inhale you,
Let nature have her way with you.

The breeze of the trees beckons the bearer,
May he also bear these organic buildings?
He cannot without sacrifice, without compromise,
He has forgotten his torch was from the tree of life.

Life is as eternal as death,
Romanticising one to diminish the other,
Through a silly parade, a wondrous charade,
He remembers he is alive, mortality is beautiful thing,
Mortality,
Also a word.

One cannot run,
Nor rationalise.
Words: ailments;
Hindrances to the body.
Words are fuel,
Food for minds.
Craniums Process,
Converting Signals.

He gives silence to respect himself,
He gives his heart to the woods,
For his physique will reside here,
Once borrowed time is complete.

Silence in respect.

I want to exist in coffee shops.
In riveting conversations of the world and self.
In piano concertos, melancholy music lyrics and brush strokes.
In days spent lying under the sun
then evenings strolling down a seaside pavement
and nights spent dancing without a care.

I just want to exist in lines of romantic, perfected poetry.

i just want to be invited to the funeral.
i'll buy a new suit. sunday best.
take the train to london
by myself. take some time to reflect.
stand at the back if that's better
i'll probably avoid meeting your family
because i'll still feel guilty.
about romanticising my own suicide
and telling you death was beautiful,
when i knew that you were just as unhealthy
as me. i was a black miasma.
noxious laughing gas.
i'll bring flowers for your coffin
if they survive the train ride.
the last thing i said to you was
how i felt like falling in love
so i could cultivate a broken heart
and finally **** myself,
you were always one step ahead.

I am done writing love poems
Done pouring my starving heart into a never ending buffet of possibility
Optimism has never been a specialty of mine
Therefore I can never seem to pinpoint the positives
Or any kind of genuine reality
Only uncertainty
And minor cracks in the foundation
I am skilled in hanging on to breaking rope
With the mindset that it will hold
Too many times have I unknowingly tied my own noose
With over analyzed thoughts
My soul is always eager
To grab at whatever arms shoot out towards me
Justifying the flaws in their grip
With the only alternative being seclusion
I used to avoid solidarity
For fear that isolation was a trap to being made undesirable
I now know this is myth
That being alone does not destroy your chances at finding love
Love is a term that I have never correctly defined
I have spelled it out on countless occasions
Unaware that my definitions were unsound
Romanticising the blatant errors in every episode
Believing that love was supposed to hurt
Engraining it into muscle memory
I have hurled myself towards black holes expecting nothing less than escape
Only to find that everything has an ending
From it all I have learned
That happiness through another can not be created with metaphors
And a sense of hope
That it can only be made with sincerity
Therefore
I am through with writing love poems
Through with throwing sentences at people like lassos
You cannot make someone love you
With words
You can only incite it
So I am done writing love poems
Until I find someone
Willing to write me
A novel.

you felt like my cabin,
when the wood sank under.
loyalty doesn't take time,
it takes character.
seeing fallen branches
crating to one side of it,
like rough patches,
which I saw him through too.
and there i sat with you
with 3 drinks too many -
and saw the way you spoke to
strangers under the canopy.
did you notice me watching?
i knew it as soon as we sat down
and shared battle stories,
like coming back to comfort,
then into torrential feelings
i found parts of you in me,
shavings of pain and joy,
contingent to democratic debate
and i found parts of me in you
pairings of ego and art,
conditional to romanticising realism
did you notice me too?

This isn't about love.
There's no point in romanticising me living on a couch.
Mom, I am so sorry, I can't come back again.
But I love you.
This isn't about love.
Maybe about karma.
What goes around steals your belongings and asks you back the key.
And my backpack is so heavy.
(How did I fit my life in there)
But my feet aren't tired yet.
Let's try Rotterdam
I hate that city but
This isn't about love.

The candles in my window have melted.
That's no big deal, I don't remember  the last time they were romanticising this room.
The streets are dry, the people here aren't used to it.
They live on the edge of sleep,
stopped eating two weeks ago.
Nobody touch me.

Untill suddenly the clouds shatter on our roof.

I must stop romanticising heartbreak:
Arguments in the rain
Joni Mitchell at 3am
Burning pictures

My mind is the rolling camera on a short,
running out of film just before the resolution.

It can only get worse,
after a perfect break.

The thoughts of suicide riddle my brain,
They're around all corners of every word I say.
Every thought I think or memory I look back,
The symbiote of suicide leaks out of every crack.

Writing and romanticising all my bad habits isn't smart,
But it's the sacrifice I make to make sacrificial art.
There's beauty in trapping myself in a box of sadness and doubt,
Walls made of paper; so maybe I can write myself out.

As unhealthy and sordid as it may be,
I find self-solitary to bring out the best in me.
As unstable and morbid as it may seem,
I find thoughts of suicide to bring out the best in me.

Who taught you to love like folded pages?
You hid them away because you do not need self validation.
Why are you still writing apologies in the form of poems?
Indeed, you are too full for their palms to hold.

Why do you keep blaming other things for your unluckiness?
Things bigger and better than what you're becoming to be.
Things have better things to do,
Instead of focusing on your slander,
That isn't as bitter.

Why do you keep doing it even when you don't like it?
Stop putting on a brave face.
Though they say fake it till you make it.
Life will probably end on it's own,
But your hopeless romantic mind is braided with dreams of the unknowns of 'someones' and 'somedays'.

You whine about the creative blockage that prevents you from creating,
Every now and then.
Why can't you just pick up a pen and jot something down to make you feel less even?
Stop eating your feelings alive.
There are food that you can eat.
And water that you can drink,
Instead of romanticising the feeling of drowning.

Your life is a big question mark,
And you are left with very little knowledge to search for an answer,
But by writing down things that you should stop doing instead of working on them,
Wouldn't get you anywhere,
Either.