I was once just a girl who thought I loved you.
Now I'm a woman who knows the difference between love and convenience.
     Between high school and the real world

I wonder if you remember some of the things I do...
The way your name tumbled out of my mouth as I took careful instruction
on just where to touch...
Or the hours we spent talking about nothing.
Or the way I used to be...
Or if I am just the me I am now,
still lost but still bold and unafraid,
with different scars and deeper forehead wrinkles.
Aging is irrelevant in this part of my head, you're still just as much welcome to this body as you were before.
But I don't need instructions on how to make myself scream your name anymore, I can do that all on my own...

Though help is always appreciated.

The scar in your eyebrow, the way you know exactly where to stand to raise my temperature

These are the things that will haunt me most

I swore I wouldn't do this to myself, swore I wouldn't play the game

But the chess board was already set in my head

And it only ends with me losing, it always ends with me losing

The three freckles on your lips keep my heart stuttering,

But I will never be yours, and you could never be mine

And it will keep me wondering til the ends of time.

I wonder if you remember, sitting on your porch smoking a cigarette while I sat on mine

1) when you tell him you love him and he says "thank you"
Says "I know"
Says absolutely nothing
Pretend like the cavity where your heart used to be isn't endlessly throbbing. Pretend like you don't crave the words, pretend like it doesn't hurt, pretend like you're not empty.
2) imagine, remember hearing him say the words back. Imagine, remember the way his lips feel pressed against yours. Imagine, remember the sound of his heart beating against your ear when he says your name. Imagine, remember the smell of him on your skin and clothes
3) when you see his family out in the town you can't leave, say hi. Smile, ask them about themselves. Hug his little sister. After 4 years, 3 months, 9 days (who's counting right) you've earned the right to be civil to them. You've earned the right to be friends with them.
4) after 4 years 3 months and 9 days, when you tell him you love him and he doesn't say anything... don't stop telling him you love him. Even though your heart belongs to him, even though the empty spaces in your chest hurt, tell him you love him again. Because maybe one day, he'll say it back.

I have loved you through every broken promise.
Through every fight, through every cold night alone
Through every minute, hour, day, month
Through every year.
I have loved you through every tear.

I have loved you when all I had of you was your sweatshirt to hold at night.
When all I had were ghosts of memories.
When all I had was myself
When all I had was gone.
I have loved you on and on.

I have loved you for all you are
For all you are not.
For all you stood for.
For every laugh, and for every cry.
For every kiss and every smile
I have loved you for every mile.

I will love you through every fight
Through every sleepless, lonely night

I will love you when I can't,
And even when I go on rants

I will love you in every way
For the rest of every day.

It took me this long to sit back and think about who you used to be.
It's been hard to pick through all of the ****, rotting away the parts of my brain
that have forgotten who we used to be.

It wasn't always this vat of putrid waste, of tossed away hopes, of the essence of failure, of distrust and hatred.

Once before, a fire burning warm, hands held tight, drowning beers and speaking over the dead.

Now the castaways of a shadow's burden, haunting the spirits of the back of our minds.

I'd forgotten what you were like before this, but I can remember now.

I didn't know I was so prepared to fall in lo... Lo... Loooooo?

I really ******* like you, okay? Like, I'm awake at 4am writing this poem. Like, I wanna beg you to see the good in me. Like, I never knew that a kiss could send me into a tailspin and make me question my spot on this floating rock so thoroughly. Like, I might just lo, lo, lo....

I lust after you. How strange. You've barely touched me. How intriguing that you've unlocked the primal part of my brain, the part that screams "this one is mine" and wants to parade around the outside world with your fingers tied through my fingers. How delightful that when I picture the nights of my future, it's always with you tied around me, with you inside of me.

And I want you inside of me. Inside my brain, where sometimes it a party and sometimes it's a relaxing vacation and sometimes it's a horror movie but it's always something different. Inside my heart, which has the current Olympic gold metal for gymnastics, the way you have it doing backflips and somersaults. Inside of me, deep and stretching, pressing, fill me to the brim with all of the reasons I forgot to enjoy being alive. Words cascading from my lips, a language spoken only between souls. "I lo... Lo... Lo..."

I am terrified to fall in love again. I worry that the mere existence of you will make me crumble. That I will not be enough, again, and again and again... That disappointment is the only thing I have to offer. I am shaking, scared, vulnerable in the worst ways,
vulnerable in the best ways,
but I am unsure of my next step.

I am a patient, intelligent woman. But this game of chess is one I don't quite remember the rules to. The flutters in my stomach are enough to fly away, the short-circuiting in my brain enough to make me wary, enough to make me want to run, run, run

Run right back into your embrace, into the future I want to make, into the terrifying, through the thick of it, to the other side of time. To where I want my home.

I lo.. lo... Like you a lot, alright?

Occasionally I just have a day of
"I really can't do this anymore."
And my heart breaks over and over because the only thing I want
Is so unattainable.
I've worked so **** hard, but my body is tired of working.
I'm so tired of fighting.
I'm just ****** tired.
So I look through our old pictures and I feel so empty and so full at the same time.
Shaken up.
Nothing will ever go back, will it?

No one ever sees when my soul is cutting its own tether to this earth.

No one ever notices when my eyes fixate far into the abyss.

No one ever holds me when I'm ripping myself apart to shreds.

But everyone will show up at my funeral telling everyone how they never knew I felt that way.

All anyone had to do was open their eyes.

(M)aybe this doesn't come easy to me
(Y)es, I know I've done this before

(M)aybe there is more to see
(I)n all, I can give you more
(R)ead into this what you will
(A)sk me for my heart
(C)alm it though, keep it still
(L)ay in wait for your part
(E)verything comes down to a kiss

Don't fall victim
It's a trap
Sadness wants
To eat your soul
Away to
Nothing; nothing
Can
Ever replace you

I am the world's best liar.
I'm not saying this because I forthrightly lie, no. Not to the people around me.

I lie to myself. I lie because I have to. Because how else am I supposed to get myself out of bed? How else do I live half alive and stuck in my mind?

   I tell myself I'm fine.

            That's the best lie I can think of

Can I just
                 S
                    t
                      u
                 ­       m
                           b
                             l
                               e
                   into your arms again and again?

I'm still in love with you.
Except, I don't know how to be.
Or how not to be.
I think a stupid part of me will always love you.
I think a stupid part of me will always be yours no matter how many times I've asked for it back.
I can lie to everyone, lie to myself, until I'm here in bed alone asking myself why I can't be alone without you in my brain.
Every part of me misses you.
It's my ***** little secret, I suppose, but
You were my soul mate.
You were supposed to be my happily ever after.
My dork in tinfoil with eyes like the ocean.
The eyes that held me behind bars for so long, terrified to move.
I want so badly to be a part of your life again,
I want so badly to be everything to you again.
I want so badly for you to miss me like I miss you,
But I guess it was all in my head.
The four years that we spent together an endless nightmare of the wait for the end.
And you ended it.
I so badly want for the words "I can't do this anymore" to be erased from your memory like a daydream you lost track of.
I want you to love me.
I want "I love you" whispered in my ears again.
I want you to be sick over the fact you lost me.
I don't think you're sick over the fact you lost me.
Our love was a sick game of loving too much and having too little.
I love you so much.

Walk all over people and one day someone will fight back

                           Teeth bared

And all you'll have is scars on your heels.

I looked at my wrists today and where my veins used to be were dotted lines
"Cut here" they said.
And I tasted salt on my lips
For a second I thought it was French fries that I consumed earlier
But I realized it was tears
And as I fall to a sack of blood and puddle of tears on the floor
All I can think is another year
Another year without you and I will go crazy
And I will not have you
Because there are girls prettier than me
Because there are girls that are worth more
That think better of themselves
That aren't sick in the ******* head
There are girls out there who you deserve
And not just the one you got stuck with.

Where did I lose myself?
Between lines of paper I stopped filling with my daily musings,
around corners of the walls that hold my family now,
or in my brain, where the illness has swallowed me whole and spit me back out more times than it has not?
I have become an even more fragile soul than before, now relied upon to keep an entire new person whole. It's a curious task when I'm falling apart at the seams.
Where did I go? Hidden amidst old thoughts and harrowed poems, new smells and insomnia,
I have to know the answer to this.
Did I allow my soul to escape between breaths, allow the words that twisted their way through each crevice of my soul to escape me when I decided I had to be more? Did I heal myself just enough that my sicknesses are actually all in my head?

His voice is where I find solace. With no arms to hold me I find peace in words. In "you make me happy." In "I'll be home soon."

And he will be home soon. And I am scared that the damaged parts of me will be too damaged.

I find comfort in knowing that a face I've needed to see will be within kissing distance. But will he want to kiss me? Up close and personal for the first time in months, both with fresh scars from fresh heartbreak.

He wears his scars behind a uniform, and mine are as clear as day on my face.
My heart is his if he wants it, and I am afraid that he won't. But I'm easily in love, easily ready to admit it to myself, but I won't admit it to him. There's too much damage there, too fresh of wounds to break open.

But hey, I love him. I love him. I'm not hiding behind it anymore. I'll admit it right now.

The ring finger is supposed to be the loveline, the path right to the heart, the "right" line

But I've seen far more work from index fingers, middle fingers, the palm of a large calloused hand pressed just right...

The ring finger means so little in the frame of a life, marriage just a pretty little lie we tell ourselves to excuse lust, to pretend like we're not all animals ourselves

I'd wager the true loveline is the one that points arrows below the bellybutton, that makes a leg shoot out too straight, that curls toes

Is love even a line, or just a black hole leading to a womb, the place where all things begin?

The way my name wraps around his mouth
is the same way I've wrapped my mouth
around him, 100 times, probably more, I stopped keeping track.

What do I have to change?
                             everything
          nothing

And we have been down this road, with its curves and twists, at least 100 times, maybe less, I stopped keeping track.

And I fail to squash it every ******* day, but I will never not miss him. Never not hear his laugh in my dreams.

What do I need to work on?
                             everything
            nothing

Happily ever after seems far away.

This is for the people who don't have the suicide hotline number memorized just in case.
For the people who have never cried sitting across from a counselor because their lives are actually perfect.
For the people who have never chainsmoked a pack of cigarettes while their brain flirts with the danger of "what if..."
Whose hands don't shake uncontrollably with the memories of what used to be.
This is for the people who haven't drank an entire bottle just for the peace of sleep
The people who haven't wondered if waking up isn't the scariest part of their day
This is for the people who weren't diagnosed with PTSD, Anxiety, and Depression all in a spin of words.
The people who don't have to hold themselves together with fake promises that survival is only half the battle.
To the people who have never met the call of a razor blade with the skin of their bodies.
This is for the people who say that mental illness is just whining.
Do you realize just how lucky you actually are?

The terrible thing about poets is we're all sadistic masochists.
We all want to read about heartache, and we all want to write about the demons that haunt us in our worst hours.
We never talk about our happiness, our productive days and nights where we slept enough.
We drown in each other's depression so nicely, a swimming pool of lonely writers, ink pooling around us each because we always carry pens in our pockets.
No one wants to know how happy we are. How our boring mundane human life of doing dishes and vacuuming the carpet went.
We all want to stick the knives in a little deeper, to draw out a little more of each other's blood. Because honestly, our poetry has always been written in blood, sweat, and tears.
That's the thing about poets. We'd rather be miserable and have something to write about than be happy and have nothing to write about.

When I walk with Mary, **** doesn't seem as bad
She doesn't judge me harshly, in fact she makes me laugh
And yeah, she's a little harsh around the edges,
not everyone's particular "Cup of tea"
But none of that **** matters when it's just Mary and Me.

I married the knight
instead of my Prince Charming.
My heart is empty.

I was conceived on acid and whippets, the drugs a kaleidoscope of umbilical dreams.
I was conceived on bad luck and lust, from darkness and sexually exploitive childhood trauma.
I was conceived on teenage dreams and difficult childhoods, to black sheep children of 17.

I was raised on addiction and narcissism, a love bomb here and authoritarian abuse there.
I was raised on the chess long game, to lose a piece here means to win at the end.
I was raised on 2000s tv, Lorelei Gilmore my wish for a mother, Rory my idol.

I taught myself strength in building up a fantasy on the outside while my castle crumbled within.
I picked myself up by the tendrils of a lost childhood, by the whispers of good memories, by the hiding places I found in pages upon pages of someone else’s imagination.

And I let it all go at 28. To find peace. To start over. To build myself a new castle with no more haunted corners or echoes of pill bottles or smells of ***** and orange juice permeating the breaths of those who walk these sacred halls.
Rib cage cut open, heart destroyed and renewed, ancient umbilical nooses cut with teeth.

I will no longer fall victim to my mother’s circumstances or my father’s mistakes, I will never have the soul I’ve created look at me and ask himself if he is loved or safe.

I am cycle breaker,
I am generational karma’s worst ******* fear,
I am no longer frightened maiden,
I am fearsome mother.
I am new.

I never expected to fall back in.
I suppose jumping is the real word, because I've always been a headfirst without thinking kind of girl.
I've always called it fearless, the words forever tattooed into my ribs, scar tissue raising so that his hands graze it when they touch me,
But oh dear God am I terrified as I make room for my things in his closet
Take a breath and store my makeup under his sink.
This is the first time in forever I can say that I wish I wasn't jumping headfirst.
I am frightened I am falling, forever the fearless female
Now a pile of lovesick mess on the living room floor I share.

I am honestly terrified to start over with someone new

I live a life of leaving.
Half my **** is packed into my car, and to have the mindset I could leave with it all...
I live a life of unsettled, restless passion
A life full of wanting things I can't have
A life full of smiling at strangers, buying coffee for the chick that had a bad day, a life full of filling the world with just a little happiness.
I live a life full of fixing. I fix things. I fix everything. I fall apart myself, but the smiles keep me going.

I want to pack it all up again. I want to leave home again. I want to smile at all new strangers in all new cities and buy cups of coffee for all new people having bad days.

And I want to fix you.

I refuse to apologize for the things I've written.
I refuse to apologize for telling truths amongst the cacophony in rhymes, or rhythms, or word *****.
I refuse to not own this brain, to regret my depression, to swallow my anxiety with a pill.
I will not lie, as my family expands and my brain reconforms to standards I forgot, it gets harder to dig up the person that bled for these words.
She and I aren't the same anymore, but we belong to the same body.
So I call on her when I need her, let myself really feel everything, my alter ego: the poet.
As my boyfriend's family asks me what I do for fun, I try not to lie. To say that I pour words from my soul is distasteful. So I joke "I'm a poet of sorts, a writer."
And they look at me with frightened eyes, so I do not tell them this is what I want to do for a living.
I do not tell them about the razor blades beneath my bed at age 16, or the ****** assault at 20.
I do not tell them inside this head is a mess that is desperately hiding.
But I do not disown her. My mess. My poet heart.

Never me, questioning if the giving up is worth it
                             I **** well know I'm worth it

Never me, questioning if the fire really is as hot as I think
                             I can't and won't be burned again

Never me, questioning if this is really what I'm meant to be doing
                             Flee to the woods, girl, run yelling

Never me, pretending my feelings are erasable and mundane
                             Scream, let it out, you know you want to

Never me, logic and feeling arguing past the point of insanity
                             You were meant for bigger things, girl

Never me, trying to fuse all my feelings into a cohesive thought.

After him, I swore I'd never fall in love again. Swore it in contract and oath to God and in the eyes of the state of Ohio. After him, I promised I'd never love another boy.
I never meant to lie, to be so madly in love with someone else that it consumes my entire day. To be needed so much that my marriage might be shoved to the back burner. I never meant to be so deeply mad about someone else, to put their needs before my own; to care more about them then I care about my own life.
I never meant to love so deeply this brown eyed boy, this young soul, newly loveable. This boy with the same eyes as his father, as my husband. This boy that will someday call me mom.

Hear me out,
5 years will pass quickly and slowly.
A jumble of seconds, slow and steady to create another 525,600 minutes to close out this last chapter.

Growth comes and goes in waves, realization its steady companion. We are still so ******* young.

Perhaps Peter Pan had it right. I do not want to be grown yet, stuck between birth and death; I watch time tumble treacherously through my fingers like quicksand, no where to go but down.

Yet I can pick you up like a favorite book. I've seen all the creases and fades and lines and letters before, but it's been 5 long years and there's something exciting about you still.

If this steady crawl to the end is it for all of us, perhaps I'll meet you in the next life. Maybe next time, we can get it right.

How strange, bitten lips between old friends
A juxtaposition from the reality that was

How intriguing, something familiar
Yet entirely different from what we could ever be

How worrying, the truth of it
The people we know will never see this coming from us

How delightful, the strange newness here
I only hope that this doesn't end with us lost at sea

I selfishly hope that when you look up and see how not okay I really am,
while I'm pretending to be for your sake,
It rips your heart apart.

Let's talk about consent for a minute
                    When I said no
                        I meant no

I did not mean
               Give me a few more drinks
                                  Or
                    Wait until I'm drunk

And I definitely did not mean
                                Yes

Let's talk about this for a minute
              Drunk does not mean yes
                   Only yes means yes
                            I said no

I am nothing.
Full of empty hope, stolen kisses, unfulfilled dreams
Full of starlight and sunshine
But really, full of last night's ***** and wasted promise.
I am nothing. Pouring tears, wastoid of God's creation
Covered in bruises and scars and tattoos and sweat and contempt from onlookers
I am nothing. Nothingness in its truest form, the lack of soul, the lack of feeling.
Call me Robot.
Call me Wasteling
Call me Loser
Call me Ugly.
Just ******* call me.
For I am nothing,
        Without you.

Scars
     Reminders not of my suffering
     But of my survival

I've only ever been good at ******* **** up for myself

Who needs a faux pas when your mouth opens and you should bury your head in the sand?

I didn't realize that it would hurt to see your name.
Why do I always open my stupid ******* mouth?

I hate to be that girl
But I'd really like for someone to just
Actually pick me for once.

It's waiting on the sidelines of every ******* dance, praying that someone would see the brilliance of my soul,
Under this ******* skin suit
Forever and ever

Repeat, replay, again and again
I just hope that the stars or the moon or whatever Gods I believe in today will just,
******* have faith in me,
Like I try to have faith in them.

If the lesson is that I need to be comfortable with being alone,
Then I'm unwilling to be the student. I'm unchanging and unwavering.
I just want to be ******* loved,
The way I ******* deserve by someone that I actually want to be loved by.
It's really not that much to ask

You, my muse, my love
My beating heart won't still now
Give me one last chance