What You Might’ve Missed

When did we become so much smoke, and so little fire?

And at your touch, I collapsed into myself- like a great star…or a hollow human being.

Goodbye doesn’t even feel like leaving anymore. It just feels like part of the process…like staying was never an option.

I am not naive enough to believe that the world is all rainbows and butterflies, but I know that today is not nearly as dark as yesterday- and yesterday was not nearly as dark as the day before. And for now, that is enough.

And I was somehow always still there to catch you- even when it wasn’t me that you fell for.

I don’t need you in order to be me. My life will go on- with or without you.

We are too young to feel this old.

I hid my heart away so that it would not be broken…and in the end, it was the loneliness that hurt me more than anything.

Your lies drip like honey from your lips and fall like acid on my skin.

So I spend hours on end tossing your words around in my mouth, biting at their edges, sucking out meanings that weren’t even there to begin with.

And instead of food, I fill my empty stomach with memories of you:
Those eyes.
Those lips.
That voice.
Those fists.
I’m living like you are the only thing I need to survive, like empty promises could somehow fill these holes that you’ve left.

Like I could eat my own heart out and still be home in time to cook your dinner.

I tell myself that you never loved me in the same way that I loved you. I can’t bring myself to admit that you never really loved me at all.

And as we pursue what we consider to be life, we often leave behind the very things that keep us alive.

Do what makes you happy.

It’s so bittersweet seeing her with you- but I know that she will love you in all the ways that you deserve to be loved. That’s all I’ve ever wanted for you.

Please don’t anchor yourself to things that only know how to float away.

I want to know why you loved her when you couldn’t love me. I want to know why things happen the way that they do- why the world shows us beauty just before it leaves us blind.

In a perfect world- you’d learn how to love me, and I’d learn how to let go of the things that didn’t.

You’ve waited this long- please don’t give up now. I promise you, love is on it’s way.

I’m, somehow, still waiting for you to love me.

My dear, a girl like you is much too valuable a thing to be begging for love.

My mistake wasn’t that I loved you; it was that I believed you loved me, too.

Don’t for a second think that you are the only one who has made your mistakes. We are all nursing old wounds behind closed doors.

I’m not giving up you…so you aren’t allowed to give up on you, either.

Yes, I still love you. No, that doesn’t mean I want you back.

There are pieces of the woman I thought I’d be all over this apartment.
Last night I tripped over my dreams on my
way to the kitchen.
And I curl up in bed at night
under quilts made of words
that I never had the courage to say
Or of ones that I did
but to the wrong person
and at the wrong time.
And I spent 7 years
trying to find my self-worth
before I realized I’d thrown it out
with the rest of the trash.

Love is the easiest thing in the world; it’s humans that are difficult.

To say I loved you more than I ever expected to is an understatement. You somehow became the only thing that mattered to me.

There is nothing more terrifying than to love something past all sense of self-preservation- and yet, it is the only thing that our hearts truly desire.

She spent her whole life running away, but never escaping. The problem was that sadness like hers come from the inside, not the outside.

Is this the part where I’m supposed to pretend I don’t miss you?

It’s suddenly January, and you’re not here..and I still am…and nothing is the way I imagined it would be.

This year, I will let go of the things that have let go of me.

For the Girls

I wish I could give you some saintly, gold-hearted reason for why I’m actually writing this post, like maybe I thought it would fix your life or open your eyes, or give you some other bullshit things to think about other than your dwindling bank account and bleaker future. But, honestly, I’m writing this because I’m bored as Hell and as pissed as the Devil that lives in it. I know you’re already expecting me to tell you that this whole thing is about a guy, but you’d be wrong, because I’m actually going to refer to him as a boy. After all, if it thinks like a child, plays like a child, and leaves it’s freshly mangled toys strewn across the playground like a child, I think it’s safe to refer to it as a child. If you’ve actually read this far into this post, I know you’re curious about the fuckboy that screwed me over. “He really got her good,” you’re thinking, with a half-witted smirk on your face. But you’re also thinking about that one that fucked you over too, aren’t you? You know, the one that your friends can’t talk about without rolling their eyes and scrunching their noses. To be honest though, it’s not even just one boy that I’m referring to- it’s the whole lot of them- it’s what they all seem to stand for once you get past the well-groomed, country club, chivalry encrusted exterior. Maybe you’ll tell me it’s not fair to lump them all into one frat-tank-wearing, Bud-Light-chugging, douche-faced group, but if that’s how you feel, then this post isn’t for girls like you. This post is for the girls that have tasted his alcohol laced breath and shitfaced ego firsthand and still couldn’t rid his stench from their minds. This is for the girls who were pretty enough to make him cum, but not enough to make him stay. He’s not worth the 3 minutes you took to read this post, let alone the 5 years you’ve let him live in your head.

Words

Let me play with your words, string them up like lights from the ceiling. Connect the vowels like the freckles on your jawline. Maybe I’ll finish the ends of all those sentences you left drift away, tie them together until they become the shape of a noose. Maybe they’ll leave me hanging like the story you started and never had the heart to finish. Maybe next time I won’t let myself be a book for a boy that is my library.

Passing Time

When your time finally came, there was no moment of holy knowing. There was just your heart and the way it drummed softly against your chest. There was just your shallow breath, and the way it leaked from between your lips. There was just your empty hand curled around itself, holding on to so much, and so little. There was just time, and the way it moved so achingly slow. Just time, and the way it moved so incredibly fast.

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Drunk you throws his sloppy kisses in her direction and thinks that she might catch them.
Drunk you shrugs when she doesn’t, figures I’ll be more grateful.
Drunk you texts and wants to know where I am, has decided that silver, or bronze, will be enough for tonight.
Drunk you has forgotten that
Sober me was serious when she said goodbye.

I told you about how sometimes instead of running away from
my enemies,
I ran beside them
so I could tell myself I wasn’t alone.
I told you about the way
the leaves near my house seemed
to fall all year round,
how the walls in my room were always so cold and how I missed myself more than I could ever miss you.

She will emerge from the fray,
Bloodied limbs
Clutching tightly
To rubies the shape
Of hope.
Or she won’t emerge
At all.

My words
collect in my throat
like vomit,
kicking to come out.
I’m yelling at us
for the way we hooked
our souls together
and drove different directions.
I’m yelling at us
for becoming the same song
and then falling out of rhythm.

You loved something like the marrow in your bones,
viciously and without restraint.
You smiled as it held your hand in its own and your starving heart between it’s teeth.