- ...and you told me so
Would you hate me less if I was dead? Because I could've offed myself at 15, but I decided you were worth it. So tell me, am I worth it? You keep me closer to the ground. You're what I dream of when I dream of what it means to be safe and sound.
You like my hair long and I like you more than I could ever like myself because I'm a piece of shit and not worth it. And I'll never feel safe around myself.
So if you want to tell me the last year of my life spent trying to get over myself was wasted, well maybe, maybe you're right.
You told me so.
- ...but i was young and stupid then
Watch your life pass you by, you are the one who passed me by but I’m sure you didn’t mean to. Look at me I’m a nervous wreck in front of all the ones I love. You are the one I love, I’m sure.
But again, it’s not your fault. I’m so scared of what will happen.
When I used to love your face I was never so afraid of the consequences of my actions, but I was young and stupid then. But I am so much older now, I am so much healthier now, and I will never blame you for this again, I will never make that mistake again.
But again, it’s not your fault. I’m so scared of what could still happen.
- a mirror's reflection that is millimeters off, to think i would notice on a day like today
I notice you're not here
I notice you are gone
I carve a crevice just wide enough to call long
And if you return
From your great escape
We can sit inside today and just enjoy the rain
I notice you are different
- but i love your thighs
I think you're beautiful even when you don't think so. I think you're beautiful even when you're not.
I'm not trying to romanticize your sadness, I just want you to be okay.
I like you, but you'll never notice.
I'll give you all of my self worth if it means you stay alive.
Please don't kill yourself, let me kiss your thighs.
- everything, all at once
You said you'd be okay.
///
You said you'd be okay, but you lied. So I dream about one day turning 21, while all the while being 15 locked inside your parents' house. You're someone I know. I know you too well, like the soft spot on your neck or your weakness for soft drinks. You make me feel scared, you make me feel like a child, or the devil, or whatever will communicate to you that what I did was wrong. So I watch you from afar but wait across your block, hoping you're home from college and I can tell you about the kind of piece of shit I am. I'm talking about obsession and I don't think you'll quite understand me. I don't think we were ever meant for each other. Maybe I'm just not meant for you. Let's talk about the children we'll never have over coffee. They can burn in your belly and I'll scream at you for the sake of irritability's sake. I can't stand still. My back won't sit straight. Your expresionlessness when you're angry makes me sit on my own emotions. Comparing you to train tracks will never do you justice. Amateur poetry will never serve its purpose. You were company worth keeping. But now, you're just the sum total of everything, all at once. Tell me you'll be okay because I still think about you, I still worry over you, I still love your face. You're the one. I will always stay the same.
///
- expressionlessness
In my genes I have my father's depression and my mother's anxiety. These diseases blend together the way my parents did, unevenly. At times I am overwhelmingly happy around beautiful people and other times I am as ugly as I feel. When I am ugly, it is called expressionlessness.
Like my father, depression cuts into me slowly like knives that are sharpened to get the point across or an endless ether of unfulfilled relationships with people I cannot trust, no matter how much I may want to. It's a quiet sort of sadness on my father's face that won't leave mine alone, silent acceptance to seem less unbecoming. I share varicose veins and I plan to leave this world the same way I came into it, screaming out of irritability, for the sole sake of irritability and nothing else.
As for my mother, we are both anxious messes and as a result are manipulative people. I cannot let anyone live their life unless I specifically know how they are living their life. I so deeply engrave myself into the air bubble of the lives of those I love and I take and take and take and take until there is no more oxygen, ultimately suffocating love for a quieter space. I share eating habits and a distraught sense of self due to both of us being abused at young age by someone we didn't know well enough. Never fully in moments, hours will pass like seconds and simultaneously we will complain about all we have to do.
But nothing will ever finish. We will always be the same people, meant to spend our lives repeating the same mistakes and falsely labeling it as growth.
- i'm going to eat my own words
I'm going to school and the sun rises around 5 am, my life is back to normal and I am glad. I'm appreciative of the scenery and am in love with the beauty in everything in my life.
My body wakes up now at an appropriate time and I don't think about you daily. I no longer look at the moon and both my eyes they close in unison.
- one day we'll be older
One day we'll be older and we won't have to scream "please stay younger" at our skin. Then we'll never get wrinkly because you still love me and we'll never get sad because I still love you.
I spoke to you in a dream that I had and all you said was "good things never last" and before I could call you cliche, you had disappeared, your lips from my face.
One day we'll be so much older and we won't have to scream "please stay younger" at our skin because I never stopped loving you back. So don't say "good things they never last" because the wrinkles in your face are just the stretch marks that I'll kiss when we're both 21. We'll get coffee and talk about how nothing ever changes. Trust me, I know.
- please, please
Put into boxes that which you'd like to keep but rather not see. A puppet's anxiety of when to cut strings lies with a paranoia preventing time keep, or stable relationships. So tell me, what does your father know?
And don't rely on compliments you get, I'm telling you it's poison. It goes straight to your head. And if food is what you need, then eat. Your body is skinny and initials carved, you called it art, and your mother called it a problem. I should've kept quiet like you kept hungry.
So please, please darling I don't want to.
So please, please darling we don't have to.
- saliva
The first time you said that you loved me was when we were just kids. I know you've changed a lot since then, but I still hear it in your voice. I hear it in my head. I know no one else ever meant it the way you did.
-excerpt from "Spending the hours between three and four pacing back and forth across my apartment" by Naturally the foundation will bear your expenses
///
Drinking saliva, you leave it in my throat.
I strained myself, but you did not notice or hear a sound.
- strain
Rot my teeth to spend time with you
It's drizzling out and we can take our clothes off
Bite my neck and spit the aftertaste into my mouth
Wishing we could be more than this
Strain myself over nothing
Strain myself over you
Strain myself over the thought of you
- Stretch Mark
Turns out your stretch marks, they were more like the state lines. Now the burden is all mine. I won't live for you but I'll call you mine.
So if you want me, say you'll say when.
And if you love me, then I love you back.
Your stretch marks are the most beautiful state lines of your anatomy.
So I'll kiss your belly and we can drink coffee and then both get anxious over nothing.
- we write good stories with bad endings, or at least you'd tell me so
I live with regret because it's much easier than facing myself in mirrors. With who I've become and who I will be, eventually everything, all at once.
Just say you're not in the mood, we don't have to. And don't scream please give me some more.
I'd gouge out my eyes to give you perspective on terrible thoughts I think. But you'd still act blind and say that you're right. I don't exist, and neither did we.
Just say you're not in the mood, we don't have to. And don't scream please give me some more.
- well
You wrote "LOVE" on my arm expecting it to work. But all I wanted was your attention. False affection couldn't keep me clean, but we acted like it could. You're right to hurt me and I'm right to touch you. I'm lying through my teeth but your lips shut my mouth. I wrote you a letter everyday and when I ran out of things to say I wonder if you noticed.