Dear you,
You should have called me. Why didn't you call me? You were the only thing between me and a drug habit, between me and a hospital bracelet, between me and a headstone. You were not my everything. I am too strong for that, I do not depend on men or love or the nuclear family. I depend on Klonopin and Bacardi and MDMA.
I didn't visit your grave for a month after you died. Then I visited it every week. Now it's every month, or whenever I need the wind and the clouds and the too-green grass to scream louder than I can. I haven't said your name in months. Tomorrow, you will have been dead for longer than we dated. I knew you for fifteen years, dated you for seventeen months, loved you ever since that first date on the hill with the sunrise and the blueberries.
You fucked me up.
You fucked me up.
0 notes
and just because I said I couldn't be with you doesn't mean I can't fall head-over-heels for you so please take your dreamy eyes and your can-do attitude somewhere else
0 notes
Love won't leave me alone.
I still love the boy who treated me like an illness, who treated his own fists like a cure. I love him despite the eighteen times I've told him to fuck off in the last two weeks. I love him despite the fact that it's taken me three years to admit that I ever felt anything for him in the first place. I love him despite the broken bones and the black eyes and the covered wrists and the anxiety he left me. I love him but I cannot love him. I love him but he is bad for me.
I still love the other boy, the one who came after. I love his 6'3 sandy blond California. I love his 2 am Skype dates and his quiet understanding and his "I don't understand but I support you." I love the way thinking about him still makes me smile a little. I love his stupid puns and bear hugs and first-rate date ideas. I love his questions about things I loved and he didn't, how he tried doing everything I loved to do. I love how being with him made the entire world quiet down. I love how he still manages to do that. I love how the quietest, calmest place I know is in front of his grave. I love how he still listens without interruption.
0 notes
We laid together
under your favorite willow
and I listened to you tell stories
about the "good ol' days"
before the diagnoses
and the psychiatrists
and the hospitalizations.
And, when I looked back at you,
I realized the true meaning
of change
when I saw it, raw and undisguised,
in the depths of your eyes.
And just as hazel is an "in-between" color,
you are an "in-between" spirit,
caught between what should have been
and what came to be.
2 notes
·
View notes
I drank the last of the Four Loko
at 3:17 a.m. on Wednesday.
It tasted like you;
like cracked lips and broken sunrises
and dread.
There are sixteen empty cans littering my floor.
You would have scolded me,
trying to convince me to stop drinking
or at least brought me better alcohol,
alcohol that doesn't choke me on its way down my throat.
But you have no say anymore.
I will drink as I see fit.
And tonight, I want the world to spin.
I want to fall to my knees and cling to the grass
and hope I don't fall off the planet.
I want to fall into bed and call my brother
and tell him I don't think I'm ever coming home.
I want to get on a plane
and wake up in a different part of the world.
I want to find a place that doesn't remind me of you.
I'm not trying to drink myself to death.
But if that's what it takes,
I will.
1 note
·
View note
I don't remember the exact date
of the first time I was terrified of you.
It was only two and a half weeks
into our relationship
and I still had plenty of time to run.
I didn't.
That first time wasn't bad;
just a black eye and fractured hopes.
This was before you learned how
to carefully place the bruises
where they could be hidden by a sweater.
The second time, and the third time,
and the fourthfifthsixthseventheighth time,
you apologized.
You called me up, crying, begged my forgiveness.
It was the last time, you promised.
Always the last time.
I'm not proud of how long I stayed with you,
how long I chose to believe that each time
really was the last time.
The ninth time, I hadn't seen you in almost two years.
You called, told me you were clean,
said you wanted to have lunch and atone for past sins,
invited me to your place.
I went, but when you learned of his existence,
your fists hardened into steel. Again.
Another black eye. Another half-assed excuse.
Another goodbye.
The tenth--and final--time was three weeks later.
We happened to be at the same New Year's party
(though it was at my apartment
and you were carried in, blackout drunk,
by my well-intentioned friends).
12:00 midnight, your drunk ass goes in for the kiss.
I push you away. You get mad. This is nothing new for us.
Two broken ribs, a concussion, and a sprained ankle.
I told you goodbye.
I meant it this time.
0 notes
It has been eight months and five days.
Eight months and five days ago I lost the ability to laugh wholeheartedly. My eyes stopped dancing and my heart turned to steel. Since then, I can't look at the sky for fear of remembering the color of your eyes, and all my friends are brunettes because being near blondes hurts too much. I find your cheekbones in how my drapes puddle on the floor and the curve of your shoulder blades in the body of my guitar.
It's been 250 days and my breath still catches when "At Your Door" comes on the radio because the first time I kissed you that was playing in the background and since then it has been our song. I see my ex crossing the street and my heart stops because I can't help but to remember how gently you hugged me after he beat me the first time and every time after that and how you stayed up with me all night when I finally left him.
6,000 hours have passed and you're still the first person I want to text when something ridiculous happens. Your old phone number is still in my phone and I still have the last three voicemail messages you left me. The first was a pocket-dial message you didn't know you were leaving but I can hear you laughing on it and that sound makes everything hurt and everything stop hurting at the same time. The second was a simple "I love you." The third you were crying and apologizing and slurring and I've tried to delete it thousands of times but it's the last thing I'll ever have of you.
Eight months and five days have passed and it still hurts more than anything and I miss you more than anything and I'm sober now and I quit smoking and you'd be so proud of me please oh god please come back it's been 21 million seconds since you died and every single one of them is another knife in the wound
i miss you
0 notes
it's 9:28 pm and the walls are bulging
the walls are shrinking
the walls are screaming
i am screaming
i think i drank too much
i am fine i am fine i am fine
don't touch me.
i don't need your help.
i didn't understand before
but now i know!
i know that this is what
they've all been talking about!
me! imagine that,
people talking about me!
they're worrying about me!
this does not bring the comfort
i'd hoped it would.
this just brings purple-tinged
desperation.
i am alive i am alive i am alive
i am alive.
0 notes
Throw away the dead bouquet, dear.
The flowers have wilted
faster than you ever will.
The redolant languor has faded
to the cloying smell of fear
and loneliness;
and you spend too much time
comparing their
sickly-skinny stems
to your own wasted form
in the mirror.
The colors have faded to sepia.
You have faded too.
You envy their vase of water,
the way they require nothing
but sunlight and love.
They're already dead, dear.
They've been dead since
they were plucked from their roots.
They died long ago, dear.
And so did you.
1 note
·
View note
I've never associated Halloween
with candy corn and ghosts
and jack-o-lanterns.
To me, Halloween is sawdust;
Ray LaMontagne,
the color blue.
Fall is golden lockets
and clouds shaped like worry.
Pumpkin spice lattes are second only
to the internal ache of girlhood.
(Is it womanhood yet?
Only the spider plants
on my front porch know that answer.)
Pet rats and crystal pendants
and number-2 pencils and watercolors
all find themselves in Halloween.
So when you set your clock back an hour,
remember that I still only sing
at midnight.
1 note
·
View note
Leave me a note and flowers when you decide to go.
Write the note in flawless calligraphy on personalized stationary. Don't write the word 'goodbye.' Write about when we were in Cabo and I was still enough for you and we were happy. Write about how peonies are always going to remind you of me and how hard it will be to forget the sound of my laugh. Write about the way you know my lungs will shatter like glass when I pick up that note and write about the mercury in my eyes and the fluorine in my soul. Write about the fact that the stars are dimmer now than they were in Cabo.
And you'd better leave me a lavender flower because you know I know they mean distrust and you know damn well I'll appreciate the sentiment but that I will always remember Cabo.
1 note
·
View note
We were young and stupid
but we were also the smartest people
we knew.
That summer we left behind girlhood
in favor of this new and exciting
maturity, testing it out with
our suntanned bodies,
slick with the salt of the ocean.
We tried anything and everything
took anything, drank anything,
smoked anything.
We flirted with boys
we knew we'd never see again.
We dyed our hair,
wore too much makeup,
showed too much skin.
That summer, we took on the world
headfirst
and expected to win.
That summer, we learned more
about ourselves than we ever had before.
That summer was the turning point.
0 notes
I tattooed your face
on the backs of my eyelids.
I burned candles that smell like you
and read books by authors
who share your first name.
I learned guitar just to write songs
that turned ineffable emotion
into a linear progression of chords
and lyrics about roses.
I told my friends you were on vacation,
gone to Alaska to spend time
with the family I wanted to share with you.
I refuse to admit you've moved on.
I poured my heart into a flask
and mailed it to where
I thought you might be.
You sent it back full of bourbon
and moonlight
and broken promises.
1 note
·
View note
I think the stars crash into each other
when we're not watching them.
I think the ocean gets lonely
and the mountains think they're too old for this.
The rain doesn't taste like freedom anymore.
It tastes like sorrow and regret.
They say there could be holes
in our ozone layer,
that in a few years we may have
nothing to breathe at all.
I say bring it on.
I say maybe we've had this earth for too long.
I say maybe it's tired of us.
It's probably time to give it a rest.
The stars might appreciate a little privacy.
It's time for the ocean and the mountains
to get reacquainted.
The rain could start falling again.
10 notes
·
View notes
i. His eyes remind me of Tahoe. The snow on the mountain and the snow in my heart are one and the same. His heart is made of steel and his liver is made of iron and his eyelids are heavier than lead. He is the man in the moon and I am stardust.
ii. The dates on the backs of the pictures say January but I could have sworn it was June. White yarrow was blooming on the side of the road and I corrected you when you called it queen anne's lace. I don't know why it offended me.
iii. The bruise your lips left on my collarbone turned into a scar when you left.
0 notes
everything is too flat and
everything is too vivid and
everything is too bright.
i can't hear anything
except for the ringing in my ears.
i don't know if i'm screaming.
i don't know if anyone can hear.
the world is tinged with green
and the world is spinning too damn fast
and i want to get off.
the contrast is too high and
the saturation too low
and everything is second
to the buzzing in my head.
i need help but
i don't know which way is up
and i'm pretty sure my car
is out of gas.
i want to be with you and
i want you to love me and
i want me to love me
and i want you to love yourself
and i want us to stop.
1 note
·
View note