just once i want someone to fight for me, to think “oh shit i could really lose her”, but it seems like i’m always doing the fighting. i guess that’s my problem, people think i’m always gonna be there because when they leave i don’t shut the door on their way out. i feel myself being pushed to the point of just not giving a shit and that says a lot because even though i’m fucked up, my heart’s big
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You get over him like this:
at first, you don’t. his name is a note you can’t
unsingbut
eventually your body gets bored
of making tears over the same person
who broke you.
your body says “listen up
it was a long time ago” and for a second
you feel whole butyou catch sight of him in a starbucks and your heart drops
and your hands shake and you want to throw up and
you can’t explain to your friends why this messed you up
because you’ve already talked their ears off so you go home
and have a good old-fashioned sob butsomewhere in that night or the next one or two weeks
down the road
the things that came to the surface start getting old and
you start turning over your relationship in your palms
until you discover the ugly things you’ve been hiding
from yourself and you think
maybe it’s wasn’t always heaven maybe
it was helland you write about him or cry about him or
get him out of yourself however you can, you
scrape yourself clean until there’s nothing left
and rebuild from the ground up and
some wicked part of you still wants to talk to him
just to say “look, i’m new now,
i’m different,”
but you don’t because you’ve straightened out
the voices in your headand you write about him and make a stupid poetry blog about
red blood and black ink and you make playlists of songs
you found way after him and you
make yourself okay again eventually becausethe truth is, you were whole before you found him
you have just forgotten how to be who you are
without him - don’t worry, my love
all it takes is a little soul-searching
before you rediscover
you are
better off without him.
We are not friends, neither lovers nor enemies; just strangers whose hearts speed up a little each time our gazes meet, after all.
The bones in my fingers have gotten longer.
Long enough to hold a gun,
or your hand.
And my mother knocks on my door much less often,
quietly, unspoken, she knows my blood sleeps in my veins nowadays, not on my bedroom floor anymore.
I don’t talk about it much, but when I was younger, my skin got so tight around me, I’d cut my body open. Drain the blood, release the pressure, breathe breathe breathe.
But dizzy and numb aren’t the same as happy.
The tightness comes back again, when you’re alone, when the moon comes out, and you’ve only got so much blood to give.
Now that I am older, with longer fingers, and gentler thoughts, I know I don’t need razor blades. I need fists up, I need my mother. I fight and I cry and I sing and I breathe. I don’t need love, or whatever fucked up thing I convinced myself was love in my haze. I keep my heart in a glass box in my hands, not between his slippery fingers. It’s still fragile, but only I can break it. And I do, and I will. And I bleed. But I’ve got my fists up this time.
I tried so hard. You know that, right? I tried harder than you could ever imagine. Now, here I am, trying my best just to forget everything. Every piece of you. The way you smell, the feel of your skin. I can still feel you, I think I always will.
It is a strange time to come back. The house is warm and you used to be excited. Now you’re tired. Just weary of even good things. When something is temporary like a holiday you learn not to hold onto it too tightly. You learn that the best thing is to be pleasantly surprised while bracing for the worst. So you never really get excited anymore. It’s a strange time to be alive and somehow feeling nothing. The absence always feels louder when you’re expecting happy. When it used to be good. When numbness didn’t overshadow everything in your reach. When stuff was still good.
just because
he says he’s nice
doesn’t make him
kind;
you’re twenty-three and tired,
step yourself out of his narrative.
don’t allow him to talk over you.
when he tries to explain, say,
“i knew that already,”
when he makes you take out headphones to compliment you,
you roll your eyes. when he talks about
his dirty slut of an ex-girlfriend, when he says
all girls should really just chill because they’re always
upset about something, when he’s a nice guy.
you edit your manic pixie self out of his book
where he saves you from the demons your therapist
clearly glanced over. clock yourself
out of working to make him pleased with you, open
that bad mouth and say,
“no”
and flinch. be ready for the punch
because it comes quick. or when you’re
not looking. the cream in his smile curdles
in an instant. you who were beautiful with rose glasses
are now an ugly harpy shrew who complains about
every small thing.
you’re a bitch. you need to stop talking so much. you laugh too loud,
pop a fight into your teeth that comes unpretty
like an oncoming truck. like
a bullet lodged in the brain of a young girl at a concert
like a knife in the throat of another because of prom like
a mattress that’s seen too much.
you can’t kill us all. the more of us you plant,
the more of us grow. our sister sip blood out of
our palms, come creeping into the corners of our rooms
sing their siren songs at midnight, tell us
“don’t forget me”, so okay, we’ve got her name carved into
our bellies, drink her up like fish oil,
because nothing about this is wonderful, it makes you sick but
goddamn if you’ll let this world hurt another girl,
so okay. the nice man might be nice. he might
want you to be happy at the end of the night, but you arrive
ready with your claws out, with your tongue red.
why you gotta be so dramatic. why you gotta be on guard all the time.
so okay. like last night i didn’t wake up after dreaming about
what happened to her. what happens to all of us. like
the nightmare doesn’t shut up, just gets worse because
it doesn’t end, you don’t save her, the scream she never spoke
comes crashing through your breastbone, she cuts the spine of you
with her hurt, because you hurt too,
so okay. the nice man doesn’t want to kill you.
doesn’t put a drunk gun to your head or run you down
or leave you after the breast cancer gets you.
there are men you love and are gentle and kind.
and the nice men know you’ve got that big heart beating hard
so they tell you to calm down and look at the bigger picture,
not everyone is out to hurt you if you’ve only got a twenty-five
percent chance of being hurt, if you’ve only got a one in four
chance of meeting somebody who’s been hurt, less than fingers
on your shaky hands, if you’re lucky and
he’s three of four men you know he just might be nice.
they urge you to put down the banner around him, don’t call him out,
he’s not there to frighten you on bus stops and film your reaction,
so you need to stop jumping down his throat about every
little thing. stop the fight. and you say: okay but she died.
and he says that’s sad, yeah, but i’m not like that. i’m nice.
every nice man keeps telling you
he’s nice and he’s nice and some men are nice.
it never brings her back to life.
My thoughts cannot move an inch without bumping into some piece of you.
My feelings just changed. I had been waiting for you to realize you couldn’t go another day without me. I had played out every excuse you could of had for putting all that time between us. Missing you had become second nature to me. And somewhere in the last year, when I never got that phone call, and you never showed up at my window, and we never ran into each other, I just stopped feeling like I needed you so much.

