At eighteen I'm the scent of second-day hair with perfume in it
It smells like your bed, and my sweat, and your exhales, and my Juicy Couture Viva la Juicy . How middle school of me.  
I'm the cool touch of unwashed sheets on bare skin because the thermostat is fussy and I like sleeping naked
Just me, you, and this body that I don't like so much right now, but I'm eighteen, and I'm working on that.
I'm leggings while they still pass for pants, and the chewed up ends of pens in twenty different colors
Chinese homework has really turned me into such a biter, and I claim to love all those darling pens equally, but I show my blue pens the most love
I've teethed them half to death
I'm not even close to halfway to death assuming things go well for me. Oh, please let things go well for me.

At eighteen I'm the taste of chai and menthol because that's what's **** these days
I'm all about what's **** these days. Apathy, really bad electronic music, bare midriffs.
Funny since at eighteen I don't want anyone to touch me
This body is my project, please don’t even look at me like this, all insecure and exposed. Please just let me curl up, and please let me be by myself.
I wish my mother were here to bring me a popsicle. My throat hurts from all the screaming I do these days.

At eighteen I guess I'm still a little angsty, but I just want you to love me
God, do I want you to love me.
I want you to patronize me with the warmth of your arms and undress me with strong, resolved hands
Don't touch me, just look at me and tell me that I'm perfect and naive because at eighteen I'm still milky white, soft, and broken
I'm a sight for sore eyes, a new sight, your sight
For god's sake
Just love me.

I would dig you an ocean if you'd swim in it, but you would always insist it's too cold. And I could take all the energy I invested in your happiness and warm the entire ocean over, but then you would say it's too warm, or too *****, too big, too small.
I would build you a home if you'd live in it, but you would complain about how the floors creak, and how everything isn't just exactly how it should be. I could sweep all of the dust under the couch where you would never see all of the leaks, and holes, and cracks, but you wouldn't even like the furniture. You wouldn't like any of it.
I would take all my love back if I knew how to - how to drain an ocean of years upon years of tears that I wasted on you.
But you took my love with you when you left for the other side of this country. And while you sit in a beautiful new house, looking out at a beautiful new ocean, I'll be here, in this miserable dry spell, hoping that if I swim all the way across this ******* ocean that it will bring me back to you.

I. You said you would always be there for me
II. Then you weren't
III. It's fine though
.... I'm over it

If I could be anything I would be the imprint your bodyweight leaves in your mattress when you pick yourself up (again). I would like to be the curve of your back when you're tired and it's late, but there's still work to do, and the way your shoulders start to cave under your sense of obligation. I want to be the way your heart breaks when your father calls, and the knowledge that he will never love you like I do. I want to be the cracks in the tiles where the ground split open under the weight of the sadness you discard on the bathroom floor every time you step into your shower. I want to be the misery that runs down your drain as you wash away the dusty coating this world has left on your skin. I want to be the place your eyes wander to when you can't look at me: the broken sight of your self-loathing. And when the acid in your stomach has torn through the dwindling reserves of your tangled sense of place, I would be the anchor restraining the winds that rush through your sails. If I could be anything, I would be the way you inhale every time I leave, and the gravity that I'll never understand that brings you back to me.

It was just the tips of your fingers and the way they weren't ashamed to be between mine. The way your skin's not mine, and mine will never be yours, but you loved its freckled smoothness anyways. It's just because my heart broke when every word you passed to me in two a.m. dizziness turned itself into a confession, and the way your eyes gave you away, and apologized for wanting to not be alone tonight.
It's raining today, and I'll never be the weight upon your chest at night, or the pitch you'll tune your self-acceptance to. But I will be the grogginess of morning that never lasts forever, but never fails to come back, and I will love you like the very saddest memory I keep away in my chest. It's not important, but it's where my mind goes when it's windy, so I guess I'll love you there. In the spaces where no one sees it, because no one sees us.
It's just because your smile broke when you said that nothing hurts you. Well, that's certainly not true.
But I will love you like the ocean at midnight, a stillness I'm never allowed to swim in, and can only love from  distance.
But I promise to love you anyways.